With the end of the baseball season comes a time when players hit the free agent market and potentially find homes with new organizations. Obviously for Atlanta Braves fans, the focus is largely on major league players and, more specifically, what the future holds for Freddie Freeman.
As a result, you would be excused if you didn’t realize that an entire slew of Braves minor leaguers just became available to join new organizations. Some have been with the Braves since they became professionals and their team control ran its course while others were on one year minor league deals and were not with the Braves for very long at all.
Now that we are officially in the offseason, the fine folks at Baseball America put together a list of all of the minor league free agents sorted by team. This is a fantastic resource.
If you want to go through all of the minor league free agents and see who the Braves should target as reclamation/utility pieces, feel free. There are a lot of names that could be interesting.
However, for our purposes, here is a list of the Braves’ minor leaguers that are now free to leave the organization.
RHP Victor Arano
RHP Chasen Bradford
RHP Jay Flaa
RHP Josh Graham
RHP Kurt Hoekstra
RHP Trevor Kelley
RHP Sean McLaughlin
RHP Luis Mora
RHP Emmanuel Ramirez
RHP Jose Rodriguez
RHP Matt Withrow
IF Ryan Casteel
OF Phillip Ervin
SS Joseph Fernando
3B Maikel Franco
3B Ryan Goins
OF Terrance Gore
SS Kevin Josephina
C Carlos Martinez
C Jeff Mathis
OF Shean Michel
2B Jalen Miller
C Jonathan Morales
2B Wendell Rijo
C Ricardo Rodriguez
3B Yolmer Sanchez
SS Riley Unroe
C Stephen Vogt
While it is far from unusual to see a bunch of minor league free agents from an organization, it is worth noting that the Braves are certainly at the higher end in terms of pure numbers this season. Its unclear as to what that is due to, but we imagine some combination of a number of guys from the 2015 and 2016 drafts still being around and finally running out of time, the contraction of minor league affiliates, and an organization that wants to continue to retool its player development is the easiest explanation.
Veteran guys on deals like Stephen Vogt, Jeff Mathis, Terrance Gore, Maikel Franco, and Victor Arano moving on was inevitable, but it is sad to see some of the long-term Braves minor leaguers seemingly moving on. Guys like Matt Withrow, Josh Graham, Kevin Josephina, Kurt Hoekstra, Sean McLaughlin, and Jonathan Morales have been with the organization for a long time. It is entirely possible that the Braves could bring some of them back, but whatever their future holds...we wish them nothing but the best.