Atlanta Braves Draft Philosophy
By Fred Owens
Atlanta Braves Draft Philosophy
The 2016 Rule 4 amateur draft begins on June 9th and we’ve had lots of coverage on that already here on the Take. Ben is running a series of Mock Drafts; he’s up to version two now and Alan seemed a little pessimistic in his look forward yesterday.
All of the discussion about whether we should as Jim Callis suggested today take Kyle Lewis, or perhaps Riley Pint as predicted by Hudson Belinsky, or maybe Jeff Ellis’s latest prediction Corey Ray or someone we haven’t discussed yet – though honestly I think Ben has that covered – begs a look at what the Braves have done in the past and how that may be an indicator of what the future holds.
Prologue
Way back in 2012 I wrote a series posts about the Braves minor league system. The first post in the series I explained the history of the Braves draft success going back to the late 80s. In the post I quoted an R.J. Anderson Painting the Black column on Baseball Prospectus describing how the Braves farm system under John Schuerholz really had it’s roots back in 1967 when they hired Bill Wight.
I recommend you read the article (membership is required but well worth it) as there’s a lot of history there I for one didn’t know. This paragraph from that post is a critical point of relevance for the June 9, 2016 draft.
"In Scout’s Honor, Wight says, “If you get the long range pitching established, you’ve got the nucleus of taking a second division ball club into the (Sic) division faster than anything.” (Paul) Snyder (Wight’s understudy) took this parlance to heart, acknowledging later that he would opt for the pitcher if the two players were valued equally. Wight recognized that producing pitchers served two purposes. The Braves could use those pitchers to strengthen their own roster. But they could also use superfluous starters to fill other needs through trade. Also in Scout’s Honor, Snyder, while paraphrasing Wight, says, “[Everybody’s] always looking for pitching and if you have pitching you can get players.” (emphasis added)"
Wright retired in 1997 when JS moved upstairs and Fran Wren took over. His influence is however alive and well in the current Braves scouting and development department.
Next: That was then, this is now