Considered to be the lifeblood of an organization, farm systems in baseball are a crucial building block on the path to a World Series title. So, title in hand, how does the Braves farm system stack up against the rest of the league?
Well, according to Baseball America’s Kyle Glaser, the cupboard may be a bit bare in the minor leagues for the defending champs. In the publication’s recent farm system rankings ahead of the 2022 season (hopefully), the Braves are in the bottom 10, but as Glaser explains, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“Keep in mind that they’ve graduated so much talent, and that’s frankly why they won the World Series and traded some other talent away to go get veteran additions. Their organization talent ranking has fallen if you combine graduations, trades plus the fact that they weren’t able to sign anyone on the international market for a few years…They are in the bottom of 10 of Major League Baseball right now,” Glaser told Jon Chuckery on 92.9 The Game.
In terms of “graduating” talent, the Braves World Series roster was full of players that worked their way through the minor league system and Glaser credits the organization for pressing all the right buttons.
“This is the point of prospects and great farm systems is to get them up to majors. You look at [Ozzie] Albies, [Dansby] Swanson, [Austin] Riley, Ronald [Acuña], [Mike] Soroka, [Max] Fried, [Ian] Anderson, the Braves have a tremendous success rate in their prospects. If you have 15-20 good prospects, getting eight or nine guys to be regulars for you, that’s a huge win. The Braves did everything right and they won a World Series because of it. Now it’s about back-filling a little bit. The fact that they’re a bottom 10 farm system right now is actually a testament and means that they did everything right,” he said.
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Glaser also gave his take on a couple of the top prospects in the Braves farm system entering the 2022 season saying that players like OF Michael Harris and C Shea Langeliers are a “little further away."
Harris—a 3rd round pick in 2019—has yet to be elevated above A-ball and Glaser said that Travis d'Arnaud’s presence on the MLB roster will allow Langeliers to “marinate” in the minors for a while longer.
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Other prospects to keep an eye on include OF Christian Pache and OF Drew Waters. Pache made his MLB debut in 2020 but has yet to carve out a regular role on the big league roster while Waters took a step back in 2021, hitting .240 in AAA after he was named the Southern League MVP in 2019 with the AA Mississippi Braves.