Atlanta Braves Scouting Report on OF Justin Ellison

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Ellison is a left-handed hitter and thrower. He is listed at 6’2 and 175 pounds. He could be a bit heavier than that weight, but he’s still extremely lean in his build.

Hitting

Ellison has a lean build, and he has a very spring-loaded swing. He has a long swing path, but he explodes the bat through the zone when he swings, so he has excellent torque on his swing, allowing him to generate very good power from his lean build. Ellison’s explosive swing with a little bit of muscle added to his frame could certainly turn into some big time power numbers.

His long swing does make it tough for Ellison to adjust to pitches once they’re released, and he has looked bad, but to his credit, he’s been able to keep his strikeout numbers fairly reasonable (18.5%), so he’s been able to get the bat on the ball enough to foul it off when he is fooled on a pitch. His swing path really does portend a lower batting average with an uppercut swing that’s a bit exaggerated in its path.

While he does keep his strikeout numbers low, Ellison did not display great pitch recognition in the games I watched. He does see break well, but he really struggled to get more than “foul” wood on hard breaking stuff, even when it was left in great position to be driven. That’s something that going forward could absolutely improve his walk rate and his power once he was able to better recognize those pitches out of the hand.

Base Running/Fielding

Ellison has tremendous speed, from a lightning quick first step on the bases to stretching out his long legs for quick moves from first to third and second to home on long singles very well. His first step allows him to get a lot of stolen bases just based on that first step alone. He was artificially suppressed in his stealing this year as he was often in the middle of the order, but if he’s working from the top or bottom of the order, Ellison has the requisite speed to be a guy who could steal 30 bases in a season.

Ellison is very rangy in the outfield, using his exceptional speed to track down balls as well as any corner outfielder in the system. He’s likely best suited for left field due to an average-ish arm, but he handles left field very well, and he never has shown an issue at all with going hard toward the wall in pursuit of a ball.

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