Jun 22, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; A bat rests inside a baseball glove at an MLB game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Arizona Diamondbacks at Rogers Centre. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Sousa-USA TODAY Sports
Jun 22, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; A bat rests inside a baseball glove at an MLB game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Arizona Diamondbacks at Rogers Centre. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Sousa-USA TODAY Sports /
Ray-Patrick Didder may have turned more heads in 2016 than nearly any other Atlanta Braves prospect. Is there still more he could do?
Player Profile
The Atlanta Braves signed Ray-Patrick Didder out of Aruba before the 2013 season. An under scouted area, Didder was older than your typical Latin American prospect when he signed due to the lack of scouting in his home country.
To give an idea of how under scouted Aruba is, only 5 major leaguers have ever come from Aruba, and Xander Bogaerts this past season in his third full professional season took a substantial lead in career WAR over the next closest competitor, Sidney Ponson.
Didder came to the Atlanta Braves as an infielder, and for his first two minor league seasons, the Braves attempted to use him as a shortstop.
In 2013, he started his professional career in the Dominican Summer League, and he hit .259/.420/.289 with no home runs and 8 stolen bases, posting a 17.2% walk rate and a 18.9% strikeout rate.
In 2014, he moved up to the Gulf Coast League, and while still playing primarily at shortstop, he hit .274/.354/.376 with no home runs and 4 stolen bases, posting an 8.2% walk rate and a 17.9% strikeout rate.
Current Braves front office member Kiley McDaniel may have been the first person to really hit on Didder when he mentioned him before the 2015 season in his review of the Braves, saying he had the tools to stick at short, but was still raw in all phases.
The Braves decided instead to move Didder to the outfield, and it was very soon into that transition when I started making contacts in the minor leagues and among scouts that I started to hear raves about Didder’s defense in the outfield, no matter where the team put him in the outfield.
With advanced rookie Danville in the Appalachian League that season, Didder hit .247/.346/.332 with no home runs and 10 stolen bases, posting a 7.7% walk rate and a 19.7% strikeout rate.
In the 2015-2016 offseason, there were two guys I kept hearing better and better reports on, so I kept bumping them up farther and farther in my Braves top 100. One was Patrick Weigel, the other was Ray-Patrick Didder who I finished at #42 overall in the system going into 2016.
That definitely looks light now. Didder moved up to full season ball with low-A Rome, and he did nearly anything and everything you could ask – he played right field and center field both exceptionally, taking over the latter for most of the season when Ronald Acuna went down with injury, he hit for average, he flashed power, and he was a major threat on the bases as well.
In the regular season, Didder finished with a .274/.387/.381 line with 6 home runs and 37 stolen bases, posting an 8.8% walk rate and 17.5% strikeout rate. He then was a key cog in the Rome playoff run, hitting .292/.452/.375 over the two series with 3 stolen bases.
Didder is by no means a large guy, standing 6′ and 170 pounds, per listing, and that seems about right on the field, if perhaps maybe a pound or two shy of reality.
Hitting
Contact (50) – This was a tough grade for me. I watch Didder play, and by the true definition of “puts the bat on the ball”, Didder’s a plus contact guy.
However, if you look at the tool as putting the “best” part of the bat on the ball with every swing, then Didder is probably below average, but I’m honestly not sure how much of that is on him.
Didder’s swing changed significantly once Acuna went out and suddenly Didder went from the #2 hitter in the lineup to the leadoff guy. He was focused on contacting the ball and using his speed to get on base rather than driving the ball and moving runners along with solid contact.
For now, I’ll put the contact at a 50, but there are definitely signs that he could do much more with his swing than that grade as well.
Power (45) – Didder does generate solid power in his swing, though he frequently is focused on contact to get on base, so he doesn’t maximize his ability to truly drive the ball.
Watching Didder in batting practice, you see a swing that’s loose and free for power, and he could certainly generate 10-15 home runs if he was focusing his swing better.
Eye (55) – One of the surprises that many have when viewing Didder’s stat line is to see that he has an on base nearing .400 and that he walks at a sub-10% rate.
Part of the reason for that has grown to a near-legendary/cult status in his ability to get hit by the ball, something Didder did an astonishing 39 times last season.
For reference, only one person since 1900 has been hit that many times in a season (Ron Hunt in 1971, who was hit 50 (!!) times), and seasons of 30+ hit by pitch have happened only three times in the 2000s, though twice in the last two seasons, with Brandon Guyer having 31 in 2016 and Anthony Rizzo and Craig Wilson each having 30 in 2015 and 2004, respectively.
Base Running/Fielding
Speed (65) – Didder’s speed was getting to be the stuff of legend on Braves Twitter this spring. There was the double play ball that Didder caused no outs to be recorded on because he beat out the throw from shortstop to second base and threw off the timing of the second baseman attempting to make the turn as he was so surprised to have the runner right on top of him on what was a routine double play ball.
There’s another story where Didder hit a fairly routine ground ball to the second baseman and beat out the throw to first base for an infield single.
That level of speed is incredibly impressive, though he still does need some bit of refinement in his timing of his base stealing as he struggles to read pitchers still, but that’s part of that raw-ness that is still present in his game due to signing late and still developing.
Defense (70) – Didder is an incredibly elite outfielder. Many outfielders play center field very well but struggle in the corners or vice versa.
Didder is unique in that he excels in all three outfield spots. While his arm is best suited for center or right field, he shows no ill affect from moving to either corner in terms of his instincts, reads off the bat, or feel for the walls or foul lines.
Didder has as much range as any outfielder in the system, and he also excels in his initial reads off the bat. My biggest reason for holding off on going even higher is simply needing exposure at upper level competition.
Arm (70) – In all seriousness, it would not be out of line nor crazy to put a full 80 on Ray-Patrick Didder’s arm. It is the best in the system by a mark, and that’s saying something in a system with an elite arm like Conner Lien patrolling an outfield in the system.
Didder is not just pure arm strength, either. He has tremendous accuracy with his arm, and the more impressive thing is that he has incredible game awareness and baseball instincts.
A great example of this was in the first round of the playoffs. In a game against Charleston, in the first inning, Mike Soroka didn’t have his best stuff and had runners on first and second with none out.
A sharp single was hit to right field, and because of Didder’s exceptional range, the runner had to hold between first and second, but as soon as the ball landed, Didder had positioned himself perfectly to grab and throw, releasing the ball on a pure strike to second base to get the force out at second base from right field.
MLB Player Comp
I’m dipping a bit into the “way back” machine for this one, but the more and more I watch of Didder and get away from his stat sheet, there’s just one guy who I keep thinking of, and that’s Devon White.
When I was growing up in the 1980s, I’d never seen a player play center field like Devon White could play center field. Griffey was special, but he wasn’t White. It wasn’t until Andruw came along that White’s excellence at the position was surpassed defensively in my lifetime.
On top of the defense, though, when I decided to go back to the stats and see how the similarities may work out, there are more than just visual reasons the two fit.
White was listed at 6’2″ and 180 pounds, a near mirror image of Didder’s body style. In his career, he had a career walk rate of 6.7% and strikeout rate of 18.9%. In Didder’s minor league career to date, he’s posted a 9.7% walk rate and a 18.3% strikeout rate.
White offensively had a big rookie year due to the 1987 offensive explosion, but he settled more into a guy who hit 10-15 home runs each season with a good amount of doubles and triples and flashed excellent speed offensively.
Didder could get pushed past high-A and straight to AA this season, and I could possibly see he and Connor Lien in the same outfield in Mississippi, which would be very, very fun for the people of Pearl to get to enjoy that every night!
