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Atlanta Braves getting even better press from ESPN’s Keith Law this week

By Alan Carpenter

MIAMI, FL - JULY 09: Mike Soroka #45 of the Atlanta Braves and the World Team pitches against the U.S. Team during the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game at Marlins Park on July 9, 2017 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
MIAMI, FL - JULY 09: Mike Soroka #45 of the Atlanta Braves and the World Team pitches against the U.S. Team during the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game at Marlins Park on July 9, 2017 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images) /
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This morning we told you about Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects list… seems that ESPN’s prospect watcher is even more bullish on the Braves farm than they were.

As noted earlier, this is prospect ranking season, and multiple outlets are reporting their evaluations of the best minor league players in pro ball.  But while the Atlanta Braves were well-represented in Baseball America’s list today, Keith Law of ESPN apparently went “All In”.

First, a quick bit of house-keeping:

  • I would provide Law’s own tweet announcing this report… except that I seem to be blocked by him.  Sorry about that… I honestly have no idea why.  But circle back to @keithlaw on twitter if you’d like to check his stuff.  (see Keith?  No ill-feelings harbored here)
  • His column on ESPN.com can be seen here, though… if you are a subscriber.
  • Fortunately, enough others have reported/tweeted/gushed over the results in Braves country that we can discuss the important bits…. and a hat tip to all of you for doing so.

In short:  while this is only the ‘bottom 50’ of his ‘top 100’ thus far, we’ve got enough information to recognize that he really really likes the Braves’ system.

Here’s those rankings (via twitter, google, etc):

Really glad to see somebody jumping onto the Pache/Wilson/Wentz bandwagons… we have been watching for them to get some press for their work, and here they are.  But overall, it continues to be amazing at just how much pitching talent this club has amassed.

Now here’s the overlaps from Baseball America’s list from earlier today:

  • 27 – Soroka
  • 72 – Fried

That’s it… everybody else was an addition that BA did not feel compelled to include in their Top 100.

That could indicate that Law intends to place up to 5 more Braves – eleven overall – in his Top 100 when the Top 50 are announced.  This is based on those not mentioned by Law while Baseball America did.

Now there could be some variations based on definitions.  For example, Luiz Gohara might not be considered if Law has a personal policy to exclude him for some given number of major league innings (Gohara has 29.1, though Max Fried has 26).

More from Tomahawk Take

It’s also reasonably possible that he isn’t as high on Austin Riley as BA was (#54).  That said, he’s clearly bullish on many of the others – though Mike Soroka is the obvious exception here, so we can’t yet call Riley a slam-dunk to be a Top 50 guy.

Still, this is remarkable.  The raw math suggests that each team should expect to have between 3 and 4 prospects apiece on any random Top 100 list.

For the Braves to have probably 10 and possibly 11 on anyone’s chart is honestly a testament to the work that the scouts did over the past 3-5 seasons… despite some duress in recent times.

Hopefully Alex Anthopoulos is able to follow through on his standard practice of bolstering the scouting department even more in the pursuit of talent like that already assembled.

Next: Best of the Best

But in the meantime, this continues to be an exciting part of Braves baseball – and hopefully it continues to portend better days ahead.

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