Braves Quote For The Day ... Prospects Good And Bad

The latest Baseball America Prospect Hot Sheet is up, and waddayknow Julio Teheran is on the list (again):

While fellow 19-year-old Jordan Lyles won the race to Triple-A, Teheran has made more progress this season. He ranks in the top 15 in the minors in both ERA (2.36) and strikeouts (144). Coming into the year the Colombia native had made just seven starts in full-season ball. This season, Teheran has breezed through two levels of Class A and seems more than ready to tackle Double-A.

Touched up for five runs in his first start for Mississippi, Teheran has been practically untouchable since. He completed 5 2/3 no-hit innings in start No. 2 and had allowed a mere two runs on eight hits in a span of 18 2/3 innings. And one could not ask for better peripherals. Teheran has 20 strikeouts, four walks and no home runs allowed in his past three starts.

Yeah, I'm pretty much ga-ga for Teheran. He has ridiculous upside, and he's already shown so much this year in only his first full professional season.

The not-so-hot sheet also has one of the Braves top prospects, Edward Salcedo:

Scouts who have seen Salcedo play with low Class A Rome this year seem to come away saying the same thing: The tools and size are there, but it just doesn't look like he's played much. The Braves' $1.6 million signing hasn't shown much in-game ability with low Class A Rome, where he's hitting .195/.232/.331 with 33 strikeouts in 125 plate appearances. Things haven't been any better in the field, where he has 19 errors in 31 games at shortstop, though he doesn't project to stay at the position anyway.

Salcedo looks real good in the field, though his execution leaves little to be desired. At this point it looks like the Braves started him out at too high of a level. They probably should have kept him in the Dominican Summer League the rest of the season, only bringing him over to the States for the Instructional League. Perhaps we (and they) wrongly believed that he was advanced for his age. Still, there's no reason to doubt the tools or think too much less of him, everything is still there, some guys just take longer than others.

As much as Teheran is having a successful double-A campaign -- making that jump from A to AA is one of the toughest to make in baseball -- Salcedo is making an equally difficult jump, going from his native country to the U.S. and skipping two levels of Rookie ball. Ozzie Guillen reminded us recently how difficult it can be for foreign-born players when they first arrive in this country.