Saturday seeds: Intriguing prospect promotion, draft pools, and Eli White at shortstop?

Here's some of the news and notes you might have missed from this week

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Fuentes moves up

The Atlanta Braves were busy this week moving minor leaguers around, shuffling several rosters to reinforce positions of weakness or cover for injured players.

One promotion that didn’t escape notice among the Prospectors was the move of Didier Fuentes to Columbus. Just nineteen but already a top twelve player on the Braves Prospect Composite, the flamethrowing righty doesn’t have the conventional statistics that would warrant a promotion but the stuff’s absolutely there. While he pitched to a 5.54 ERA in High-A Rome, allowing eight runs on eight hits in his thirteen innings, the underlying stuff warrants a tougher test.

Fuentes has struck out eighteen to just five walks on the strength of his heater - sitting mid-90s and running up into the high 90s, it has a good mix of both vertical and horizontal movement (plus a very flat vertical approach angle) that makes it a bear to hit when it’s up in the zone. He pairs it with a slider and a splitter, both underused, that have him still floating around the starting pitcher pool but also capable of being an exemplary reliever.

In case you forgot, this is the same kid who struck out seven in three innings of work during the Spring Breakout matchup versus the Tigers back in March.

I’m very excited to see what he does against a higher level of competition, as well as if Atlanta moves him to the pen in order to fast-track him to the majors.

Draft pools are out

The 2025 MLB Draft is approaching this summer, and the league’s released the draft pools that each team has to draw from to sign their picks.

Based on increasing league revenues, the total dollar amount allocated to the draft has risen by 4.8% from last year, to a total of $350,357,700. Atlanta, picking 22nd in the first round and with only one compensatory pick heading their way, #136 overall for Max Fried’s signing with the New York Yankees, have one of the smaller draft pools in the league.

Atlanta’s allocated $9,081,100 to sign their picks this summer, just the 23rd-largest in the league. Of note, every team can exceed their given pool by up to 5% without any penalty and most do, with the Braves missing an exact 5% overage by just $150.¹

The largest pool belongs to the Seattle Mariners, sitting on $17,074,400 as one of the record seven teams that have more than $15M available to sign their picks.

We’ll start ramping up our draft coverage here once June rolls around, looking at potential targets at different positions and discussing Atlanta’s overall philosophy to the draft and the quirks in their selections and signing process.

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White to shortstop?

The Braves have been enjoying “Eli White Week” - the utility player has started each of the last two games and provided key RBI in each. On Wednesday in the series finale versus the Cardinals, he hit the go-ahead three-run homer in the 8th inning and then added two more RBI and a run scored last night to open the Diamondbacks series.

White’s been almost exclusively an outfielder in the majors, spending only 28 of his career 1,130 innings on the dirt (and that was second base).

But the calls to put him back at shortstop are growing. After playing the position at Clemson University, White logged over 2300 innings at the position in the minors before finally acquiescing to the Rangers’ request to play the outfield in 2020.

While he’s predominantly been an outfielder ever since, the out-of-options speedster spent time during spring training on the dirt, including shortstop, to show his utility bona fides and earn the final bench spot over fellow out-of-options utilityman Luke Williams.

While it’s not a pressing issue now - Nick Allen’s batting .273 and providing solid defense with the lion’s share of starts at shortstop right now - White’s a potential option on the dirt if his bat is still hot when Ronald Acuña Jr. returns to the lineup and takes over for White in right field.

This is one to watch. I remember White being…fine in his limited time at shortstop during spring training, which might be good enough for a Braves team that appears to be rounding into the league-leading form we expected them to be on offense from the jump.

Suarez sticks around

After designing reliever José Suarez for assignment on Monday when they acquired reliever Scott Blewett from Baltimore, the Braves passed him through waivers and outrighted him to Triple-A Gwinnett.

As a vested veteran, Suarez had the ability to elect free agency in lieu of heading to Gwinnett, but he’d have forfeited the remainder of his $1.1M salary for 2025 to do so. He didn’t actually pitch poorly for Atlanta, putting up a 2.45 ERA across his 7.1 innings, but there’s a strong “smoke and mirrors” element to his performance here.

Facing thirty total batters, he walked seven while only striking out five. While only three batters put up hits on him, over half the batted balls off of him were hard-hit, resulting in an expected ERA of 6.08.

He’ll join a Gwinnett roster that recently welcomed back Craig Kimbrel, who has excelled so far in the minors despite throwing in the low-90s. I’d expect Atlanta to continue playing bullpen roulette, with Rafael Montero and Jesse Chavez both at risk of being DFA’d at any time for one of a half-dozen relievers currently pitching late in games for the Stripers.

1. The Braves had $7,765,000 to spend and used $8,153,100, with $8,153,250 being an exact 5%.