Here's what Atlanta's Rule-5 eligibles need to do this year to get protected

The Atlanta Braves have some prospects with 40-man roster decisions due this winter

Good morning! Baseball’s almost here. The Braves kick off their season on Thursday in San Diego against the Padres, while Triple-A Gwinnett starts their campaign the very next day. The Stripers will be in Charlotte to take on the Knights, affiliate of the White Sox, for a weekend series before returning home for their home opener on Tuesday.

While the Stripers don’t have very many actual prospects there - 26 of 28 rostered players have MLB experience - there’s still plenty to be excited about, starting with prospect Hurston Waldrep leading the rotation. After a rough Major League debut and then an elbow injury last season, the splitter specialist needs to have a great showing to solidify himself in the team’s future rotation plans.

But it’s not just Waldrep that needs to succeed in 2025. Several of the organization’s players are reaching their Rule 5 deadlines¹ this winter - they’ll either need to be added to the 40-man roster to protect them or else be exposed and potentially claimed by another organization.

Here’s a list of all newly eligible players this winter and what they’ll need to do this season to show worthy of a 40-man spot. (All positions come from their depth chart classifications in FanGraphs’ Roster Resource.)

Catchers - none to decide

The organization’s top catching prospect, Drake Baldwin, will begin the season on the 40-man roster. Everyone else is already Rule 5 eligible and wasn’t selected or won’t be eligible until at least 2026.

First base - one, not being kept

Justin Janas, a 12th-round pick in 2022 out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign², spent his age 23 season in Rome, playing in 82 games and hitting .244/.358/.344. Never a slugger, with just two six collegiate homers (all in his draft year of 2022), it’s an atypical profile for a corner infield spot. While he made four outfield starts for Rome last year, he finished with just 29 innings and it might not be enough versatility for Atlanta to overlook the lack of power.

Second base - one, not being kept

Elio Campos is a 2021 IFA by the Dodgers who was traded to the Braves last summer for cash considerations. He’s spent four consecutive seasons in the DSL, hitting .288 across the four years, and is entering his age-21 season without having ever played stateside.

I honestly don’t know why the deal was made - probably to help relations with a trainer in his native Venezuela - but there’s practically a 0% chance he’s protected this winter.

Third base - two, with one possibly being kept

Third base has two prospects and they couldn’t be more different.

Keshawn Ogans, a 20th-round pick in 2022 out of Cal, is the first one we’ll talk about. He’s a Short King, listed in baseball reference at 5-8, 180 pounds.

This one’s tough, as Ogans is well-liked by everyone we’ve talked to and is someone you want to have in your organization - he plays everywhere in the infield and is just a good ball player.

He’s probably not someone who will get a 40-man roster spot, though - even with AA Mississippi’s poor power production environment notwithstanding, he still finished with just sixteen extra-base hits in 393 plate appearances. While he stole 16 bases, it was with 8 caught stealing. Hitting .219 with a .560 OPS in your age 22 season isn’t a recipe that screams “40-man add”, unfortunately.

The other player technically shouldn’t even be here - David McCabe, the hulking slugger out of UNC-Charlotte³ from the 4th round in 2022, is technically a first baseman now but is still listed at third base.⁴

As a first baseman in college, Atlanta was attempting to move him to third, but after Tommy John surgery, he’s moving back to the cold corner. He has some good raw power and a decent batter's eye, although he isn’t a finished product at the plate. A great season this year in AA Columbus can get him protection and a future 1B/DH bench spot, but it’s an outside chance that requires him to absolutely mash in a way that he never truly has before.

Shortstop - two, with decisions already penciled in

There are two infielders here, neither of which is a slam dunk to get protected. E.J. Exposito was a 16th-rounder in 2022 out of Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus⁵, while Ambioris Tavarez was a 2021 international free agent.

Exposito has struggled to hit in his time in the system, maxing out with a .238 in High-A last year despite being slightly old for the level at a full 23 years old. He’s defensively sound and can field multiple positions well, but it’s still hard to use a 40-man spot on him unless he rakes this year.

Ambioris Tavarez was the organization’s first splash back in international free agency after the John Coppella penalties finally ended. Signing for $1.5M in that J15 class out of the Dominican, he didn’t debut professionally until coming stateside in 2022.⁶

He’s played exclusively shortstop in his pro career, and the reviews are good enough there that they haven’t moved him around, but the bat still hasn’t come around. After hitting .216 in Single-A at age 19, he followed that up with a sub-.200 batting average in High-A last year before his season essentially ended in late May due to a broken wrist caused by an HBP.

I honestly don’t expect either player to be protected, and I’m not sure - barring a massive breakout - that it’ll change after this year, either.

Outfield - Surprisingly, only one name here

Let’s meet Kevin Kilpatrick, Jr. A 17th-round pick in 2022 out of College of Central Florida.⁷ He’s technically a local kid as he went to Redan HS in Stone Mountain, so we’re counting that despite him leaving for Florida for college.

I still don’t think they protect him this offseason, though - he just spent two straight seasons in High-A Rome and hit a combined .232. He drew 119 walks across both seasons but also offset that with only ten homers and 280 strikeouts. The 82 stolen bases are nice, but (cynically) a defensive-first outfielder that can give you stolen bases but not much else just isn’t that valuable or hard to find.

A whole bunch of pitching options here

And here’s where we actually see the team likely decide to protect some guys.

Blake Burkhalter’s the most obvious protection candidate. A 2nd-rounder in 2022 out of nearby Auburn, his minor league career was derailed by Tommy John surgery that took away his entire 2023 season. A converted reliever, he went 3-3 with a 2.71 ERA in Rome last season after returning from elbow surgery. He’s a virtual lock to start in the Columbus rotation and, if everything goes as well as I expect it to, will likely get moved to Gwinnett before the end of the season.

Other starters on the possible protection list include Ian Mejia, Jhancarlos Lara, Adam Maier, Cedric De Grandpre, and Adam Shoemaker.

Lara and Maier are the two to watch here - Lara’s got fantastic velocity but enough wildness that there’s been talk of moving him to the pen, while Maier is a sinker/slider arm with fringy control that needs to have a good season from both an innings and a stuff perspective to get himself a spot next season.

De Grandpre broke out in early 2023 with a 1.95 ERA in Augusta, but he struggled after a move to Rome (5.13 ERA) and then went down with Tommy John that took away his entire 2024 season. It’s likely that he doesn’t show enough in 2025 to warrant a coveted 40-man spot.

Mejia is a soft-tossing righty with good control but only middling stuff - it’s a low-90s fastball with poor movement traits paired with a good slider and a fringy changeup. There are things to like, but also lots of development still to go to make him into someone who can survive as anything more than a fill-in “pitch to contact” type. Some organizations protect this type of player, but Atlanta probably won’t.

Shoemaker just repeated Single-A and managed to somehow have a worse ERA, going from 6.06 to 6.20, and was eventually moved to the pen. He’s listed as a starter on FanGraphs but is solidly a reliever and not one they’ll be inclined to protect without some sort of significant breakout.

Many of the other listed relievers are in the same boat. Out of the group of Landon Harper, Hayden Harris, Rob Griswold, William Silva, and Juan Sanchez, Harris is the one of note here.

An undrafted free agent out of Georgia Southern, he’s climbed through the system to AAA on the strength of some sort of absurd deception - he’s throwing low-90s with his lefty heater, but hitters just couldn’t seem to pick it up out of the hand.

Until 2024, that is.

After a solid 1.74 ERA stint in Mississippi across 20.2 innings, he moved to Gwinnett and immediately started getting knocked around. Putting up a 7.36 ERA and walking 16 in his 22 innings for the Stripers, the organization sent him to Arizona for more work. The desert wasn’t any kinder to him than Gwinnett was, with Arizona Fall League hitters tagging him for 11 runs in just 8.2 innings across the fall slate for Peoria.

In all likelihood, anything short of complete dominance in AAA likely leaves him unprotected in next winter’s Rule 5 draft. Let’s see what happens.

1. The deadline for Rule 5 protection depends on your age when first signing with an MLB team - under 18 and it’s five years, over 18 and it’s four

2. The Fighting Illini, if you were curious

3. The 49ers

4. In defense of FanGraphs, he started at third base in the Spring Breakout game.

5. The Sharks

6. The Braves didn’t have a DSL team in 2021 because they had been locked out of the IFA market for multiple years and consequently didn’t have enough players to field a team.

7. The Patriots