Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospect – #7 Lucas Sims Scouting Report
Atlanta Braves Right Hander Lucas Sims
Who Is He?
The Braves drafted Sims out of Brookwood High School in Snellville, Georgia with the 21st pick of the 2012 draft. They sent him to their Gulf Coast League team, and he excelled there, earning a promotion to Danville to finish the season. All told, he made 11 starts in his draft season with a 3.71 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, and 13/39 BB/K ratio over 34 innings. While he didn’t make any top 100 lists, he certainly got the notice of quite a few national writers who raved about his raw stuff.
Sims pitched the entire season for the low-A Rome Braves team, going 12-4, with a 2.62 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and 46/134 BB/K ratio over 116 2/3 innings over 28 games, 18 of them starts. Scouts raved about Sims, pumping him up the prospect lists. He was ranked #57 by Baseball America, #60 by MLB.com, and #40 by Baseball Prospectus. Certainly, he had become the next big pitching prospect, falling in line roughly 3 years after Julio Teheran had similar rankings after his first go-round in Rome.
The Braves sent Sims to high-A Lynchburg in 2014, and he had a “flat” year. He threw well for a 20 year-old at the level, but nothing excellent like his previous performance. His season totals were 28 starts and 156 1/3 innings of 4.20 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, and 57/107 BB/K. The notable thing on the season was his home run rate, which spiked to three times the rate of his previous season. National writers by and large still believed, many stating that he may be more of a 2/3 starter than the ace they were projecting the season before. While he fell out of the Baseball America top 100 prospects, he was ranked #94 on the MLB.com list and #54 on the Baseball Prospectus list.
Sims returned to high-A in 2015 at the Braves’ new affiliate in Carolina. From the get-go, it looked rough. Just when he seemed to be getting on track with his first two “good” starts of the entire season, the Mudcats had their infamous bus crash. After a time with the Gulf Coast League team rehabbing and missing just short of two months, Sims returned to the Carolina staff for two more poor starts, and then once he finally made one good one again, he was promoted to AA Mississippi.
Next: Sims's scouting report
Most would certainly wonder about the Braves’ sanity in promoting a guy with an ERA over 5 on the season, and early on for Mississippi, it looked rough as Sims only totaled 11 2/3 innings over his first 3 starts with a 8.49 ERA and 2.06 WHIP. However, then something happened that was nothing short of amazing. Start with basically being unhittable in his next start against Montgomery, Sims finished the season going 4-0 over his last 6 starts, throwing 36 innings with a 1.50 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, and 16/41 BB/K ratio. On the regular season, he finished with a combined season of 20 starts, 92 2/3 innings, a 4.37 ERA, 1.39 WHIP, and 54/100 BB/K ratio. Then, he went to the Arizona Fall League, and his success continued. He appeared in six games, five of them starts, in the typically hitter-dominated league. He posted a 2.12 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, and 3/17 BB/K ratio over 17 innings. The notable mark of his performance in the AFL was his control as his 4.5% walk rate was almost half the rate of what he had ever put up in a full season.