Atlanta Braves Minor League Spotlight: Drew Waters

The Atlanta Braves made an aggressive move right before the minor league season began — they promoted  top-10 prospect Drew Waters to Double-A.

At such an early stage of his pro career with the Atlanta Braves, it’s amazing how far he’s come.

According to Baseball Reference, the average Double-A player is currently somewhere around 24-years-old; and I know this because Atlanta Braves minor league outfielder Drew Waters is 20 years and 101 days old — 3.8 years younger than the average player at that level.

This really isn’t that uncommon or very informative, I presume. There have been extremely young players come through the upper-minors that were ridiculously talented, and the same can even be said for the Major Leagues.

Signing right out of high school, Drew Waters was a second-round pick in the 2017 MLB Draft by the Atlanta Braves.

A top-100 prospect in all of baseball at the young age of 18, frankly a promotion to Double-A baseball shouldn’t really be too big of a deal for him.

He’s been a highly regarded player for a couple of years now, and this past Spring he even was invited to play with the big boys at Spring Training.

Most likely he’s not looking at this promotion as I am. He’s too busy competing and trying to get better, and there’s no time to pause and look at what he’s done, for there’s still work to do.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t be excited.

More Fun in Rome

In 2018, in Single-A, Drew Waters had the season of his life playing for the Rome Braves (if there is such a thing for a player with just a 2-year career).

He hit, played defense, and stole bases — posting his best numbers in literally every stat category. Waters was so good that he played his way into a promotion, moving up to the Advanced-A team, the Florida Fire Frogs.

Waters had just got done hitting 9 home runs and stealing 20 bases, not to mention maintaining a .303 batting average and an .867 OPS in 84 games in Rome.

You could say that he had arguably mastered Single-A, and was ready for the next level.

With just a short time left to go in the 2018 season, Waters was only able to play in 30 games after his promotion to Florida, and the numbers really took a nosedive.

In those 30 contests, Waters struck out almost 30 percent of the time and failed to hit a homer, while also only stealing 3 bases.

He did hit 7 doubles and bat .268 during that span — numbers that no 19-year-old should be ashamed of.

But it was pretty apparent that either Waters wasn’t ready for that level of competition or he had just tired out. I, along with obviously the Atlanta Braves, think the latter.

I think it was an aggressive move by the Braves to promote Drew Waters to Mississippi this season, but I also think it’s a smart and necessary one.

The Atlanta Braves are essentially saying “show us what you got,” and he’s got a full season to do just that without tiring out.

Waters isn’t the only young-and-freshly-drafted prospect to be thrown into battle, either. The Braves 2018 selection is getting the same treatment, as CJ Alexander is coming off of an exceptional first-campaign in professional baseball and is also in Mississippi.

As I’m sure you’ve already seen me say once or twice recently in my previews: this 2019 Mississippi Braves team is going to be fun to watch.

There are too many great players to talk about in just this one piece.

Drew Waters is one of those great players and he’s getting an awesome opportunity this season. It’s exciting to see that the Atlanta Braves have this amount of confidence in him already.

And four games in, Waters is holding his own so far in Double-A. He’s 6-for-19 (.316 BA) with 2 doubles, though, he does have an error to his name out in right field.

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But he’s a natural centerfielder, so he’ll have to adjust to this position.

Adjusting is something Drew Waters will have to do a lot of in 2019, and probably for the rest of his career.

He’s now made it to the upper minors — the competition is getting better and better. He’s more than capable, though, he’s already proved that.

Drew Waters was still just in high school in the summer of 2017, and now he’s two levels away from the Show. If that’s not cool than I don’t know what is.

There are stories like this basically every season in baseball, and that’s what makes this sport so great.

Another young player, and another step towards reaching the goal of one day playing in the big leagues. So good luck Drew Waters, and welcome to Mississippi.