Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospects: #25 Leudys Baez

Leudys Baez Scouting Report

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Baez is listed in Baseball Reference as 6′ tall and 160 pounds. He’s a switch-hitter and throws right-handed. I’d wager Baez is between that and 180 from viewing him, but he still looks quite lean and could definitely use some weight training.

Hitting
Baez has a nice, balanced stance and when he puts contact to a ball, he does have very explosive twitch within the swing, which generates quite a bit of power in spite of what appears some need for added strength. Baez really punishes fastballs and sliders above the knees right now, but that’s just about it. His strikeout rate doesn’t lie about his struggles to get to pitches, and he really struggles with pitches that move toward him, whether in-breaking curve balls, cutters that break in, or sinkers breaking down and in. From his switch-hitting, he seems to have better contact skills from the left side and significantly more power from the right side. Catching one of his home runs against Lexington, it was an impressive sound when he connected true with the ball, and it’s easy to hear why those I talk with within the organization really talk up the kid’s raw skills. The problem is that he struggles with committing his swing early, and that really hurts him.

Base Running/Fielding
I’d been told that Baez had extremely impressive speed, and definitely, his top end speed is quite impressive, but he does take a couple steps to get there, and facing better catchers in Rome, he struggled more in stealing bases. He also doesn’t read pitchers extremely well, getting picked off twice in his 29 games with Rome. All that said, Baez has top end speed that is, as I said earlier, impressive. He scored from first on a pretty standard double in the outfield that would normally lead to a guy standing on third rather than pushing all the way for home, let alone making it home standing up as Baez did.

Baez does use his speed well in the field, but he seems to struggle with the angle of the ball in center field, where his speed would likely play better. He does have a very solid arm, though he never really displayed it much in the games I viewed, but he was definitely accurate with it and showed strong throws on the two tag plays that I caught, but his throw held the runner, so you couldn’t see how well his throw would beat the runner in the end.

Next: 2016 outlook

Video

2016 Outlook

Baez is very, very raw, but the athleticism is blatantly obvious. He’ll most likely start at Rome this year, and he’ll be given his time to work his way up to Carolina. The Braves people that I’ve had a chance to talk with about Baez talk about him being a diamond in the rough and a surprise sleeper in their scouting system. Frankly, scouts were quite proud of their find of Baez, so while the K/BB ratio didn’t look good, there’s a lot there that people really like about Baez that the organization will likely be patient with.

Next: Braves Top 100 Prospects Updated

In fact, that was a focus that I really noticed in the last season in the organization as a whole. In recent conversation with a national scout, I discussed the Braves position players and described how much of the recent players were “extreme upside” guys, and his comment back to me was that with all minor leaguers, you likely have 2-3 of every 5 guys make the upper minors, and of those guys 1-2 of those 2-3 end up making the majors for even a cup of coffee. With those huge upside sorts, though, when they do make the majors, they tend to be the guys who end up “superstars”. He talked about how most organizations have 2-4 guys (between pitchers AND hitters) with that sort of upside in their system, really good systems have a half dozen or so. His evaluation was that the Braves currently touted at least 10 such guys and as many as 13, all from Rome on down in 2015. Then I mentioned the Braves #3 draft choice and stated intentions to spend big in the IFA market in 2016. The comment I got back was to do the math. 15 such players in the system’s lower levels with that “extreme upside” sort of profile by numbers would likely mean that the Braves are currently sitting on 3 or more future superstars in their lower levels among their pitchers and hitters. Add in the depth of guys who are considered more “high floor” in the system and other guys who could surprise, and you have a team that is possibly sitting on an absolute gold mine at the lower levels. Baez is the type of signing the Braves have made recently to build that gold mine. Some of these guys will certainly fail out, and we as fans will lament that with their athleticism, but in the numbers game, this is absolutely going to end very well for the Braves!