The Tomahawk Take Top 20 Atlanta Braves Prospects: 6-10
#6: SS Ozhaino Albies
I don’t know who originally decided to go see Andruw Jones when he was growing up on the island of Curaçao, but thanks to that visit, the Braves once had a virtual lock on many of the kids coming thereafter from this baseball-blessed paradise. The word has since gotten around.
Now comes along the next Big Thing… at all of five-foot, nine inches, 150 pounds, and barely 18 years old.
This could be your starting shortstop in a few years.
As Jim Callis reported yesterday in his “Almost Top 100” prospects list, Ozzy has the arm of a true shortstop… with “plus-plus” speed (grade: 65) and perhaps a bat (55) to match.
We caught wind of Ozzy in the midst of his first full season as a Brave when he was moved up to Danville. Between there and his GCL debut, here’s the numbers:
- 28 walks, 26 K’s
- 22 steals
- OBP of .446
- batting average of .364
He even managed to pop a home run. All of that in just 57 games.
So yeah – it’s still early. That’s a lot of hype for a kid who wasn’t on any prospect chart a year ago – much less an organizational Top 10… much less a Top 10 Chart that’s suddenly this good.
But you might want to get onto Ozzy’s bandwagon, because it’s filling up pretty quickly:
- 5th on Callis’ Braves rankings
- 5th on BaseballAmerica’s chart
- John Sickels: 4th
- Fangraphs.com: 1st
That does beg the question – why do we have him lower? That’s probably my fault – I had him 10th on my own list. But that’s primarily because of the luster surrounding the group in my Top 9 along with the fact that I’m exercising some restraint until he gets a full season under his belt.
That next season could very well start out at Low-A Rome this year. Ozzy will be awfully young for even that level, but we’ll learn a lot about him there. If that test proves easy, then the Carolina League would be next… if he gets that far in 2014, then we’ll really know the Braves have something special going on.
Projection: Wow… hard to call from this distance, but… while Kiley McDaniel at fangraphs mentioned Francisco Lindor and Rafael Furcal, I’m tempted to mention Jose Altuve (though Ozzy is easily taller). The difference – other than position – could end up being that Albies gets on base more often if that walk rate persists.
Regardless, we’re likely looking at a future shortstop who hits for average and can hit near the top of the lineup.
ETA to majors: Optimistic outlook would say 2018 (he would just be 21). Pessimism would say 2020. There is the not-so-small matter of Andrelton Simmons‘ contract running through 2020. But we’ll sort all that out if we get that far.
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That’s half of our Top 10. Tomorrow we’ll see the Top 5.