Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospects: #46 Keith Curcio

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Feb 23, 2015; Lake Buena Vista, FL, USA; Atlanta Braves pitchers equipment lies at the base of the fence during spring training workouts at Champion Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports /

Keith Curcio Scouting Report

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Curcio is listed at 5’10 and 170 pounds, which looks right when you see him. He is a left-handed hitter and a right-handed thrower.

Hitting
His start at Rome was tremendous. I make a comparison to Prado later, but the comparison that really stuck in the time in Rome was Mookie Betts due to the size and the way he was recognizing pitches and driving them in a way that defied his size while also displaying blazing speed, though not exactly tremendous base stealing. Then, after his promotion to Rome, the pitch recognition took a serious dive. He especially struggled with recognizing pitches on guys who had a solid hard breaker or change up that matched with top end velocity and could disguise it well.

His approach to me seemed to get a lot more pull-happy and seemed to focus on attempting to force the issue in the power department during his time in Carolina. He was focused on hitting line drives in Rome, and he had 11 base hits in only 40 hits, so he was doing quite well generating that power, but the real key was he was staying back and attacking the best pitch of the at bat, which allowed a 14/12 BB/K ratio. Instead, during his time with Carolina, he had a 29/61 BB/K ratio. That’s not a terrible strikeout rate by any means, but his walk rate was below 7%, which is too low for a guy at the top of the order.

Fielding/Base Running
Curcio isn’t a guy that will ever win a major league gold glove, but he’s also a guy who I never saw in bad position. He seems to have a good instinct on the defensive side of the ball, regardless of it was in center, left, or at second last season in the games I watched. He’s not got a cannon for an arm, but he can make accurate throws from anywhere in the outfield, so arm strength doesn’t hinder him. I noted that he made all the plays you should make in left and center, but nothing beyond that, and he really never had a play at second in my viewing that would have challenged his range like that.

Curcio’s base running was seemingly bi-polar. He would go through stretches where he would easily make great routes from first to third on routine outfield singles and pick up extra bases on throws back to the infield, things an excellent base runner does. And then he’d seemingly follow that up with a stretch of games where he’d be picked off or get caught napping on an easy fly ball to tag up on. After catching him in Rome a few times and seeing good base running games, I was caught off guard by the poor base running I noted in looking deeper into his season. He’s also not exactly the greatest at reading pitchers, but all that said, he has blazing speed, so he is absolutely a threat at all times to take an extra base, and that’s always going to disrupt a pitcher’s frame of mind.

Next: 2016 outlook

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