Atlanta Braves Minor League Predictions…Who’s In The Rotation For The Mississippi Braves?

One day away from the Atlanta Braves pitchers and catchers officially reporting to the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Florida.  Some have already made it to the facility to started throwing, while others will join them tomorrow.  First practice will be on Saturday, February 20th.

Predicting wins, player stats, rotations, lineups, how many sunflower seeds players will eat…all examples are extremely unlikely to be even close, but it’s fun to do and read about.

Today we’re going to be looking at the Braves Double-A affiliate the Mississippi Braves and their pitching rotation.

In 2015, the M-Braves finished with a winning record as they went 69-67, but missed out on the playoffs.  They had 13 different pitchers have at least three starts for them including Zack Bird, Andrew Thurman, Ryan Weber, John Gant, Andrew Barbosa, Lucas Sims, Jake Brigham, Stephen Janas, Jorge Reyes, Jason Hursh, Tyrell Jenkins, Victor Mateo, and Greg Ross.

With all the turnover and additions the Braves organizations has had within the last two years, the amount of pitchers they have is ridiculous.  On paper, it looks as though they have too many starters for the amount of rotation spots they can fill.  Would a six-man rotation in all levels be acceptable? (ha, sarcastic)

To get an opinion on the Mississippi Braves upcoming season and rotation, we asked Kyle Tait, the radio voice of the M-Braves, to give us some insight.

Tait: In past years I’ve been able to guess pretty accurately. But with the massive influx of pitching talent this year, you’re going to see a lot of guys who are probably ready for AAA getting pushed down to AA because of the stack of upper-level talent. There are only 10 total rotation slots at AA and AAA, and I can probably name 12-13 guys who could make a run at those spots.. It’s a great problem to have.

Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. When you have 10 guys who are AAA-ready, how do you decide which of them has to stay back at AA? Schuerholz the Younger gets to handle that noble task. Well, it’ll be Schuerholz and Coppy together. Coppy and Hart probably give more input on the top specs with input from Schuerholz and crew.

Before a pitch has even been thrown or a practice started, a guess is all we have.  Instead of a prediction, let’s do the guessing game.  You’re welcome to participate in the comments field below.  Let’s keep the guesses to just the Mississippi Braves because we’ll get to the other affiliated teams next.

My guess for the starting rotation to start the 2016 in Mississippi – Sean Newcomb, Lucas Sims, John Gant, Chris Ellis and Andrew Thurman.

I sent Newcomb to Mississippi to get more experience at this level – he’s only pitched in seven games in Double-A.  Still just 22-years-old, the Braves will give him plenty of time to develop into the dominate pitcher he will become.  I can see a move to Gwinnett pretty soon, but he’ll start the season with the M-Braves.

Sims was able to get to Mississippi in 2015 as he made nine starts there.  In his nine starts, he went 4-2 with a 3.21 ERA with 56 strikeouts and 29 walks.  Kind of like Newcomb, I’ll send him to Double-A to get more experience.

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The Braves acquired Gant from the New York Mets for Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson at the trade deadline in 2015.  The 23-year-old started 11 games for the Mets Double-A team and seven games for Mississippi in 2015.  He should head back to M-Braves for more seasoning time.

Ellis came to the Braves from the Angels with Newcomb as they were teammates on the Double-A level.  The 6-4″, 220 pound righty was able to get 15 starts in Double-A and should head back there.  There’s a chance he moves up to Gwinnett, but I see the 22-year-old starting here.

Thurman reached the M-Braves at the end of the season in 2015 and started five games.  He wasn’t impressive in these starts as he went 1-4 with a 5.18 ERA and more walks (16) than strikeouts (14).  I see this 24-year-old making an impact for the M-Braves this season.

A couple names I left off because, well there wasn’t room…Zack Bird, Stephen Janas, Touki Toussaint, Max Povse, Rob Whalen and Wes Parsons