Rule 5 deadline day will be quiet for the Atlanta Braves

In years past, Rule 5 protection day has involved some drama for the Atlanta Braves.

It is probably a telling sign of the state of the Atlanta Braves minor league system that today’s deadline for protecting eligible minor leaguers from the Rule 5 draft will pass relatively quietly.

In fact, the likely lone transaction has already occurred:

Selected as the 44th overall pick in the 2016 draft, Kyle Muller represents more-or-less the last of the ‘big’ pitching prospects in this current crop of picks that originated from the Braves ‘rebuild years’.

He’s still most definitely a prospect pitcher in his own right:  left-handed, 23 years old, 6’7″/250, and has thrown very well at every minor league stop he’s made.

He spent the 2019 season at AA Mississippi, earning a 3.14 ERA in 22 starts (111.2 innings).  The one knock on his game is control — his walk rate ballooned against better competition in late 2018 and 2019.

Of course, we don’t have any data to peruse from 2020, and that’s going to be the problem with this year’s Rule 5 draft, period.

Regardless of who might be left unprotected by teams by the 40-man roster shield around baseball today, that December draft is going to be a shot in the dark… and pretty much a non-event altogether.

With scouting reduced drastically around MLB and no minor league competition, how can anyone properly evaluate whether there’s a player worth drafting and then keeping on their major league roster for the entire next year?

That’s the requirement for Rule 5 draftees, and this COVID-19 season has made prospects for such action even murkier than usual.

Graduating Talent

Our friends over at Knockahoma Nation already did the research for us, so I’m happy to cite their work here, published over twitter:  just last year, five Braves minor leaguers were added to the 40-man roster to save them from poachers:  Cristian Pache, William Contreras, Philip Pfeifer, Tucker Davidson, and Jasseel de la Cruz.

This year, while there are a number of players who could be snatched via the Rule 5 draft, only Muller stands out.  In fact, fully half of them were last seen at the High-A ball level and below.

So while we offer congratulations to Kyle Muller on joining the 40-man roster (he’ll enjoy a bump in compensation in 2021 as a result), this event does remind us that the Atlanta Braves do need to figure out how to infuse more talent into a minor league system left in disarray from a combination of better play at the major league level (and lower draft positions) and a lack of International signees thanks to the previous management regime’s sins.