There are a lot of differing opinions amongst Atlanta Braves fans, and really baseball fans in general, when it comes to how to view prospects. Some people think that prospects are far too unreliable and risky, so they should be traded when they have real value to bolster the big league roster. Others view any prospect with a pulse as untouchable and don't want to risk the Braves (or whoever) regretting giving up on a young player too soon.
Reality is somewhere in the middle. While no prospect is probably completely untouchable, the Braves under Alex Anthopoulos are never going to completely close the door on a potential deal if the payoff is big enough in the end. At the end of the day, the goal is to field the best team possible, and sometimes, that means giving up a talented player (or several) to go get the help the team needs. However, that doesn't mean that every team doesn't have a list of prospects that they would really prefer to keep.
So, when Anthopoulos recently intimated that he was making the rounds in the minor leagues and assessing which prospects the Braves would prefer to keep around, that certainly invited some spirited debate on the subject. However, reality when it comes to prospects is far more nuanced than just "keep or trade" most of the time.
The Braves have two tiers of prospects that they would probably prefer to keep, but that doesn't mean they should be completely off the table
Look, everyone wants to have a Ronald Acuña Jr.-level prospect coming through the minor leagues that is truly untouchable. However, the fact that the Braves wouldn't even describe Acuña Jr. back then as "untouchable" in public probably tells you enough about how any prospect should probably be viewed.
However, that does not mean that the Braves don't have prospects that they want to keep at least past the trade deadline if possible. The first group is guys that the Braves have plans for in the major leagues this year. That likely includes JR Ritchie, who is already on the 40-man roster and who appears to be an important part of Atlanta's current pitching depth, as well as Owen Murphy, who is starting to pitch better at Triple-A and does not see far off at all.
The other group is the uber-talents that are significantly further away from the majors. That group probably includes Tate Southisene, Eric Hartman, John Gil, and maybe Luis Guanipa, but this is a group that is much more fluid and is going to rely on internal evaluations and projections by the Braves that we just aren't privy to.
So yes, Anthopoulos is doing an accounting of the Braves' minor leagues to evaluate what he has ahead of the trade deadline. That said, that doesn't mean he is making a list of guys that he wants to keep, per se. Instead, it is more likely he just wants an accurate assessment of players' value, including those that should only be dealt in select scenarios.
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