Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospects: #37 Connor Lien

Connor Lien Scouting Report

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Lien is listed at 6’3 and 205 pounds. He’s a right-handed hitter and thrower. He has a very naturally athletic build, with a solid build, but also not any “bad” weight to note.

Hitting
Lien is certainly a free-swinger, and his strikeout rate has evidenced this in his minor league career. Regardless of the count, if he gets a pitch that he likes, he has a habit of swinging all out at the pitch. I am the first to admit that pitching is much more my forte in being able to pick up little ticks on a guy that would be something to improve to get better rather than hitting, but Lien’s swing is painfully obvious. His bat is in the zone for less time than anyone I’ve viewed for any extended time. His swing has more action going down into the zone and coming back out of it than it does into the zone. With his natural strength and speed, it would make sense for him to have a swing path akin to guys like Ozhaino Albies, whose bat seems to be in the zone forever.

Lien definitely has power at the plate. In fact, one of the strong comparisons I’ve seen in Lien over and over when I’ve watched him (both at the plate and off) is a young Jeff Francoeur. That’s a blessing and a curse at the same time at the plate, and I think after experiencing “The Natural” version #1, the Braves organization will be more intentional about attempting to maximize Lien’s instruction before he gets to the major leagues rather than leaping him too quickly based on the numbers he’s putting up.

Base Running/Fielding
Lien before 2015 was someone who had a reputation for being tremendously instinctive on the base paths, specifically in his base stealing, and the ratio bore it out – going into 2015, he had stolen 41 bases in 51 attempts, which is a very good ratio. In 2015, he was running much more frequently, and whether that was by his own desire or the team’s pushing, his success rate did drop by a couple ticks, but one of the things I caught in games was that he was notably not as sharp in going from first to third and similar base running moves that his speed should allow fairly easily as I saw in 2014 videos. Granted, the 2014 videos I saw were highlight videos and not game tape, so it could be a sample size issue, but Lien does have tremendous athleticism.

Defensively is where I was purely blown away. I’d heard the reputation, and I’ll just say it – the arm is legit. Not Frenchy legit, Rick Ankiel legit. For those of us old enough to remember it, Ellis Valentine legit (and Valentine is bar none the best outfield arm I’ve ever seen – this link is to a video talking about his arm with an amazing Gary Carter comment). What blew me away, however, was not the arm. I was amazed at the instincts of his footwork. I watched 7 games, then 2 more, then another after it, a total of 10 games of every ball hit to the outfield that he made a play on. Every single time, without exception, he was in perfect position to throw upon catching the ball, unless he was making the catch against the wall, and even then, amazingly enough the one time I saw such a catch, he came down in great throwing position. His instincts off the bat are something you simply cannot teach, and he actually has similarly good instincts in right or center. I’d heard detractors talk about his error total pointing to lapses in his field play, and I’ll tell you, that’s not the case at all. Lien is similar to a certain personal favorite shortstop of mine who will be wearing a halo on his uniform instead of a tomahawk. He frequently makes it look so easy to cover the ground and get to the balls that he does that he gets errors on balls that no one else is even going to have a chance to make an out on. While I couldn’t argue the scoring decision in a few cases when he did bobble the ball or drop the catch or one time over throw third base (from nearly the right field corner!), the plays he got errors on (and I caught four of his 9 errors in the games I saw just to attempt to see if there was a case for mental lapse issues) were plays that most guys on the field wouldn’t have a chance to even consider making, so I can forgive those sorts of plays.

Next: 2016 outlook

Video

2016 Outlook

Lien is in a bit of a quagmire. He really needs to develop his offensive game further to have a chance to be a major league regular. The walk rate has been at 6.9% in the minor leagues, and that’s simply not passable for a major league regular. For reference, among qualified outfielders in the major leagues in 2015, his ratio would have ranked among the 20 worst in the entire league. Now, even with a lower walk rate, you could live with it if he was striking out at a solid rate, but Lien’s striking out in 26.2% of his plate appearances, and of those with a walk rate at his 6.5% rate of 2015 or lower, only Marlon Byrd among all qualified major league outfielders had a strikeout rate even over 24%, let alone 26%. The more concerning thing was his 4.9% walk rate and 45.5% strikeout rate in the AFL when he faced the more advanced pitching that he’ll start facing this year in AA!

Next: Braves Top 100 Prospects Updated

All that said, Lien’s defense is truly special. He’s got the ability to produce both power and speed in his offensive game with his natural athleticism. If he can simply improve ever so slightly to cutting the strikeouts to under 20%, you’re talking about a top 100 type of prospect in all of baseball, not a guy who’s a fringe top 40 guy in the Braves own system! I’d wager the Braves will give him that test of advanced pitching at Mississippi this year, and I’m hoping to see him do well with that transition as the offensive prospect pipeline near the top is a bit dry, even if the lower levels are bursting full of talent. Lien pushing through and succeeding would give Atlanta fans a young, exciting player that could be an elite defender and solid offensive contributor with just a few minor tweaks to his swing and/or approach.