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Posted on 3/9/22 at 2:27 pm to PowHound
'He’s unreal': Top prospect Harris continues to turn heads at Braves camp
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Harris, who turned 21 on Monday, is ranked as the Braves' No. 4 prospect and the league’s No. 89 prospect overall. He has experienced just one full professional season since being taken in the third round of the 2019 MLB Draft, but his stock has soared as he has spent the past two years looking like a future superstar.
The Braves became well aware of Harris’ great upside as he impressed while playing against much more experienced talent at the team’s alternate training site during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. But the baseball world gained a greater appreciation when he hit .294 with seven homers and a .798 OPS in 420 plate appearances for High A Rome last year.
Harris was successful with 27 of 31 stolen-base attempts and he earned a Rawlings Minor League Gold Glove Award at the end of his first full season as a pro.
“He’s a special talent,” Braves hitting instructor Greg Walker said. “I think the scouts did a really good job and [scouting director Dana Brown] did a really good job of pulling the trigger on him pretty high. Nobody else was really on him as a hitter. Everybody else was on him as a pitcher.”
Four years after making the wise move to draft Austin Riley as a position player instead of as a pitcher, the Braves did the same with Harris, who had been committed to Texas Tech. Atlanta’s area scouts actually had Harris rated higher as a pitcher, but the club’s take changed when Brown traveled about 25 minutes south of downtown Atlanta to see the left-hander pitch for Stockbridge High School.
Harris pitched just three innings before moving to the outfield during that initial game Brown attended. It didn’t take long for the veteran scout to be sold on the kid’s future as a position player.
LINK
Harris, who turned 21 on Monday, is ranked as the Braves' No. 4 prospect and the league’s No. 89 prospect overall. He has experienced just one full professional season since being taken in the third round of the 2019 MLB Draft, but his stock has soared as he has spent the past two years looking like a future superstar.
The Braves became well aware of Harris’ great upside as he impressed while playing against much more experienced talent at the team’s alternate training site during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. But the baseball world gained a greater appreciation when he hit .294 with seven homers and a .798 OPS in 420 plate appearances for High A Rome last year.
Harris was successful with 27 of 31 stolen-base attempts and he earned a Rawlings Minor League Gold Glove Award at the end of his first full season as a pro.
“He’s a special talent,” Braves hitting instructor Greg Walker said. “I think the scouts did a really good job and [scouting director Dana Brown] did a really good job of pulling the trigger on him pretty high. Nobody else was really on him as a hitter. Everybody else was on him as a pitcher.”
Four years after making the wise move to draft Austin Riley as a position player instead of as a pitcher, the Braves did the same with Harris, who had been committed to Texas Tech. Atlanta’s area scouts actually had Harris rated higher as a pitcher, but the club’s take changed when Brown traveled about 25 minutes south of downtown Atlanta to see the left-hander pitch for Stockbridge High School.
Harris pitched just three innings before moving to the outfield during that initial game Brown attended. It didn’t take long for the veteran scout to be sold on the kid’s future as a position player.
Posted on 3/9/22 at 2:29 pm to RumHam
A letter to baseball fans
LINK
To Our Fans:
I had hoped against hope that I would not have to be in the position of canceling games. We worked hard to avoid an outcome that is bad for our fans, bad for our players and bad for our clubs.
I want to assure our fans that our failure to reach an agreement was not due to a lack of effort on the part of either party. The Players came here for nine days, worked hard and tried to make a deal. I appreciate their effort.
Our committee of Club representatives committed to the process, offered compromise after compromise, and hung in past the deadline to exhaust all efforts to reach an agreement.
So far, we have failed to achieve our mutual goal of a fair deal. The unfortunate thing is that the agreement we have offered has huge benefits for fans and players.
We have listened to the Players Association throughout this process. A primary goal of the Players Association has been to increase pay for younger players. As I have said previously, we agree and share that goal. We offered to raise the minimum salary to $700,000, an increase of $130,000 from 2021. We offered to create an annual bonus pool of $30 million for the very best young players. In total, we are offering a 33% raise to nearly two-thirds of Major League players and adding more than $100 million annually in additional compensation for younger players.
The proposal also addressed player and fan concerns about issues like service time and competitive issues. Baseball would for the first time have a draft lottery -- the most aggressive in professional sports. Also, for the first time ever, we agreed to an incentive system to encourage clubs to promote top prospects to their Opening Day rosters. We also proposed that the first and second-place finishers in the Rookie of the Year voting in each league would receive a full year of service.
The MLBPA asked to make free agency more robust. For the first time ever, we agreed to eliminate direct draft pick compensation, a change the MLBPA has sought for decades. On the Competitive Balance Tax, we offered a significantly larger first-year increase than in the last two agreements, bearing in mind that the Competitive Balance Tax is the only mechanism in the agreement that protects some semblance of a level playing field among clubs.
The International Draft would have more fairly allocated talent among the clubs and reduced abuses in some international markets.
We also listened to our fans. The expanded playoffs would bring the excitement of meaningful September baseball and postseason baseball to fans in more of our markets. While we preferred a 14-team format, when the format became a significant obstacle, we listened to the players’ concerns, and offered to compromise by accepting their 12-team format.
Finally, we offered a procedural agreement that would allow for the timely implementation of sorely needed rules like the pitch timer and elimination of shifts to improve the entertainment value of the game on the field. And we agreed to the universal DH.
So, what is next? The calendar dictates that we are not going to be able to play the first two series of regular season games and those games are officially canceled. We are prepared to continue negotiations. We have been informed that the MLBPA is headed back to New York meaning that no agreement is possible until at least Thursday. Currently, camps could not meaningfully operate until at least March 8th, leaving only 23 days before scheduled Opening Day.
We played without an agreement in 1994 and the players went on strike in August, forcing the cancellation of the World Series. It was a painful chapter in our game’s history. We cannot risk such an outcome again for our fans and our sport.
The Clubs and our owners fully understand just how important it is to our millions of fans that we get the game on the field as soon as possible. To that end, we want to bargain and we want a deal with the Players Association as quickly as possible.
LINK
To Our Fans:
I had hoped against hope that I would not have to be in the position of canceling games. We worked hard to avoid an outcome that is bad for our fans, bad for our players and bad for our clubs.
I want to assure our fans that our failure to reach an agreement was not due to a lack of effort on the part of either party. The Players came here for nine days, worked hard and tried to make a deal. I appreciate their effort.
Our committee of Club representatives committed to the process, offered compromise after compromise, and hung in past the deadline to exhaust all efforts to reach an agreement.
So far, we have failed to achieve our mutual goal of a fair deal. The unfortunate thing is that the agreement we have offered has huge benefits for fans and players.
We have listened to the Players Association throughout this process. A primary goal of the Players Association has been to increase pay for younger players. As I have said previously, we agree and share that goal. We offered to raise the minimum salary to $700,000, an increase of $130,000 from 2021. We offered to create an annual bonus pool of $30 million for the very best young players. In total, we are offering a 33% raise to nearly two-thirds of Major League players and adding more than $100 million annually in additional compensation for younger players.
The proposal also addressed player and fan concerns about issues like service time and competitive issues. Baseball would for the first time have a draft lottery -- the most aggressive in professional sports. Also, for the first time ever, we agreed to an incentive system to encourage clubs to promote top prospects to their Opening Day rosters. We also proposed that the first and second-place finishers in the Rookie of the Year voting in each league would receive a full year of service.
The MLBPA asked to make free agency more robust. For the first time ever, we agreed to eliminate direct draft pick compensation, a change the MLBPA has sought for decades. On the Competitive Balance Tax, we offered a significantly larger first-year increase than in the last two agreements, bearing in mind that the Competitive Balance Tax is the only mechanism in the agreement that protects some semblance of a level playing field among clubs.
The International Draft would have more fairly allocated talent among the clubs and reduced abuses in some international markets.
We also listened to our fans. The expanded playoffs would bring the excitement of meaningful September baseball and postseason baseball to fans in more of our markets. While we preferred a 14-team format, when the format became a significant obstacle, we listened to the players’ concerns, and offered to compromise by accepting their 12-team format.
Finally, we offered a procedural agreement that would allow for the timely implementation of sorely needed rules like the pitch timer and elimination of shifts to improve the entertainment value of the game on the field. And we agreed to the universal DH.
So, what is next? The calendar dictates that we are not going to be able to play the first two series of regular season games and those games are officially canceled. We are prepared to continue negotiations. We have been informed that the MLBPA is headed back to New York meaning that no agreement is possible until at least Thursday. Currently, camps could not meaningfully operate until at least March 8th, leaving only 23 days before scheduled Opening Day.
We played without an agreement in 1994 and the players went on strike in August, forcing the cancellation of the World Series. It was a painful chapter in our game’s history. We cannot risk such an outcome again for our fans and our sport.
The Clubs and our owners fully understand just how important it is to our millions of fans that we get the game on the field as soon as possible. To that end, we want to bargain and we want a deal with the Players Association as quickly as possible.
This post was edited on 3/9/22 at 2:30 pm
Posted on 3/9/22 at 2:34 pm to PowHound
Shea Langeliers looking like the real deal is great news for the club.
Posted on 3/10/22 at 2:32 pm to PowHound
Welp, here we go
Posted on 3/10/22 at 2:40 pm to SummerOfGeorge
didn't think they would get it done this fast so pleasantly surprised. Play ball.
Posted on 3/10/22 at 2:50 pm to McGregor
Yeah I am pretty stunned. Figured this would last another month or two until players started to feel the strain of no paychecks and began pressuring the union to make concessions.
frick Rob Manfred with a pineapple dipped in hot sauce though.
frick Rob Manfred with a pineapple dipped in hot sauce though.
Posted on 3/10/22 at 3:51 pm to SummerOfGeorge
This post was edited on 3/10/22 at 3:53 pm
Posted on 3/10/22 at 6:03 pm to PowHound
Gotta figure out how to stream em now
Posted on 3/11/22 at 12:05 am to Rolltide10
I get free mlb package with TMobile contract. Not sure if they still offer that deal, but I haven't had to pay for mlb in two or three years now.
Posted on 3/11/22 at 11:43 am to PowHound
And best of all, 7 inning double headers and the man on 2nd rules are history. 
Posted on 3/11/22 at 11:45 am to Hback
agreed
they should go back and take away every loss from a pitcher that got one in extra innings where he didn't give up a hit. That's absurd.
I really want to try and get to that Padres series and see Tatis this year. I think that series is early.
they should go back and take away every loss from a pitcher that got one in extra innings where he didn't give up a hit. That's absurd.
I really want to try and get to that Padres series and see Tatis this year. I think that series is early.
Posted on 3/11/22 at 3:52 pm to Hback
quote:
And best of all, 7 inning double headers and the man on 2nd rules are history.
Amen. The man on 2nd wasn’t even baseball.
Posted on 3/14/22 at 1:27 pm to Hback
quote:
C Shea Langeliers
Noooooooo
Posted on 3/14/22 at 1:28 pm to JustinT256
quote:
Langeliers
watching him in the minors for 2 years, I don't see the great love fest here
Posted on 3/14/22 at 1:28 pm to JustinT256
I really liked Pache too. Dang ...
Posted on 3/14/22 at 1:31 pm to Hback
Pache can't hit (or not yet).
We are getting a really good player for 4 guys that may never see the big leagues in any significant role.
We are getting a really good player for 4 guys that may never see the big leagues in any significant role.
Posted on 3/14/22 at 1:34 pm to Hback
I hate to lose Langeliers but this is a good move by AA
So is Freddie’s #5 getting retired or no?
So is Freddie’s #5 getting retired or no?
This post was edited on 3/14/22 at 1:35 pm
Posted on 3/14/22 at 1:58 pm to mistaken4193
Miss you already Freddie. You better go to the Yanks though. I disown you if you go to the Dodgers.
This post was edited on 3/14/22 at 1:59 pm
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