With the new year upon us and the Winter Meetings behind us, most of the top-tier free agents have signed and trading season is about to crank up for the Atlanta Braves as well as the rest of the major leagues.
The Atlanta Braves have already been named in numerous rumors thus far, as the team is still primarily interested in acquiring a cleanup hitter for the upcoming season, along with any other pieces to improve the current roster.
Trades – if such an acquisition can’t be made on the free agent market – usually involve prospects, and as we already know, prospects come in many different shapes and sizes, hence the need for such a conclusive list of players.
But to arrange such a large listing, we will release our prospect rankings in three different lists, featuring ten players per post. Also, as we always do here at TomahawkTake, the list will run from bottom to top, meaning the series will go as follows:
- Post 1: Nos. 30-21 (today)
- Post 2: Nos. 20-11 (Tuesday)
- Post 3: Nos. 10-1 (Wednesday)
So with the layout of these rankings covered, here are a few other things to keep in mind…
Some nuances to consider
After fighting with several different objective-based models, we have decided to go with a subjective approach for these rankings.
But keep in mind, this list is meant to be the first report for the 2020 season, meaning there will be more versions of these rankings to come later on. Think of this as the Spring report, with a Midseason and End-of-season report to follow. Each version will be updated according to how each player is trending (via performance, upside, promotions…etc).
Obviously, everyone won’t necessarily agree with each and every ranking, as we all have our own opinions regarding these players; although, it’s much easier to look at the list of 30 players overall in terms of tiers instead of attempting to assess the report as a whole.
Consider my tiers for the list below:
- Nos. 1-10 — Tier 1
- Nos.11-20 — Tier 2
- Nos. 21-30 — Tier 3
You could perhaps break the rankings up in to even more tiers or groups if you desired, but the point is that the actual ranking is less important than the tier or group the player is part of. Obviously, the higher the tier means the player has more upside and is closer to the majors.
Remember, these rankings are subject to change, as an updated version of this list will be published around the midseason point of the 2020 season (July-ish).
With all of that now covered, let’s look at the first group of rankings, Nos. 30-21.