10 biggest prospect busts in Atlanta Braves history
Every season, a few highly rated prospects burst onto the scene and go on to have long, successful careers. Others appear on the scene and burst like an overfilled water balloon.
From the first draft in 1965 through the draft in 2019, the Braves have selected 1400 prospects in the first 20 rounds and signed 980 of them, but only 222 (23%) appeared in the majors after signing.
Prospects are the lifeblood of a team's success, good ones add depth and take over everyday jobs to keep the team young and successful. Despite all of the time and money teams spend choosing players, signing and nurturing a prospect to reach the majors is more like a lottery than a science.
All early-round selectees are highly ranked or considered good enough by the team that selects them to have a puncher’s chance at a Major League career.
Appearing in the majors isn't a long-term success because some of those players are on this list, but it does show how hard it is to get there.
The flip side of the Braves’ 23% success rate is a 77% failure rate. With a failure rate that high, you’ll find a lot of busts, some of them epic.
Braves’ 10 biggest draft and international signing flops
10. The Wren Drafts
Frank Wren believed he had an eye for undervalued prospects. However, only Mike Minor in 2009 - who wasn’t undervalued - lived up to his first-round selection. The rest were busts.
- 2008 first-round pick, unranked Brett Duvall, topped out in Low-A,
- 76th-ranked Mat Lipka (2010) hung around in the minors for 12 years without a major league game.
- 48th-ranked Sean Gilmartin pitched elsewhere for six years and totaled a 1.0 rWAR
- 29th-ranked Lucas Sims is now a reliever with the Reds with a –0.2 total rWAR
- 46th-ranked Jason Hursh appeared in 11 games over two seasons (2016-17)
- Wren tried to convert 35th-ranked high school first baseman Braxton Davidson into an outfielder. He topped out in High-A.
9. Macay McBride 132 games (-0.2 rWAR)
John Schuerholz had awful luck in the first round of the 2001 draft. He used the Braves' three first-round picks for 24th-ranked Macay McBride, 29th-ranked Josh Burrus, and 40th-ranked Richard Lewis. McBride played for parts of three seasons (2005-2007) and was out of the game after appearing in one minor league game in 2008.
8. Dan Meyer 103 games (-0.9 rWAR)
The 2002 two draft saw the Braves select Dany Meyer as a sandwich pick between Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann. Meyer appeared in one game for Atlanta before being sent to Oakland as part of the Tim Hudson trade.
He didn’t return to the majors until 2007 and Oakland put him on waivers after the 2008 season. The Marlins claimed him but designated him for assignment after two seasons. Meyer spent 2011 in the Pirates system and was out of affiliated ball in 2012.
7. Scott Thorman – 175 games (-1.0 rWAR)
The Braves selected 96th-ranked Scott Thorman with the 30th pick of the 2000 draft in their search for a first baseman with power. In the minors, Thorman looked like he could be a Mark Grace type player, but his bat never emerged in two seasons with Atlanta. He hung around the minors through 2012 without returning to the majors.
6. Kolby Allard – Active (-1.5 rWAR)
John Coppolella ignored Allard’s history of back trouble and selected Allard with the Braves first pick (number 14) in the 2015 draft. Allard appeared in only 16 minor league games in 2016 but made 27 starts in 2017 and moved to Triple-A in 2018, pitching to a 2.72 ERA in 19 starts and earning a call to Atlanta.
5️⃣IP
— Bally Sports: Braves (@BravesOnBally) August 1, 2018
9️⃣H
3️⃣ER
2️⃣BB
1️⃣SO
… and a base hit.
It was a memorable debut for Kolby Allard.@Braves | #ChopOn pic.twitter.com/EkAr9tSeL2
Things didn’t go well for Allard in Atlanta, and injury cost him the rest of the season. He started 2019 with Gwinnett but was traded to Texas at the deadline for reliever Chris Martin. Allard is still pitching but has yet to perform at a level that would justify his rank or his first-round selection.
5. George Lombard – 144 Games (-0.9 rWAR)
Catcher George Lombard was an unranked high school catcher when the Braves took him in the second round of the 1994 draft. He’s on the list because the Braves paid him more than they paid 50th-ranked Corey Pointer, selected ahead of him, and only $75K less than their first-round pick, 27th-ranked Jacob Shumate, coincidentally taken at 27th, to tempt him to skip college. They should have saved their money and selected A.J. Pierzynski, who went to the Twins 10 picks later for less money.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Lombard was a power-hitting high school player the Braves believed they could grab early and develop into an everyday player, but it didn't work. He eventually hit well in the minors, but this bat never played well with Atlanta, and by this time, Javy Lopez was that guy. His claim to fame is hitting the first home run by an American player in China during an MLB tour in 2008.
Lombard went on to a successful career as a coach, so it wasn't all bad news for him.
4. Andy Marte – 7 Seasons (1.0 rWAR)
The Braves signed the then 16-year-old Andy Marte as an international free agent, and he took an express trip through the minors, hitting well at every level and noted as a top-50 prospect from 2003-2016. He was blocked at third by Chipper, but had he hit well, the Braves would have found a place for his bat.
He was traded to Boston in December 2005 for Edgar Renteria, and Boston almost immediately flipped him to Cleveland as part of an eight-player swap. He played for Cleveland for five seasons but never adjusted to Major League pitching.
Number 3: Mike Kelly – 6 Seasons (2.0 rWAR)
Mike Kelly was ranked baseball’s number 2 prospect, and the Braves selected him with the second pick of the 1991 draft. Kelly earned his national ranking by batting .376, hitting 21 homers for Arizona State, and winning the Golden Spikes Award as the nation's best college player in his senior year.
He was ranked as baseball’s number 19 prospect entering 1992 and continued to play at a high level as he rapidly climbed through the Braves system, finding himself ranked 34 in the spring of 1993 and 58 entering 1994.
Kelly flashed an .806 OPS in 30 games scattered across 1994 but slipped badly in 1995, and the Braves sent him to the Reds for Chad Fox and a PTBNL that miraculously became Ray King on June 11.
The Reds coaxed another small-sample-size set of numbers from him in 1997 and traded him to the Rays for Dmitri Young after the season. The Rays sent him to the Rockies in early 1999, but he continued to fail to hit even within the friendly confines of Coors Field. He kicked around the minors until 2004 without returning to the majors.
2. Wilson Betemit – 11 Seasons (2.8 rWAR)
Wilson Betemit was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on November 2, 1981. The Atlanta Braves signed him as an international free agent on July 28, 1996. That isn’t a typo. The Braves signed him when he was 14 years - 210 days old, but the team wouldn’t find that out for three years.
This post is about busts, and in the end, that’s the way most describe his career based on play in the minors. But think about how hard it was for a player of fifteen to compete with much older players every day and outperform many of them. In 1997, the other 17 members of his team, including one player who was just 16, had an average age of 18.75.
He batted only .212/.271/.283/.554 that year, which isn’t bad when you’re facing pitchers with an average age of 19. Two years later, he was 17, playing for Danville, and batting.321/.383/.463.846 against pitchers between who were 19 and 20.
In 1999, the league fined the Braves $100K for signing an underage player but allowed them to keep Betemit. Baseball America was so impressed with his performance that it made him baseball’s 99th-ranked prospect going into 2000. He climbed to number 29 in 2001, number 8 in 2002, and was still number 49 at the beginning of 2003.
After a cup of coffee in 2004, he appeared in 115 games for Atlanta in 2005 and batted .305/.359/.435/.794. He followed that by batting .281/.344/.497/.842 with nine homers in the first 88 games of 2006 before the cost-cutting Braves traded him to the Dodgers. He never reached those heights at the plate again. he went on to play for a half-dozen teams but came close to the promise he'd shown as a prospect.
1. Brad Komminsk – 8 Seasons (2.2 rWAR)
Brad Komminsk lettered in three sports for Shawnee High School in Lima, Ohio, and earned scholarship offers from Ohio State, Nebraska, and Clemson in 1979. He signed with Atlanta when they selected him with the fourth overall pick of the draft and offered him a $70K signing bonus.
In 1980, Komminsk batted .261/.376/.466/.842, stole 27 bases and hit 30 homers for Anderson in the SALLY League at 19. The following year, he batted .322/.458/.606/1.064 with 35 steals and 33 homers at Durham and followed that by batting.276/.378/.524/.903 with 14 steals and 26 homers while splitting time between Double-A and Triple-A.
Komminsk found himself in a three-player race for the IL batting title in 1983. He destroyed Triple-A pitching, batting .334/.433/.596/1.029, stealing two dozen bases, and smacking 24 homers, but finished second to Don Mattingly’s .340/.437/.598/1.034.
Unfortunately, Komminsk never adjusted to Major League pitching. He spent two seasons with Atlanta, batting 215/.295/.321 with 18 stolen bases,12 homers, 67 walks, and 148 strikeouts in 677 PA. He went on to play for four more teams before retiring.
Of all the players listed, I find Betemit and Komminsk the hardest to understand. I always wondered whether Betemit would have figured it out if he’d stayed with Atlanta. He was with the team from the time he was fourteen; they virtually raised him and then rejected him. I know it wasn’t personal, but it had to be an emotional departure for the young man.
The Braves made all kinds of excuses for Komminsk’s failures – Joe Torre once blamed it on asthma – and perhaps it was so many people trying to fix him that they became a roadblock instead. Komminsk must have wondered what happened to make his mojo vanish. But it did because it's baseball, and baseball is hard.
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