A look back at the 2011 Farm

Carp

Well-known member
Reminiscing about grander days of yore, I came across the 2011 top 20 prospect list, according to John Sickels. What an incredible group this turned out to be.

Including the honorable mentions, 22 of the players listed reached the major leagues either with us or some other team. 7 of the top 12 are above average major leaguers.

Highlighted by this class is:

Freeman
Teheran
Kimbrel
Minor
Simmons
Beachy
Pastornicky
Mike Dunn
Cory Gearrin

Link to the entire list here

Good times.
 
Reminiscing about grander days of yore, I came across the 2011 top 20 prospect list, according to John Sickels. What an incredible group this turned out to be.

22 of the players listed, reached the major leagues (either in the top 20 or in the "others of note" section). 7 of the top 12 are above average major leaguers.

Good times.

Where is the link to the list or list itself?
 
Crazy. Heyward graduated the year before too.

Gattis was still smoking weed.

Other names on there who are on other ML rosters.
 
Some day, somebody's gonna blow the whistle on Baseball America's farm system ratings. You system is important for only two things: developing major leaguers, or developing talent you can trade for major leaguers. How many five-star, five-tool prospects who are languishing in the pipeline don't matter -- until they reach the majors. Even the so-so farm clubs have turned out the talent. I wish I had the list of MLB debuts for the last 20 years; it shows the Braves on average had at least five players from their system make their MLB debut every year. That's an amazing number. But here's this decade:

2014: Schlosser, THomas, S. Simmons, Shreve, Jaime, Buchter, La Stella -- and we've still got the September roster expansion to go.
2013: Hale, A. Wood, Bethancourt, Terdoslavich, Gosselin, Rasmus, Cunningham, and, oh, Gattis.
2012: A. Simmons, Pastornicky, Avilan
2011: Teheran, Gearrin, Delgado, Constanza, Vizcaino, and lest we forget, Matt Young and Antoan Richardson
2010: Venters, Minor, Kimbrel, Brandon Hicks, Heyward, Freeman, Beachy, Boscan,

If I'm the Braves PD people, I put that list against anyone's and tell them to kiss my butt.
 
Some day, somebody's gonna blow the whistle on Baseball America's farm system ratings. You system is important for only two things: developing major leaguers, or developing talent you can trade for major leaguers. How many five-star, five-tool prospects who are languishing in the pipeline don't matter -- until they reach the majors. Even the so-so farm clubs have turned out the talent. I wish I had the list of MLB debuts for the last 20 years; it shows the Braves on average had at least five players from their system make their MLB debut every year. That's an amazing number. But here's this decade:

2014: Schlosser, THomas, S. Simmons, Shreve, Jaime, Buchter, La Stella -- and we've still got the September roster expansion to go.
2013: Hale, A. Wood, Bethancourt, Terdoslavich, Gosselin, Rasmus, Cunningham, and, oh, Gattis.
2012: A. Simmons, Pastornicky, Avilan
2011: Teheran, Gearrin, Delgado, Constanza, Vizcaino, and lest we forget, Matt Young and Antoan Richardson
2010: Venters, Minor, Kimbrel, Brandon Hicks, Heyward, Freeman, Beachy, Boscan,

If I'm the Braves PD people, I put that list against anyone's and tell them to kiss my butt.

Plus Braves farm system players who made the majors during this period after being traded to other teams: Hoover, Clemens, Oberholtzer, Spruill, Ahmed, Chapman, Abreu.
 
Plus Braves farm system players who made the majors during this period after being traded to other teams: Hoover, Clemens, Oberholtzer, Spruill, Ahmed, Chapman, Abreu.

Not to mention Brandon Drury, who I still wish we had. Go back to Locke and ChuckyT. who brought us Tim Hudson.
 
I like the 2010 list better which is has Heywood but not Simmons and Beachy. I like Sickles but he was down on the system in 2010. To really comprehend this you have to compare to the other teams farm systems. Google the Royals 2011 list, Sickles was all kinds of hyped for this list. The best 2 might be Perez and Ventura and the Braves drafted Gattis after this list was made and they are already better than those 2.
 
Not to mention Brandon Drury, who I still wish we had. Go back to Locke and ChuckyT. who brought us Tim Hudson.

Actually is was Dan Meyer and Chucky T who brought us Hudson.

Locke and Charlie Morton (who himself has become a very solid starting pitcher) was part of the deal that brought us McLouth.
 
Actually is was Dan Meyer and Chucky T who brought us Hudson.

Locke and Charlie Morton (who himself has become a very solid starting pitcher) was part of the deal that brought us McLouth.

It was clear that Morton was going to be a starting pitcher for a long time as soon as you saw him pitch. Wish we could have held on to that guy. I believe that in the pitching culture of Atlanta he would have thrived much sooner.
 
It was clear that Morton was going to be a starting pitcher for a long time as soon as you saw him pitch. Wish we could have held on to that guy. I believe that in the pitching culture of Atlanta he would have thrived much sooner.

I doubt that. Morton took off with Pitt after he changed his pitching mechanics completely to mimic Roy Halladay. And the Pirates pitching coach is largely responsible for that.
 
I doubt that. Morton took off with Pitt after he changed his pitching mechanics completely to mimic Roy Halladay. And the Pirates pitching coach is largely responsible for that.

I think Morton's problem with the Braves is that he had too many pitches and he tried to use them all. As a result, he lacked the polish to become truly effective. Great to see him doing well. Goes to show that you need to take your time with pitchers and give the ones with promise every chance to succeed. Morton's control has improved dramatically.
 
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