Braves Players Affected the Most by No Minor League Season in 2020

It was made official on Tuesday that there will be no Minor League Baseball season in 2020. Who does this hurt the most for the Atlanta Braves?

What we’ve assumed for a while became a reality on Tuesday with the Minor League Baseball season getting canceled. An entire season lost for a lot of Atlanta Braves prospects.

Even though the writing has been on the wall for a while, it’s really hard to believe there won’t be any minor league games in 2020. We’ll miss an entire year of wacky promotions.

JJ Cooper of Baseball America does a great job of breaking down the ramifications of not having a 2020 season for MiLB.

But for the Braves and their prospects, they miss an entire year of development, which could have huge impacts across the organization.

We wrote recently that the team’s top 12 prospects were part of the Braves initial player pool for the 2020 season.

At least those players will be getting reps and working with some of the coaching staff, but it’s still not great game experience. However, it’s better than nothing.

The players that will be hurt the most by this are the lower-level players. Young guys who were hoping to have a big 2020 season to elevate their status in the organization.

Take, for instance, the Braves fifth-round pick from 2019 in Stephen Paolini who is a toolsy athlete but needs a lot of at-bats and experience to adjust to professional baseball.

He’s still just 19 but is losing an entire year of development.

Or you look at someone like Freddy Tarnok who has all the ability in the world but hasn’t been able to put it together at the professional level yet. We were hoping this was the season he finally proved he could be a top prospect.

Now we have to wait another season to see if he’s progressed at all.

Of course, the 2020 season may not be a complete lost for some.

There were talks of the Arizona Fall League extending it’s schedule this year to give prospects more playing time. But the COVID-19 spike in Arizona that isn’t looking promising at the moment.

International players could have a good shot at playing in some winter leagues. And you may even see a lot of American players try to sneak in those leagues as well if they’re allowed to travel there.

The Braves are already struggling to find promising talent in the lower levels of their prospect pool because of the international restrictions they’ve had.

They need those players playing and potentially developing into big-league contributors or trade pieces.

It’s a terrible situation all around, and I haven’t even mentioned the financial impact on each team and its employees.

Here’s to hoping the spread of this virus slows soon and some of these players get the opportunity to play some sort of baseball before the end of the year.