Is there a Braves prospect that needs to get a pre-debut contract extension?

The Milwaukee Brewers and Detroit Tigers have signed top prospects to multi-year deals this offseason; should the Atlanta Braves do the same?

LINDSAY CROSBY6 HOURS AGO

Do the Atlanta Braves need to follow the lead of the Milwaukee Brewers and Detroit Tigers?

Those two organizations each signed a top prospect to a multi-year contract extension this offseason despite neither player having yet debuted in MLB, with outfielder Jackson Chourio signing for eight years and $82M from Milwaukee in December and second baseman Colt Keith agreeing on six years and $28.6M with Detroit just last weekend.

With the different escalators and club options in those deals, Chourio’s deal can extend to $142.5M over ten years and Keith’s can be a maximum of nine years and $82M.

You can understand the interest in making the extension from both sides – if Keith and Chourio, both Top 100 prospects, reach the heights that the teams believe they can, those deals come out to relative bargains. For the players, it provides financial security earlier than most players get it, with guaranteed money that’ll be paid even if the players’ performance stumbles after debuting or if they get significantly hurt (Chourio suffered a severe elbow injury as an amateur).

Could the Braves follow suit?

The Atlanta Braves have signed several players to extensions early in their careers, with Ronald Acuña Jr (early in 2nd season), Ozzie Albies (early in 2nd full season), Michael Harris II (debut season), and Spencer Strider (first full season in majors) all putting pen to paper early in the major league tenures.

But signing players prior to their debut is exceedingly rare – Keith is only the seventh player to do it in the modern era, with two of those seven coming this offseason.

And there’s some common reasons for that – there’s risk inherent in these deals.

Of the seven players, the jury’s obviously out on Keith and Chourio, but there’s only mixed results at best for the rest. Kingery and Singleton’s deals were unmitigated failures – Kingery’s option was declined after he played only one MLB game in the last two seasons, while Singleton was released in 2018 and didn’t make it back to “The Show” until 2023…coincidentally, also with the Astros. White’s dealt with a variety of injuries since his 2020 Gold Glove season, and has since been traded twice.

Jiménez and Robert have performed as expected when healthy, but owing to the frequency of them being healthy, the Robert deal is looked at more favorably than the Jiménez contract.

But looking in the farm system (which we’ve been doing this week, as we prepare the preseason top prospects list), there’s not many candidates for a pre-debut extension for Atlanta at the moment.

Why there’s not a fit for the Braves

Most of the pre-debut contracts given out so far have a few things in common:

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They’re going to (1) top prospects who has consistently performed at every level in the minors, guys with which (2) you know the makeup and character and are comfortable that they won’t “shut it down” after getting paid, and (3) aren’t pitchers, owing to the increased injury risk.

Atlanta doesn’t really have any players that fit all three criteria.

Most of the top prospects, including the most common Top 100 prospect choices in AJ Smith-Shawver and Hurston Waldrep, are pitchers. Additionally, while the Braves value clubhouse fit more than most organizations and undoubtedly are comfortable with the makeup of these guys, none of them have been lights out contributors at every single level while sitting towards the tops of prospect rankings across all of baseball.

The only position player that’s touched a Top 100 list at this point in the offseason is Ignacio Alvarez, an infielder who was on the Baseball Prospectus Top 101 but still has questions to answer both about his power ceiling and if he can stick at shortstop as he moves into the high minors.

What about extending Hurston Waldrep?

There’s a case to be made that Hurston Waldrep, if you really wanted to extend someone in the farm system prior to their debut, is the likeliest choice: He’s probably going to debut this season and, if everything holds, has the potential to be a front of the rotation armm owing to the polish on his splitter and his phenomenal velocity on his fastball.

But Waldrep’s upper fastball velocity is also reason to hesitate on making a deal – the biggest correlation between a pitcher and UCL injury is, well, fastball velocity.

That risk factor, combined with questions about if Waldrep can throw enough strikes to stick in a rotation and hit his ceiling, means that president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos is best served to wait and see how Waldrep handles his first taste of the majors before embarking on a contract extension.

Spencer Strider, another hard-throwing righty who signed his six-year, $75M deal at the conclusion of his first full regular season in the majors, had over one year of service time and 134 major league innings under his belt when signing.

And, of course, Strider had already dealt with Tommy John surgery, having the procedure during his time at Clemson University prior to being selected by the Braves in 2020’s 4th round.

Waldrep, while an avid user of the Armchair program, is still in the worst possible demographic for arm injuries: first round, four-year college starters, who have higher than normal injury rates that ultimately causes them to under produce their expected WAR.

But if Waldrep debuts in 2024 and answers the control questions, all while demonstrating the front-of-the-rotation upside that many believe he has, there’s a good chance that Anthopoulos at least has the conversation with the righty.

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BY Lindsay Crosby