Minor league thread

Chico said:
Javier Valdes could be a UT option in the next year or two. He was a Below average college UT player drafted as a C.

He crapped the bed in 21, but he is having a solid season between Rome and Miss. He could always draw a walk, but now he’s developed some power.

I’m not sure what other positions he could still play, but with using Contreras/TDA as a DH I think we could use a 3rd catcher with some versatility.
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I've wondered what they have put in his Wheaties. Just kidding, but an astronomical uptick in his performance. Played all over the place in college. Played mostly LF/RF at Florida International as a freshman, mostly C as a sophomore, mostly 1B as a junior. Some 3B sprinkled in. Didn't hit a ton in college, but had a solid junior season. From his pic, he's clearly on the great hair team.
 
50PoundHead said:
I've wondered what they have put in his Wheaties. Just kidding, but an astronomical uptick in his performance. Played all over the place in college. Played mostly LF/RF at Florida International as a freshman, mostly C as a sophomore, mostly 1B as a junior. Some 3B sprinkled in. Didn't hit a ton in college, but had a solid junior season. From his pic, he's clearly on the great hair team.
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Haha…Yeah, I first noticed him at a Rome this year when my wife said he was cute.
 
50PoundHead said:
I've wondered what they have put in his Wheaties. Just kidding, but an astronomical uptick in his performance. Played all over the place in college. Played mostly LF/RF at Florida International as a freshman, mostly C as a sophomore, mostly 1B as a junior. Some 3B sprinkled in. Didn't hit a ton in college, but had a solid junior season. From his pic, he's clearly on the great hair team.
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It will be interesting to see what we do with the bench as the payroll goes up.

Do we look to use a guy like this on the bench while he's cheap? Or do they continue to get more MLB guys in the 2-5 million range?
 
Russ2dollas said:
It will be interesting to see what we do with the bench as the payroll goes up.

Do we look to use a guy like this on the bench while he's cheap? Or do they continue to get more MLB guys in the 2-5 million range?
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Looking at major league rosters this year, I am a bit surprised that the quality of a lot of benches is so low. Of course, low payroll teams aren't going to shovel a lot of money into bench quality, but there looks to be plenty of opportunity for fringy guys to find a home in AAA and from there, there's always a shot to be a big league fill-in. Braves' bench looks solid except for Heredia (whose not a bad niche player) and maybe it gets even better with a little bigger payroll. I'm curious to see what happens when Arcia comes back. He's probably one of the two who will go on the September roster and we'll see who ends up on the post-season roster.

Just dove a little deeper on Valdes, and his problem behind the plate seems to be throwing out runners. He was an infielder in high school and had a 9.5 rating at Perfect Game (who really liked his bat in their write-up). His statistical jump this year shows he can hit some. Finding a place for him in the field is probably going to be the challenge. Nice problem to have. Braves' minor league hitting instruction seems to have abandoned (for the most part--still some notable exceptions) the Rocket Wheeler "swing if it's in the area code" School of Hitting.
 
I just noticed something that seems odd, and I’m wondering if it’s purposeful based off the big league roster or if it’s a shift in thinking.

Muller, Shuster, Dodd, and Shoemaker are the only viable LH arms in our system. You could maybe add DeAvilla as a RP option, but even all our best BP arms are RH. The LH relievers we have are low men in their pens.

On the other side, if you look at our top 20-30 hitters depending on how you’d rank them roughly half are LH or Switch hitters.
 
Chico said:
I just noticed something that seems odd, and IÂ’m wondering if itÂ’s purposeful based off the big league roster or if itÂ’s a shift in thinking.

Muller, Shuster, Dodd, and Shoemaker are the only viable LH arms in our system. You could maybe add DeAvilla as a RP option, but even all our best BP arms are RH. The LH relievers we have are low men in their pens.

On the other side, if you look at our top 20-30 hitters depending on how youÂ’d rank them roughly half are LH or Switch hitters.
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Salinas is a pretty good prospect.
 
It's always a mix when it comes to how a team drafts, but Anthopoulos' drafts have incorporated more position players in the first ten rounds than what was happening under Coppolella (or at least it seems that way). We're not that deep right now when it comes to pitching prospects, especially in the lower minors. Again, the international sanctions hurt us there. I think with the sanctions lifted and the ability to get position prospects out of Latin America, we're going to see the drafting go back a bit toward more pitching early, especially high school arms. I could easily be wrong, but I think was we saw this last draft may be replicated in the next couple of drafts.
 
Soroka was cruising and Ozzie had two hits last night when the rains came.

Murphy got absolutely shelled and only lasted 0.1 inning.
 
Great news about Morton! He's been on fire for a while. Hoping something clicked because he has some crazy raw tools. Backstrom is another who has improved over the past couple months, but still needs to work on a lot. I think the missing year of development really hurt these guys and hopefully they are coming on strong now.
 
zbhargrove said:
Great news about Morton! He's been on fire for a while. Hoping something clicked because he has some crazy raw tools. Backstrom is another who has improved over the past couple months, but still needs to work on a lot. I think the missing year of development really hurt these guys and hopefully they are coming on strong now.
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I think the lost 2020 really hurt a few guys. Good to see it coming together a bit for Morton. He got the third-highest bonus of the post-Round 10 guys in 2019 behind Tyler Owens and Joey Estes. Morton was a sought-after dual sport athlete in high school and had a baseball commitment to Alabama.
 
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