Down in the Minors

By: The Bearded Joo

The Braves outfield has been receiving a lot of attention lately, for all the wrong reasons. With Schafer and Francouer underwhelming everyone in the ballpark, the weak outfield stands out for a team struggling to score runs. The Braves’ outfielders rank dead last in homeruns and slugging percentage. This power outage also extends to the rest of the offense, which currently ranks 26^th out of 30 in homeruns hit and 24^th in RBI. Francouer is mired in a year-long "slump," Schafer is struggling to get the bat on the ball (though still drawing walks), and Garret Anderson, signed in the offseason to add some pop to the outfield that ranked last in most hitting statistics in 2008, is slugging only .319. Having been signed to a one year contract, Anderson will most likely serve as a stopgap for uber-prospect Jason Heyward, who could represent a solution to the problems in the outfield and the power drought.

Heyward was drafted 14^th overall by Atlanta in the 2007 Draft and signed a deal worth about $1.7 million, receiving the same amount of money as 2006 14^th pick Travis Snider (now in the majors with the Blue Jays). Standing 6’4’’ and weighing in over 220 pounds, Heyward has the prototypical body of a power hitter. In 2008, he hit .316 with 11 homeruns and 56 RBIs and stole 15 bases (in 18 attempts) for Rome. Though only 18 at the time, he also showed a keen eye, striking out only 78 times and walking 51. This year, Heyward is off to another good start at high A in Myrtle Beach, sporting .295/.373/.561 percentages with 9 homers in 139 ABs (1 in about 15.5).

Now I’m sure by now you’re asking yourself: how do we know Heyward will be successful in the majors? The truth is we don’t, but if Heyward’s first Major League camp showed us anything, it’s that Heyward can already hit professional pitchers, and good ones at that. During spring training, Heyward crushed 2 balls off Kawakami and also went deep off of Jair Jurrjens, the same pitcher that is currently fourth in all of baseball with a cool 1.96 ERA and who allows a homerun only every 15 innings pitched.

So it may not be this year or even next, but when it does happen, expect the Braves to get that little boost to perhaps take us back to a tradition that Braves fans had become accustomed to … the playoffs.