There are a lot of reasons to mourn the loss of the minor league season. You think about the people that work for those organizations and the communities they reside in, you think about the players and how their lives have been turned upside down, and you worry about the effects that the loss of the season will have on organizations going forward.
However, one purely selfish reason for us to be upset about the lack of minor league baseball is that we were all looking forward to seeing individual players play and determine if they were going to take steps forward or not. We asked the TC minor league crew which Braves prospect they were looking forward to seeing the most. Predictably, no one had just one player to mention. Enjoy!
Eric: I usually have two groups of players that I look forward to each season. There are the guys closer the majors that I want to see if they can actually look the part of a major leaguer and then there are the young guys that I want to look for skill developments that compliment areas where they are talented. For the closer to the show guys, I wanted to see Cristian Pache, Ian Anderson, and Kyle Wright. All three had their warts in 2019 and all three are superbly talented, so seeing if they could take the next step was a big deal. For the younger, more raw guys, I wanted to see Michael Harris, Vaughn Grissom, Mahki Backstrom, and Stephen Paolini. The latter three were probably the highest on my wishlist because I hadn’t had the chance to see them play live yet.
Wayne: It’s a tossup. I was super excited at the prospect of Mahki Backstrom landing in Rome this season. But I also want to see the same guy that I just haven’t been able to get my eye on the past couple of years: CJ Alexander.
Gaurav: A lot of the younger guys that were drafted last year: Backstrom, Harris, DeVito, Grissom, Owens, Estes, Johnson. I think the Braves had a phenomenal 2019 back half of the draft and I am excited to see how these players develop.
Aaron: One guy I like more than others is Greg Cullen. He’s not flashy, but the guy just gets on base. I was disappointed the Braves kept him in Rome the entire season. I didn’t think that was fair at all. But he’s lacking in power. I really want to see if he makes a swing adjustment. Even if it’s not home run power, he still lacks gap to gap hitting. If he can put up 40+ doubles and have that OBP around .370+, he’s going to make it to the bigs. I’m a Ricky DeVito fan too. I watched him and at times his stuff is really good. It’s about being more consistent and not having that one inning where you give up four runs. And of course, I wanted to see how last year’s HS class progressed as well as some of the international players like Cesari Moreno, Carlos Paiva, Francisco Floyd, Yoansy Moreno, Deivy Castro and Samuel Bastardo.
Matt: The 2019 draft class. Mahki Backstrom, Vaughn Grissom, Michael Harris, Stephen Paolini, Kadon Morton, Tyler Owens, Jared Johnson, and Joey Estes. These young guys have so much promise, some of them very young for their draft class. Getting to see them after a full winter in a pro organization was going to be exciting.
Garrett: There are so many to be honest. Trey Harris is one of those fun guys to watch because you can always see the spark he brings to his teams. Michael Harris is high on my list of favorite players and I wanted to see if he could build on his early successes. Kyle Wright was in the process of really turning a corner and I wanted to see him continue that momentum. I mean Kyle is going to play anyway so I guess that’s a moot point but I still wanted to get him a clean year to work with. Then of course all the other guys mentioned before from last year’s late rounds of the draft. The Rome and Danville teams were going to be a treat this season and now we’ll have to sit out until next year in anticipation of these guys.
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