Baseball Prospectus calls Atlanta a bottom five farm system in baseball
The Atlanta Braves, from a certain point of view, don't need to have a top farm system, given the long-term contractual control at the major league level. The first position player opening amongst the starting eight won't come until 2026, when shortstop Orlando Arcia reaches free agency, and even he has a club option for that season that could push it until 2027.
But with a poor farm system, it'd be pretty hard for the Braves to replace an injured major league contributor, and that's still a factor.
And that's one of the reasons that Baseball Prospectus, releasing their organizational farm system rankings ahead of the 2024 season, gave Atlanta a bottom five ranking, putting them at 27th out of 30 teams. Here's what they said about the Braves:
Atlanta has a pretty good excuse for their recent fallow farms, having graduated a young core that has led them atop the NL East for the last few seasons. And the rest of their top prospects were traded for long-term pieces like Matt Olson and Sean Murphy. And Atlanta still has a pretty good pitching pipeline. It’s just not a deep system at all, and they won’t be able to fill any significant lineup holes internally for a bit. Not that they have any.
Hard to argue with that rationale.
BP went on and described each team's farm system strengths and weaknesses, with right-handed pitching being the obvious strength and "impact bats" being the weakness for Atlanta.
(In our prospect rankings for the 2024 season, which we're gradually releasing across "Prospect Week" this week, we have sixteen right-handed pitchers amongst Atlanta's top 30 prospects, compared to only three lefties and eleven position players.)
Looking at our grades on the position player front, it's hard to argue with the "impact bats" criticism, either. Of the four hitters in our top ten, it's hard to see any of them supplanting a current starter from an offensive standpoint, although part of that is because of the strength of the major league roster.
But right now, the pitching is the more pressing matter, with the 2025 rotation currently penciled in to be Spencer Strider, Chris Sale, and Bryce Elder as your only returning members. Atlanta has time to find more impact bats in the draft and international free agency, but time is of the essence to find major league rotation members with the pending free agency of Max Fried and Charlie Morton (or Morton's retirement, as he'll pitch this season at the age of 40.)
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