One month of minor league baseball is in the books, and the good folks over at Baseball America rolled out an updated look at their top 100 prospects. For the Atlanta Braves it was the same two names as preseason, but both of their top prospects took a significant dip. AJ Smith-Shawver started the season out at 42nd, but after four starts with Gwinnett and a 5.09 ERA he drops all the way down to 66th. Hurston Waldrep saw a similar drop in rankings, going from 49th to 68th.
For both players the story of this season is similar. The Braves want both to progress their fastball command, and have put in place clear limitations on the pitchers in order to force that development. For Waldrep it is taking away his otherworldly split-finger fastball, limiting him to just a handful a game and having him throw a fairly even split of fastball and slider. As you would expect that has led to growing pains, as despite a couple of good starts peppered in Waldrep has largely not looked great in Mississippi and has a 5.68 ERA coming into his Thursday start.
On the other side of things AJ Smith-Shawver has widely eschewed all of his secondary pitches, throwing a small but fairly even split of his fastball, curve, and slider, but throwing around 60% fastball this season. He has also struggled, but in my opinion this drop for Smith-Shawver is a bit premature. His fastball has ticked up — he hit 100 mph even in his last start — and his secondaries have all shown improvement from last year. Command has been a bit slow progressing, but his changeup has taken a leap forward and gotten an extra two miles per hour separation from his fastball along with him being even more adept at killing spin. His slider has also slowly rounded back into form and he is spinning it better early this season. While Smith-Shawver’s results are limited by a one note approach to pitching designed to favor progression over results, his underlying development has largely been positive this spring and a 22 spot drop seems unfair.
