When it comes to dealing prospects, the best ones are always the most coveted. It turns out that most of these Atlanta Braves’ top prospects have turned out really well over the years.
The Atlanta Braves have enjoyed the benefits of an excellent farm system over the past 3-4 years and are now reaping those benefits.
We may soon be moving to a phase in which the Front Office deems it necessary to trade some of these minor league assets for major league talent, and therefore it’s reasonable to ask: how good could these guys be?
We’ll look through some history today – the roster of the Atlanta Braves’ best prospects over the last 30 years – to see how these players panned out.
TheBaseballCube.com site is going to be most helpful here in that they not only have those pre-season #1 prospects compiled from BaseballAmerica going back for 30+ years, but they also indicate where those #1’s ranked overall against the other prospects in their day… and that extra detail will prove useful.
In this day and age of analytics and almost universally available statistics, it’s truly hard to keep secrets or to hide flaws in prospects. As we go back further into time, that statement becomes less true as teams were more reliant on scouting reports… and scouts can’t be everywhere, so the variability of results can be a bit wild at times.
Still, there are modern instances of prospects seemingly ‘coming out of nowhere’: Ronald Acuña is a prime example. He was largely unknown outside of Braves’ circles until about 2016 when he starting busting up the charts (he was 5th on our end-of-2016 rundown; by mid-2017 we had him at #1).
All that said, here’s that list, along with the player’s overall ranking that season:
- 2019 – Austin Riley (22)
- 2018 – Ronald Acuña (1)
- 2017 – Dansby Swanson (3)
- 2016 – Dansby Swanson (17)
- 2015 – Jose Peraza (54)
- 2014 – Lucas Sims (57)
- 2013 – Julio Teheran (44)
- 2012 – Julio Teheran (5)
- 2011 – Julio Teheran (5)
- 2010 – Jason Heyward (1)
- 2009 – Tommy Hanson (4)
- 2008 – Jordan Schafer (25)
- 2007 – Jarrod Saltalamacchia (36)
- 2006 – Andy Marte (14)
- 2005 – Jeff Francoeur (14)
- 2004 – Andy Marte (11)
- 2003 – Adam Wainwright (18)
- 2002 – Wilson Betemit (29)
- 2000 – Rafael Furcal (8)
- 1999 – Bruce Chen (4)
- 1998 – (missing)
- 1997 – Andruw Jones (1)
- 1996 – Andruw Jones (1)
- 1992 through 1995 – Chipper Jones (3, 2, 1, 4)
- 1991 – Ryan Klesko (3)
- 1990 – Steve Avery (1)
- 1989 – Steve Avery (n/a)
Let’s now break down some of the trends we can learn from this…