End of season recap for the 2019 Danville Braves
By Clint Manry
An end-of-season recap covering all seven Atlanta Braves minor league teams from the 2019 season: Danville Braves.
In this series I will cover each of the seven Atlanta Braves minor league levels, evaluating each club and its top performers.
If you’re interested in jumping to previous recaps:
Today we move on to the Danville Braves, the Braves’ Rookie-Advanced club. Danville wrapped up their 2019 season on Wednesday, August 28.
The team
The 2019 Danville Braves finished with a 30-38 record, good for last place in the five-team Appalachian East division and 12 games behind the division’s leader, the Pulaski Yankees.
The first half of Danville’s 2019 season was exciting, as several newly-drafted players started their first pro season with the team.
However, this was a Braves’ minor league team that struggled to score runs, ending the season with 264 runs-scored (2nd-fewest in the 10-team league).
Given their inability to score runs, it’s not surprising that Danville also finished next-to-last in team home runs (37) and team batting average (.232). The team’s .318 OBP also ranked poorly, ranking better than just two other teams in the league.
Despite their troubles on offense, Danville still managed a modest strikeout total, going down on strikes 505 times in 2019 (4th-fewest). They also finish tied for the 5th-most walks, tallying 216 free passes in 2019.
Danville’s pitching was considerably better than their hitting, as the team wound up becoming a rather average team in that regard. Danville ranked 4th in strikeouts, totaling 580 punch outs, while also finishing with the 5th-best team-ERA, amassing a 4.55 ERA (the league’s best ERA was 3.48, owned by Burlington).
Danville also did a nice job prohibiting home runs, allowing 47 homers, the league’s 4th-fewest in 2019. However, Danville pitchers walked far too many batters, racking up 260 walks on the year — the most free passes in the league, by 14 walks.
Defensively, Danville finished with a similar unearned-run total as the GCL Braves, allowing 51 such runs in 2019.
The top performers
First baseman Mason Berne, a 33rd round pick in the 2018 draft, wasn’t in Danville long but hit .341 in 13 games this season, after batting .262 in 24 games in the GCL.
Cody Milligan was another key player for Danville in 2019. Milligan played second base and hit .252, but slugged just .299 on the year.
A 9th round pick in the 2019 draft, Milligan hit one home run and 7 doubles in 59 games. He also was 12-for-18 on stolen base attempts.
The MVP was first baseman/DH Bryce Ball, the Braves’ 24th round pick in the 2019 draft. Ball hit 13 home runs and slashed .324/.410/.676 with 38 RBI in 41 games. Ball also slapped 12 doubles with Danville, before heading up to Rome and playing his final 21 games in Single-A. Danville was at its best when Ball was lurking in the lineup.
The ace of the pitching staff didn’t stay with Danville all season, but Mitch Stallings was sharp while with the team. Stallings, 24-years-old, made 9 starts and 2 relief appearances for Danville, pitching to a 2.25 ERA and running K/BB rates of 11.1 K/9 and 1.8 BB/9.
The former Duke pitcher and 30th round pick in 2018, didn’t allow a single home run in his 56 innings-pitched in Danville. Stallings was promoted to Rome, where he made his final 3 starts of the 2019 season.
Lefty Lisandro Santos had a compelling stint with Danville in 2019. After pitching in 7 games for the DSL Braves (2.70 ERA), Santos was moved up to Danville. The 20-year-old made 5 starts for the D-Braves and finished with a 1.14 ERA and 26 strikeouts in 23.2 innings pitched.
What’s interesting is Santos didn’t allow a single homer in that span, and despite his stingy run-prevention, he ran a poor walk-rate of 6.5 BB/9 (17 total walks). Talk about bearing down with runners on base!
Danville’s top bullpen arm in 2019 was 21-year-old righty Tanner Gordon, who made 13 relief appearances and pitched to a 2.22 ERA. Gordon struck out 36 batters in just 24.1 innings-pitched (13.3 K/9).
The verdict
Even though Danville lacked the numbers of an exciting team, throughout the 2019 season there were several players that should become household names in the Atlanta Braves organization.
Like all rookie-level clubs, players that perform well usually tend to advance rather quickly, as organizations want to see what they have with a player.
A pitcher like Stallings, a power pitching lefty, could potentially become a lower-ranked prospect in the Braves system as soon as 2020, while Ball appears to be on track for even more, and maybe even sooner.
The first base, power-hitter type player isn’t as sought after as it once was, but the potential Ball showed in Danville could end up being a real bargain for the Braves, considering he was a late-round selection.
The 2020 season will bring more at-bats for hitters and more innings for pitchers, giving us more to work with in terms of assessing the talent in the Braves’ rookie levels of the minors.
Next. What's at stake in September. dark
With Danville being the final rookie-level team in this recap series, I do feel comfortable saying that the Braves’ organization still has a bright future ahead.