Who to know about Friday night starter Didier Fuentes

The Atlanta Braves are calling up a right-hander that just turned 20 for his season debut

This is the fifth straight year that the Braves have done this.

Between 2021 and 2024, Atlanta had four different players start their seasons in the low minors and make their major league debuts in the same season.

2021: Spencer Strider
2022: Michael Harris II
2023: AJ Smith-Shawver
2024: Spencer Schwellenbach

That quartet combined to make a grand total of two appearances for Triple-A Gwinnett before debuting; one each from Strider and Smith-Shawver. Harris and Schwellenbach were promoted straight from Double-A.

(Fun fact: While Harris has played eight games in Gwinnett on rehab appearances, Schwellenbach has yet to don a Stripers jersey.)

Didier Fuentes is about to extend that streak to five seasons. The newly turned 20-year-old is being called up for Friday’s start in Miami against the Marlins. Who is he and what does he do well? Let’s talk about it.

Who is Didier Fuentes?

BIO: 6’0, 170 lbs. Born June 17th, 2005 in Tolu, Colombia.

Fuentes signed with Atlanta in the 2022 international signing class, receiving a bonus of just $75,000. Skipping the Complex League and going straight from the Dominican (2.25 ERA in 2022) to Single-A Augusta, he took two seasons to get comfortable stateside. His second season with the GreenJackets was a revelation, with the righty pitching to a 2.74 ERA in a career-high 75.2 innings with 98 strikeouts.

That excellent year allowed him to catch a rocket ship this year, starting in High-A Rome and advancing to Atlanta after just nine minor league starts. While his season ERA is an unsightly 4.81, it’s the traits that have always caught the eye of scouts and evaluators.

What were the scouts saying when he signed?

Truthfully, not much. I can’t find where any of the Prospect Apparatus™ had him on prospect rankings until this season. Baseball America debuted him at #7 entering this season, while FanGraphs had him at #11.

The consensus among evaluators entering this year was that he had a “lively” mid-90s fastball and a slider, but was still very heater-heavy as he worked to get comfortable with the slider and some secondary pitches he was adding, a splitter and a curveball.

What has he done this season?

As I alluded to above, he’s pitched better than his 4.81 ERA would belie. He’s sporting a Fielding Independent Pitching of 2.81 with a strikeout rate of 28.9% and a walk rate of 7.2%.

His only Triple-A start, coming last week, was one run on three hits in 4.2 innings versus Memphis. He struck out six with no walks, not the easiest task when adjusting to a new baseball.

We have some Statcast data from that Gwinnett start and I’ve asked around to get a bit more. His fastball’s really interesting and worth diving into.

The first interesting thing is the growth in his velo. Just a season after sitting 93 mph on the heater, he’s now routinely 94-96 and touching 98. And believe it or not, it plays up from that velo thanks to a combination of his absurd extension and an almost-flat vertical approach angle.

Despite being just six feet tall, Fuentes gets almost seven feet of extension, so the actual distance the ball is traveling to the plate is shorter than most of his peers. For context, Devin Williams leads baseball at 7.5 feet of extension while the MLB average is 6.5 feet; seven feet is a 90th percentile mark on the bell curve.

Additionally, his vertical approach angle, or VAA, is almost entirely flat. As a pitch is thrown off a mound down towards the plate, it crosses the plate at a downward angle. The closer that angle is to zero (which it can’t even actually be zero; remember, you’re throwing down off of a mound), the better that fastballs at the top of the zone perform. Their backspin, which helps them resist gravity on the way to the plate, helps them give the appearance of rising when thrown with a low VAA.

Conversely, a sinker and other bottom-of-zone fastballs do better with a steeper VAA.

Fuentes has an extraordinarily flat VAA of -3.7 degrees, allowing the pitch to play up from its slightly-above-average 16 inches of induced vertical break. In addition to the ideal top-of-zone movement profile, he sits in the mid-90s and can run it up to the high-90s, which when combined with his 90th-ish percentile extension, also makes it appear to be faster than it already is.

Quick aside: Know what other pitcher has great extension and a low VAA that makes his fastball play as a top-of-zone weapon? Spencer Strider.

However, I think (as do many others) that the best comp here is Bryan Woo of the Seattle Mariners, though. Extraordinary traits-heavy fastball, but the secondaries are a work in progress. From talking to others who cover the minors more diligently than I am able to, he’s barely thrown the splitter and curveball this year, focusing on improving the slider.¹

Prediction for the start on Friday

Honestly, not a lot of length but some impressive pitches.

He’s gone six innings exactly three times in his career and only once in 2024. I’m guessing it’ll be four or so innings, maybe a batter or two into the fifth at best, with a few hard-hit balls but also a few strikeouts.

I’m honestly not expecting the Braves to keep him up for a second start - by giving him the spot start, they’re going a man short in the bullpen. And while that hasn’t been a problem lately with the length they’ve been getting from the starters, it only takes one blow-up to leave the pen in a bad place.

Additionally, to preemptively answer the question, the Braves under Alex Anthopoulos don’t seem eager to throw the actual starting pitching prospects into the bullpen to ease their transition into the majors. AA seems to value workload and so the Braves have preferred to use those starters as starters in Gwinnett versus relievers in Atlanta. I don’t expect Fuentes to move to the pen after this start, but I suppose anything’s possible.

The current struggles of Michael Harris notwithstanding, it’s an impressive list for Fuentes to join when he starts tonight in Miami. Hopefully, he can prove he belongs.

BONUS: Here’s some video I found saved in the newsletter from his dominant Spring Breakout performance, where he struck out seven Detroit Tigers prospects across three innings in the exhibition.

1. This is a common Braves development plan - “stripping away” the other secondaries to make the slider a weapon first, then gradually reintroducing the rest and/or adding new pitches to the arsenal.