Atlanta Braves OF prospect Drew Waters is already getting cagey

Atlanta Braves outfield prospect Drew Waters knows his weakness – is working to overcome it.

You think that a guy hitting .309 in 2019 and having risen to the triple-A level as a top prospect for the Atlanta Braves might figure that everything is going his way, but that is almost never the case in baseball, and Drew Waters seems to understand that.

So he arrived early in North Port to get to work – on his hitting.

Mind you, it’s one aspect of hitting… and something we noticed last May when Jake and I held an “editor’s meeting” in Birmingham at an event disguised as a AA game between the Mississippi Braves and Birmingham Barons.

On that day, Waters went 0 for 5 with 3 strikeouts. 2 days later… 0 for 4 with 2 punchouts. 4 days later against those same Barons, he was 0 for 5 again, this time with the golden sombrero treatment – 4 strikeouts.

Well, what about early that month? On May 6 vs. the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, Waters went 0 for 5 with 4 more K’s in his column.

What’s going on here?

The 21-year-old Waters is switch hitter… or at least has been trying to be. During the month of May last season, though, he truly looked lost from the right side. The swings we saw were truly bad, prompting yours truly to suggest that he should consider giving up the RHH part of his craft.

For the season, Waters did ‘wear it’ a few times: at the AA level, he had the two 4K games against lefty starters (it was difficult to find all of the stats to learn who followed the starting pitchers – both went 4 innings; I believe a lefty reliever followed the starter in the B’ham game I witnessed).

Waters did have a 4K game vs. a right-handed starter in AA, and 6 games against righties when he K’d 3 times. Twice that 3-peat happened vs. southpaws.

Overall in 2019:

• 164 K in 573 plate appearances
• 39 BB (6 as a RHH)
• 122 K against RHP (27.7%), .325 avg and .866 OPS
• 42 K against LHP (31.5%), .258 avg and .664 OPS
• Saw RHP 3.3 times as much as LHP

Water’s strikeout numbers are also a bit high, but today we’re going to take note of that right-handed swing in particular, as it’s clearly lagging behind. The good news is that Waters himself clearly already knows this.

We’ve noted multiple times that the NL East isn’t exactly a sanctuary for southpaws – none of the teams have more than 1 such starter other than the Braves, but as players like Joc Pederson have learned, if you get the reputation of being a 1-side-only hitter, than tends to dog you and reduce playing time.

Chipper Jones is the standard by which all swing-hitters should be measured and copied. His ‘natural’ side was the right, but he realized early on that it was more than just the fact that he had to work twice as hard to practice from both sides of the plate: he also had to work harder on his weaker side (the left) to make sure that swing would play.

In Chipper’s case, that was all the more important since he’d be seeing right-handed pitching most of the time anyway (it was roughly a 2.6:1 ratio over his career, and he hit .303 as a lefty; .304 as a righty).

Getting to Work

Waters early to camp this week, and was noticeable that he’s already setting out to work on that right-handed swing:

You can see in the video that he appears balanced and smooth – which characterizes his LH swing. This right-side update a significant improvement over 2018.

This video from Mark Bowman is a little tougher to see (being outside the netting) but is also a bit longer.

In this second clip, Waters is working on driving the ball to the opposite field – and having some success with that (pitch location notwithstanding).

Compare the set-up with that of a year ago in this next tweet (via the embedded photo after he reached AAA late in the season). Here’s another confirming shot from 2019. Hands at setup are noticeably lower and doesn’t appear to be reaching back as far. His legs also appear to be less open this Spring.

Obviously batting practice with a coach throwing meatballs isn’t the same as live pitching, but this is a note about the process… and Waters is clearly working on the things he needs to work on to try and make that RH swing as effective as his left-side hacks.

There is no downside to this: if he’s even partially successful, that will be the kind of work that gets his ticket to the majors punched. Good on him to put in the early effort to get that done.

Waters has an arm, he has above average wheels, and he has developing power. If this hit tool develops fully, that’s going to make him a hot commodity – however the Atlanta Braves choose to use him.