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It’s January, and the eyes of hopeful baseball fans are starting to turn towards spring training, with pitchers and catchers reporting in just a month. I am of the belief that there’s no more hopeful baseball fan that the fans of the minor leagues, watching games not just for the here and now but also using the games as a kind of crystal ball to gaze into the future.

The realities of the COVID-19 pandemic that robbed fans of the 2020 minor league season are however that the crystal ball is cloudy. This is my fifth year of making the top prospect list, and for obvious reasons this was the most difficult. Other than for the handful of prospects that made their major league debuts in 2020, there was no game footage to review, no notes from personal observation, no interviews with guys telling fans what they are working on.

Instead, we’ve had to make due with snips of workouts shown online, rumors and reporting on work being done at the Alternate Training Site or in instructional leagues, and reading tea leaves as to why some players were invited to the 60-man player pool or instructionals or were not. As I started putting this year’s list together, I started to question if it was even a worthwhile endeavor.

In the end I decided to go through with it. My list, like all the other prospect lists you’ll find out there, are simply snapshots of a current state of thought. And while there is considerably less information available to make those thoughts well-informed, I decided it was worthwhile to get it all down. That said, most of the write-ups are more cursory than typical over the last couple of years. Honestly, some of the write-ups are near word-for-word plagiarisms of myself. For most of the players, we just didn’t have more to say than what was said in 2020.

Changes From 2020

The top 3 on the list has not changed from 2020, with outfielder Cristian Pache sitting atop the list followed by right-hander Ian Anderson, who took over the two spot as of the 2020 mid-year update, and the two of them will enter 2021 as Rookie of the Year candidates. They are followed by outfielder Drew Waters.

After that things move around quite a bit thanks to a number of graduations. Right-handers Kyle Wright, Bryse Wilson, and Huascar Ynoa all graduated off our list. All three held spots in the top 15, and right-hander Victor Vodnik and first baseman Bryce Ball enter that rarified air along with a brand new addition to the Braves organization, 17-year-old international amateur free agent Ambioris Tavarez, who just signed on Friday at the start of the delayed 2020/21 signing period.

Making his debut on the list as well is infielder Riley Unroe. Honesty compels me to reveal that we mistakenly left Unroe off our 2020 list. The former Rule 5 draftee would have easily made our top 50 last season, but we simply… forgot. Unroe is back with the Braves, signing back with the organization in one of Atlanta’s first orders of business when this off-season began.

Speaking of the Rule 5 draft, the Braves opted to make three interesting low-risk/high-reward selections in the minor league portion, and all three have write-up; second baseman Jalen Miller comes in at #38, right-hander AJ Puckett at #43, and outfielder Jacob Pearson at #52.

Yes, #52. I have a few extra.

Coming Up at OFR

Next up will be the annual Braves System Depth series, followed by a return of last year’s continually updated “Making the Squad” page for spring training.

In between, look for more look backs at the best Braves to wear each uniform number as I and several guest writers fill in the remaining gaps.

And then, finally, if the promised vaccines do their job… actual baseball. And may we never see the likes of the 2020 season ever again.

Atlanta Braves 2021 Top Prospect List