What to know about Spring Breakout starter JR Ritchie
One of Atlanta's most promising young prospects takes the mound this afternoon against the Detroit Tigers
The Braves look to get in the win column in the Spring Breakout series this afternoon when they host the top prospects of the Detroit Tigers in North Port at 4:05 PM ET.
Starting for Atlanta is pitching prospect JR Ritchie. Here’s a breakdown on the youngster.
Who is JR Ritchie?
BIO: 6’2, 185 lbs. Born June 26th, 2003 in Seattle, Washington.
The 2nd of two first-round picks for Atlanta in the 2022 MLB Draft, Ritchie was taken 35th overall with a pick in Competitive Balance round A - that pick was acquired in a trade with the Kansas City Royals for outfielder Drew Waters. Signing for $2.4M (+$196,800 over slot value) to forgo a commitment to UCLA, Ritchie joined fellow prep pitchers Owen Murphy (#20 overall) and 2nd rounder Cole Phillips (#57 overall) as an out-of-type draft swerve for a front office that typically liked to go with velo and college arms.
(Phillips, who had Tommy John in high school, has since been traded to the Seattle Mariners and needed a second Tommy John soon after the deal.)
What were the scouts saying when he was picked?
The consensus on Ritchie was that he had as much arm talent as the rest of the preps in the first round, but an inability to hold his velocity very deep into his starts pushed him back in the draft order. Sporting a four-pitch mix of a four-seam fastball (93-95, T97), a two-plane breaking curveball, a low-80s slider and changeup, he had all the tools to be a mid-rotation arm. Ritchie had a very clean and repeatable arm motion, but needed to add strength to hold up as a starter.
What happened to him in pro ball?
2022: 0-0, 1.88 ERA in 5 starts (3 Rk, 2A). 14.1 IP, 9H, 3R (all ER), 5 BB to 14 Ks
2023: 0-1, 5.40 ERA in 4 starts (Single-A). 13.1 IP, 11H, 9R (8ER), 3BB to 25 Ks
2024: 2-5, 2.90 ERA in 12 G (11 GS). 49.2 IP, 39H, 21 R (16ER), 17BB to 56 Ks
As Atlanta is wont to do, they threw him right into competition. Ritchie threw 14.1 innings across five outings in his draft year, starting in rookie ball and moving to Single-A Augusta. He went back to Augusta to start 2023 but made it just four outings before Tommy John surgery took him down.
And here’s where it gets interesting.
Ritchie returned to action in June of this last year1, getting three games in rookie ball before returning to standard action in Augusta and eventually making it to Rome. I think it’s more illuminating to throw out what he did in North Port and just look at Augusta and Rome:
There are a few things that stand out to me here.
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The first is that he was still handled with kid gloves early in his Augusta tenure, which makes sense for a promising young player that was less than ten actual innings removed from Tommy John surgery. Three of his first four outings were less than five frames in length, although the pitch counts got as high as the mid-70s twice so it might have been more inefficiency than a hard limit on innings.
Ritchie earned himself a promotion in late August after three starts for Augusta with a combined one earned run on nine hits across 15.2 innings, striking out 19 with just four walks.
His three games in Rome were more of the same out of Ritchie - a flyball pitcher with decent efficiency, albeit with a bit less strikeouts and a bit more walks against more advanced hitters. He was in the zone less in High-A - 67% strikes in the last three Single-A starts down to 61% in the first three High-A starts - and they chased a bit less, bringing down the strikeouts and raising the walks. None of that’s unusual for a former prep pitcher in his first taste of a new level, especially once just-drafted college hitters got to the affiliates after signing.2
What are the scouts saying now?
Ritchie’s the organization’s #7 prospect in our Braves Prospect Composite, sitting as high as #4 (The Athletic, Battery Power) and as low as #9 (FanGraphs). He’s solidly in the “second tier” of prospects along with draft classmate Owen Murphy (now out with his own Tommy John), Drue Hackenberg, and infielder Nacho Alvarez Jr.
The consensus here on Ritchie is that, while the stuff’s not fully back - his fastball averaged just 92 and touched 96 in 2024, while the slider’s not as sharp as it was pre-surgery - that he’s a strikethrower with a surprisingly good changeup3 and above-average control.
My expectations for 2025 are that he’s starting off in Rome and a move to Double-A Columbus by the MLB Draft or shortly after is the goal here, although the timing of that depends on how well his offseason work can translate to a full season that’ll undoubtedly be the largest workload of his professional career.
I’m specifically looking at his breaking ball - coming out of high school, his slider was the most promising of the secondaries, but looked rather slurve-ish last year as he worked his way back from surgery. Tons of spin, but the shape’s not quite the same and it’s a bit looser. Also, while the fastball velo is always notable, the shape is of more interest to me because it looks to me4 like it needs more vertical break to fool hitters up in the zone as he gets into the upper minors.
Majors ETA: Late 2026
Prediction for today
Put me down for three innings of work with four hits and two earned runs, walking only one but striking out four. Someone takes him deep on a hanging slider - I’ll guess Kevin McGonigle or Max Clark5 - but it’s the only extra base hit allowed to an impressive group of Tigers position player prospects.
Coincidentally right after Murphy went down with his own Tommy John. I guess there can be only one
Ritchie was still two years younger than the average High-A player for all three of those starts.
As a “feel” pitch, it’s sometimes the hardest to get back after TJ
Remember, lower levels of the minors don’t have publicly accessible statcast
Really going out on a limb by picking Detroit’s two best hitting prospects, huh?
I want to see him shove today. Excited for what he can do this season.