Atlanta’s Farm System Has a Problem—and It’s Not Just the Hitters

Long considered an organizational weak point, it feels at times recently like it's worse than ever.

For years, the Braves’ farm system didn’t have to be good—just good enough. But in 2025, with a broken rotation and black holes in the lineup, ‘good enough’ isn’t cutting it anymore.

Because Atlanta’s major league roster is scuffling in a way it hasn’t ever done during the Alex Anthopoulos era.

Since Atlanta’s President of Baseball Operations joined the organization on November 13th, 2017, the Braves have made the postseason in every season, doing it via winning the National League East in all but one of those years (2024), and took home the Commissioner’s Trophy in 2021 with a miraculous late-season surge. Anthopoulos receives a lot of credit for that championship; he acquired four outfielders, two of which went on to be postseason round MVPs, in the run-up to the trade deadline.

But the situation’s different in 2025. They have their star hitter, with Ronald Acuña Jr. having returned from injury in late May and hitting like an MVP. It’s the rotation that’s been decimated this time, with the trio of Chris Sale (fractured ribs), Reynaldo López (shoulder surgery), and AJ Smith-Shawver (season-ending elbow surgery) on the injured list and unavailable.

And just like 2021, the Braves don’t have the reinforcements internally to fill the hole in their rotation, despite their persistent, heavy focus on pitching in the MLB Draft. Let’s talk about it.

Just how much do the Braves target pitching in the draft?

More than anyone else in the entire sport.

From 2018 through 2023, the Atlanta Braves devoted the highest percentage of their MLB Draft bonus pool to pitching of any team in baseball, sitting at 61%. While 27 of 30 teams selected more pitchers than position players during that span, not every team pays for their arms. Only nine teams exceeded 50% of their bonus pool paid out to pitching, while Atlanta was the only to break 60%.

While I’ve not yet updated this research since 2023 - it’s an offseason project of mine to add both 2024 and 2025 to this analysis - they took pitchers with ten of their first twelve picks last year, so it’s doubtful the overall percentage of bonus pool money went down.

And it makes sense - look back to just 2023 and Atlanta’s in an enviable position of having a multi-year deal at every single position on the diamond. Why wouldn’t they acquire as much pitching as possible, to keep the pipeline to the Truist Park mound going?

But that strategy only works if the team’s needs don’t change, on either end.

The position player group is lacking

There was an open question going into the 2025 season about whether or not the step back in offensive production from the 2024 roster was due to the myriad injuries or if 2023 was an outlier.

The longer we get away from that historic 2023 season, where Atlanta set the single-season record for team slugging at .501 and tied the single-season homer record with 307 roundtrippers, it appears more and more like 2023 was the fluke, not 2024.

And now, the cracks in 2025’s lineup are impossible to ignore. Centerfield and shortstop are both offensive black holes, albeit with Gold Glove-caliber defense at those positions from Michael Harris II and Nick Allen. Second baseman Ozzie Albies is both a black hole offensively and defensively, reaching the point that picking up his $7M 2026 club option for next year is an open question despite his $4M buyout owed if Atlanta allows him to walk.

And unfortunately, no help seems to be coming at any of those positions anytime soon. Atlanta was dealing with a black hole in left field entering the season, leading them to sign veteran Jurickson Profar to a multi-year contract over the winter to hopefully fill the void. (You know what happened next.)

But here’s the issue: There’s not even a possibility of getting help out of the farm system at any of these positions right now, or maybe even next year.

The Stripers are one of the worst teams in the Triple-A International League, finishing the first half at the bottom of the West division at 29-46. They were outscored by 79 runs, 266 to 345, and had the worst statistics of any team in AAA in all three components of the slash line with a .227/.306/.341 line.

The Columbus Clingstones aren’t fairing much better. They finished the first half with the South division’s worst record at 26-40 and a -49 run differential. Just like the Stripers, the Clingstones also sported the worst slash line in the league at .207/.300/.310.

(This entire feature was prompted by the 5-3 loss suffered by Columbus on Wednesday night, one where the top three in the lineup went 5-11 with two runs, three RBI, and a homer while batters four through nine went 0-23 with three walks, nine strikeouts, and a single run scored.)

With the graduation of catcher Drake Baldwin a few weeks ago, there is only four upper minors position players in Atlanta’s top 30 prospects rankings per MLB Pipeline: 2B/3B Nacho Alvarez (AAA, #3), 1B/3B David McCabe (AA, #17), and outfielders Carlos Rodríguez (AAA, #28) and Ethan Workinger (AA, #30).

And not all of those players are thought of as potential impact major leaguers. MLB.com’s Mark Bowman, answering fan questions on Reddit on Wednesday, had damning words for Alvarez’s future at the major league level:

I don't think anybody has ever seriously considered Nacho to be a legit option to play either of the middle infield options at the big league level. It has been encouraging to see him show some power, especially that of the pull variety since beginning to play for Gwinnett this month. The Braves don't have many trade chips. So, while I wouldn't say they are shopping Nacho, he's one of the few pieces available to possibly gain a return before the July 31 Trade Deadline.

And that’s currently the organization’s THIRD best prospect, according to MLB Pipeline!

The majority of Atlanta’s high-ceiling position player talent is in the low minors, with the Single-A Augusta GreenJackets proving to be an incredibly fun watch on a daily basis. Most of these 19-year-old hitters are, conservatively, two or three seasons away from the majors, barring a major developmental leap, but the odds are better that if one of them makes the majors, they could at least provide some sort of impact and/or positive WAR.

But at least Atlanta’s focus on pitching has given them plenty of arms to fill in at the major league level, right?

Where are the pitchers?

Except, as we’ve discussed in both the newsletter and podcast, the starting pitching depth is just not there in Triple-A right now.

The 40-man starters in Gwinnett at the moment, along with their stats:

Hurston Waldrep: 5-6, 5.60 ERA, 1.64 WHIP
Davis Daniel: 4-6, 3.76 ERA, 1.28 WHIP
Nathan Wiles: 2-7, 2.92 ERA, 1.13 WHIP

Other options include injured starter Ian Anderson (1-3, 6.10 ERA and 1.87 WHIP) and stretched-out relievers José Suarez (0-1, 4.25 ERA) and Zach Thompson (0-3, 5.52 ERA as a starter). A new development and potential major league option is the two starts from Jackson Stephens, who has gone nine scoreless innings with only one hit and three walks to nine strikeouts, although he has done this before and not been called up to the majors.

It’s an underwhelming group.

What’s most frustrating is that this is the current situation despite Atlanta’s heavy investment in starting pitching, especially early on day one. Since 2015, the Braves have drafted twelve pitchers in the first round. None of those players are in the current rotation and over half of them are not even with the organization.

Here’s the list of draft picks, including the position players (bold indicates a player still with the organization):

2015: LHP Kolby Allard & 3B Austin Riley
2016: LHP Joey Wentz
2017: RHP Kyle Wright
2018: RHP Carter Stewart (unsigned, currently playing in Japan)
2019: C Shea Langeliers & SS Braden Shewmake
2020: LHP Jared Shuster
2021: RHP Ryan Cusick
2022: RHPs Owen Murphy & JR Ritchie
2023: RHP Hurston Waldrep
2024: LHP Cam Caminiti

13 picks, five players still with the organization. Another fun fact here is that Austin Riley is the only first-round pick by Atlanta to be on the major league roster.

So, to recap: There’s been a deliberate focus to build up the pitching pipeline in the farm system over the last seven years, sacrificing the position player group to do so, but right now the farm system’s not able to deliver reinforcements in either arena.

What needs to happen now?

Changes the Braves need to make

International free agency has seen the Braves go heavy on the bats ever since being permitted to rejoin the signing frenzy. Atlanta has attempted to be in the mix for one of the top prospects every signing period, with four of their top fifteen prospects being hitters that signed as teenagers out of Latin America:

#8, SS Jose Perdomo (2024, $5M bonus)
#12 SS John Gil (2023, $110,000)
#13 OF Luis Guanipa (2023, $2.5M)
#15 OF Diego Tornes ($2.497M)

But the oldest of these four is Gil and Guanipa, both 19 years old in Single-A Augusta. As I mentioned above, it’s likely a multi-year ETA on both players.

It might be time for Atlanta to take a hitter early in this draft. They have a question to answer about second base this offseason, as well as potentially both left field and center field (depending on how Jurickson Profar and Michael Harris rebound statistically in the back half of the schedule). Shortstop could use an offensive upgrade, too, but you can accept Gold Glove-caliber defense and a light bat from Nick Allen if the rest of the lineup is performing.

And as I wrote last month, adding an early hitter tracks with the strength of this year’s class. While we’re going to do more draft content in the next week or two, it’s definitely a situation where Atlanta can’t afford to focus on college arms at the expense of everything else. In a year where the Braves need bats more than ever, this year’s draft class just might line up with those needs. We’ll break down the names and options in next week’s preview.

Because right now, the farm system isn’t able to be any help at all. Atlanta had to go out and sign 374,259 relievers¹ to minor league deals this offseason to supplement their bullpen losses and then fill the Gwinnett roster full of veteran bats making significantly more than the league minimum, just to lose more games than anyone else in the entire International League. And now that Chris Sale is down and Didier Fuentes has struggled, they’re looking at either using a subpar option out of Gwinnett or needing to make a trade just to fill the fifth spot in the rotation.

For as much as we admire the stability of the long-term roster in Atlanta, it’s also possible for the championship window to narrow with injuries, underperformance, and an inability to supplement when disaster strikes. Injuries drug down the 2024 roster, and it can be argued that 2025’s roster is facing the same fate.

1. Ballpark estimate