Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospects: #22 Dustin Peterson

Atlanta Braves Outfielder Dustin Peterson

Who Is He?

Dustin Peterson was the 2nd round selection in the 2013 draft by the San Diego Padres out of high school in Arizona. His draft season, he debuted for the Padres Arizona Rookie League team, and he hit .293/.337/.344 with a 9/33 BB/K ratio over 172 plate appearances while playing third base.

The Padres skipped him up to full season ball in 2014, sending him to Fort Wayne in the Midwest League of class A ball. Over 563 plate appearances, he hit .233/.274/.361 with 10 home runs and 31 doubles and a 25/137 BB/K ratio. At issue, however, were his 38 (!!) errors on defense at third base.

Next: Peterson's scouting report

The Braves acquired Peterson as part of the Justin Upton trade in December of 2014, and they moved him to the outfield and sent him to the Carolina League as one of the youngest players in the league. He worked in the spring on re-vamping his swing and his approach, and before the Carolina bus crash, his new swing had him hitting tremendously with a .314/.392/.448 line on the day of the bus crash with 3 home runs and a 14/21 BB/K ratio over 120 PA, nearly twice the walk rate he’d had ever before. After the crash, his swing never looked right the rest of the season, even though he continued playing through sometimes very obvious pain. His overall line on the season was .251/.317/.348 with 8 home runs and 6 stolen bases over 498 plate appearances with a 44/91 BB/K ratio. Even with the struggles after the crash, Peterson ended the season with a walk rate of 8.8% and a strikeout rate of 18.3%. The walk rate was exactly double his previous season’s rate, and his strikeout rate was a full 6% lower than the previous season. He also received rave reviews for his play in left field.

Scouting Report

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Peterson is listed as 6’2 and 180 pounds on Baseball Reference, but that seems to be his draft weight as he looks to be a more solid 200-215 now, not bad weight, but just natural growth into his frame. He is a righty hitter and thrower.

Hitting
Peterson made an adjustment in his swing to keep his front leg more still in his approach coming into 2015. He had a toe tap and leg lift in his approach in 2014 that led to his swing being pulled through the zone and less ability to have bat control within the zone. To start 2015, the toe tap was gone, and he did well making solid contact and reaching balls throughout the zone in the early season before the bus crash. After the crash, he visibly struggled with his timing due to his injuries from the crash, and it led to a hitch in his swing, causing similar struggles with bat control in the zone. He was especially susceptible to breaking stuff to the outside part of the plate after the crash. His early season performance is certainly repeatable, however, and hopefully the team is working with him in the offseason to get back to that same swing.

Base Running/Fielding
For a guy who’d stolen all of 4 bases in 8 attempts in his minor league career before 2015, one would assume that Peterson was a slow plodding corner type that was lacking in speed. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. He’s a tremendous athlete, and he really flashed some solid speed skills on the base paths this year. One thing to note is that while he did still steal at only a 50% rate in 2015, he wasn’t asked to steal very often due to his position as the #3 or cleanup hitter in the lineup very frequently. Peterson’s speed is most evident in his abilities when the ball is put on the ground. He has very good first movements when breaking on a ball and gets to top speed quickly for a “big” guy, which allowed him to get to third on a routine grounder between the first baseman and second baseman in one game whereas many guys with his power profile would never be able to add that dimension.

In the field, much like Braxton Davidson found the transition to right field workable, and Fred pointed out in his scouting report that the angles of the ball for a first baseman moving to right field made sense, similarly Peterson’s move to left from third base was a successful transition. Peterson has a very solid arm, something you don’t typically see in left field, racking up 9 assists in left field on the season and making some very impressive throws in the games I watched, one from the warning track to home plate on a line that froze the runner at third and ended up saving the run as the next hitter struck out. Peterson has good first step instincts in left, the comparable for me in the field being another former third baseman turned left fielder Alex Gordon of the Kansas City Royals. Peterson did have some issues with gauging his limits in the field. By that, I’m talking about when he’d come up to a wall or come to the edge of “his” territory near where his center fielder would be. I noted that he seemed to not quite have the feel for where a ball should be his and where it should be the center fielder’s, and he also seemed to struggle in pacing his work against the wall, missing one home run when he mistimed his jump, but the jump he did have easily would have caught the ball had his timing been true.

Next: 2016 outlook

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