Atlanta Braves Minor League Overview: Right-handed Pitchers

The 2020 MLB Draft is deep and is very rich with pitching. Keith Law noted in a chat that the Braves are one of the teams most likely to go all high school. Aren’t rumors fun and obviously take that with a grain of salt and it is worth mentioning that rumor doesn’t specify pitching or positional player. The Braves have made it a point with drafting pitching early and often since the rebuild started in 2015...let’s not forget all the pitching prospects that have been acquired.

The Braves may have hit big with Mike Soroka and Max Fried, but there have been many more disappointments. Whether from stuff backing up or injuries, guys like Kyle Wright, Bryse Wilson, Touki Toussaint, Luiz Gohara, Kolby Allard, Lucas Sims, Sean Newcomb, Aaron Blair, etc. are all still either clear misses or works in progress. As it stands though, we’ve built up in our minds that most of the prospects in the Braves system will pan out, but the harsh truth is that many won’t. That the Braves have gotten as many as they have to The Show is fortunate.

Let’s start by looking at some of the right-handed pitching depth in the Braves system that already have some MLB experience – Kyle Wright, Bryce Wilson and Touki Toussaint. I’m going to include Touki even though he recently lost his rookie status, but he’s still really young and counts toward that starting pitching depth.

Touki Toussaint has a mid 90’s fastball to go along with a very sexy curve and splitter. Through 40+ innings of work last season, Touki didn’t perform well. Touki’s always had issues with control and walking guys and that hurt him quite a bit as he posted a 5.62 BB/9. He gave up a lot of hits, but some of that could be bad luck but not all of it can’t be attributed to that. What is encouraging, though, is the swinging strike percentage and his strikeout rate. Also, his hard hit contact was actually lower than Mike Soroka’s 36.3%. Very encouraging signs.

Bryce Wilson features a pretty good fastball that sits mid 90’s as well, and he’s normally a strike thrower. However, there’s a host of problems with Wilson at this moment. First, I don’t know many pitchers, particularly starters, that find success throwing a fastball 72% of the time. You are basically telling the player what you are throwing and MLB hitters are too good. You have to mix it up and change speeds to keep hitters off balance and so far, Bryce Wilson hasn’t offered enough of that as his secondaries have lagged behind. Secondly, if you are going to throw your fastball that much, it has to be some kind of sinker to induce weak or ground ball contact. Looking at the numbers for Wilson, he gives up way too much medium and hard contact and is a fly ball pitcher. That’s a recipe for disaster and it shows in his home run rate. At this point in time, I’m not sure you can even have Wilson come out of the pen and may just require more time in the minors to develop his non-fastball offerings. He’s still young, but the Braves did him no favors by moving him so quickly through the system knowing he was primarily dominating with just the fastball. Just like we say you have to look past the numbers when they are bad, sometimes that needs to hold true for when they are stellar.

Kyle Wright has three potential plus or better pitches in his fastball, curve and slider. His changeup isn’t that bad either and could be better than average in time. The main thing holding Wright back isn’t really the walk rate as his control is better than the numbers have shown. No, it’s that he doesn’t always trust his secondaries. He wants to throw a fastball by a hitter, which is possible when you are throwing 94-99. But we know MLB hitters can hit 100+ mph pitches. Wright has to do a better job of sequencing his pitches and trusting his stuff which is an odd thing to have to long for for a guy that has such good stuff.

As previously mentioned, these guys are young and hungry. Touki and Wright were both having excellent springs by their numbers below. They were showing the exact improvements to be successful. Touki in particular showed much better control. Wright’s trust in his secondaries were evident as his strikeout and walk rates showed much improvement. Only Bryce Wilson continued to get hit hard, so hopefully the Braves give him time to focus on his secondaries.

Let’s move past the three players with MLB experience and discuss the other players that are just a stones throw away from getting a call-up.

Ian Anderson has so far lived up to being the #3 overall pick in 2016. He’s done everything you could ask for and he’s moved up the system at pretty fast rate dominating at almost every stop. I say almost since he only pitched a few innings in AAA and he simply wasn’t used to pitching with the MLB baseball. That will just take time to get used to. Anderson has a solid three pitch mix with a fastball that sits around 93 mph. His slider and change-up flash above average or better. I’d even go as far as saying that Anderson’s change-up might be his best pitch, and actually helps his fastball play up and not the other way around. Now we can debate whether his lack of high spin rates for the fastball and slider will hurt him long term, but at least his small sample size in Spring Training showed that he appears to be on the right track.

Patrick Weigel is already on the 40 man and was knocking on the doorstep before going down with TJS. Now that he’s even further away from the injury, it should be fun see him pitch with no restrictions. Weigel has four pitches that are average or better so he’ll should get opportunities to start although his more immediate future appears to be as a bullpen piece.

Jasseel De La Cruz has been in the system since 2015. He had a big arm that can pump it to 98/99 mph, but there were concerns with control and secondaries. Cruz had a breakout party in 2019 and he vaulted up three levels to finish the season at AA. He also threw a complete game no hitter in his last start in High-A. Cruz would routinely pitch deep into games, so he’s working putting durability issues behind him as he surpassed 100 innings for the first time. What helped with the breakout was the improvement to his slider. At times, it was just nasty and could be an above average pitch or better pitch although consistency with it was lacking at times. He still needs to work on the change-up, but it does play up a little bit since there is a big velocity difference vs his mid to high 90’s fastball. Now that he’s on the 40 man roster, he’s just a call away.

Those in the next wave down include around five pitchers. The first two in Freddy Tarnok and Victor Vodnik offer high risk/high reward. Both have big potential, but neither one really wowed in 2019. Vodnik mostly came out of the pen and didn’t really dominate hitters in those short spurts like you’d expect. Tarnok was simply rushed to High-A and his sub par performance really showed. The next three are college arms and each have their positives and negatives. Trey Riley was a big time JUCO arm, but his mechanics are just a mess. When he was at his best he features two potential plus pitches in his fastball and slider. He’s a real mystery right now, but I’d expect the Braves keep him as a starter for now. Ricky DeVito is a personal favorite of mine. I’ve seen him look straight up dominate for 2 or 3 innings of work and then something happens, maybe mechanics, and he’ll just have that one inning where things just go south. If he gets that straightened out and show that consistency inning to inning and start to start, then he could be a draft steal. Nolan Kingham was a big time prospect at one time. He’s got a good fastball, but Kingham’s problem is much like Jeremy Walker in that he gives up too much contact and doesn’t strike out enough guys to compensate. Jeremy Walker has turned himself into a very good reliever, so there’s hope for Kingham. As it stands right now, he’s a starter until he’s not.

Last but not least are three prep pitchers taken between rounds 13-16 of the 2019 draft in Tyler Owens, Jared Johnson and Joey Estes. Only Tyler Owens really stood out after getting drafted and earned a promotion to Danville. Each offers a good amount of upside, but they’ll likely be moved along very slowly, so don’t expect to see them anytime soon unless these guys are going to Driveline and absolutely blow up.

A few shoutouts include Huascar Ynoa, Jeremy Walker, Brooks Wilson and Darius Vines. I mention Ynoa and Walker since they are on the top 30, but they’ve mostly relievers at this point, so I skipped over them. Brooks Wilson was a closer in college, but moved into a starter role last year where he pitched pretty well. He’s a strike throwing machine that ultimately ends up in the pen, but we’ll see how long he sticks as a starter. Darius Vines doesn’t have a ton of upside as he gives up a lot of hits.

Whatever your point of view is on the Braves system and pitching, there’s a reason why teams always load up on it. The bust rates are high due to the fact that injuries hurt pitchers worse than positional players or their stuff simply never progresses. This draft is loaded with pitching talent, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the Braves draft some pitchers. You also need that depth to help fill other areas via trades. Whatever happens, I just hope Alex Anthopoulos has learned what players are worth keeping and which are worth trading (we’ll find out eventually if Joey Wentz and Tristan Beck were the right guys to trade). Cause he’s lost a lot of value for some prospects by holding on to them too long.