ESPN leaves Atlanta Braves hanging — only two prospects in top 50
By Clint Manry

The baseball industry has adjusted their prospect lists and the Atlanta Braves may be feeling a bit neglected with ESPN’s updated rankings.
The talent currently in the Atlanta Braves Minor League system has been well documented for quite some time now.
This past winter, the Atlanta Braves were ranked No. 2 by MLB Pipeline, coming in right behind the San Diego Padres in terms of overall best farm systems.
In March of 2018, MiLB.com ranked the Atlanta Braves as the top system, when the hype surrounding still-a-minor leaguer, Ronald Acuna Jr., was at its highest.
In 2017, the Atlanta Braves were ranked No. 2 as well, according to a list by Bleacher Report, in September of that season. They also had the Braves No. 1 in 2016.
So obviously, the trend has been pretty consistent, at least for the last four years. And we know the Atlanta Braves investment into acquiring top prospects has in fact been going on longer than that.
But on Thursday, ESPN’s Senior Writer and prospect analyst, Keith Law, sang a bit of a different tune with his Midseason Top-50 Prospect Update. He ranked just two Atlanta Braves minor leaguers in his list of 50:
- No. 6 (OF) Christian Pache
- No. 36 (SP) Ian Anderson
Now clearly, no ranking is perfect. It would be quite unreasonable to anticipate all prospect lists to fit our biased opinions, no matter how much we attempt to leave out such notions.
But c’mon!
And frankly, after doing a bit more digging, it’s not just Law that has, for lack of a better word, shortchanged the Atlanta Braves.
There are other writers and sites that have released prospect rankings that don’t quite line up with the common narration that we’ve been acquainted with regarding the Atlanta Braves farm system.
It’s been generally accepted that the Braves have an elite minor league group, right?
But to say that there are only two players in the Atlanta Braves system currently worthy of a top 50 ranking is a bit erroneous, at the very least.
Having said that, before we make a case as to which Atlanta Braves prospects were incorrectly left off Law’s list, perhaps we should look at an assortment of other prospect rankings.
Maybe I’m just being too much of an Atlanta Braves homer?