Future Watch: Atlanta Braves Baseball Cards, trio to collect – The Atlanta Braves have been the class of the NL East for a while. They manage to stay ahead of the pack because of good drafting and development. They don’t spend as much as some big market teams and yet they stay competitive. Every few years they add to their stable of solid major league players and part of this trio is already paying dividends.
Austin Riley is a 6-3, 220-pound third baseman who was drafted in the first round of the 2015 MLB Amateur Draft. He was supposed to attend Mississippi State but when the Braves drafted him, his plans changed. Riley hit .304 with 12 home runs over two teams right after the draft. From 2017-2019, he played for seven teams, ripping through the Braves system. His last was the Gwinnett Stripers in AAA, where he hit safely in nine games early in the season. Riley had a call up to Atlanta in May and stayed with them until early August. Riley then finished out back in AAA where he had a .593 slugging percentage for the month of August. When Gwinnett’s season was over, this slugger played in Atlanta for a second stint. Riley got postseason experience in 2020 and is now a Braves regular.
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Cristian Pache was signed as an international free agent in 2015. MLB.com had him ranked as the 10th best at the time. In four years in the minors, most recently with Gwinnett. In 2019, he hit 21 home runs, 171 RBI with a .283 batting average. Pache made his MLB debut in 2020, played a lot in the postseason, and as a result had a good chance to make the team in 2021. He outruns balls in center field and he can go with the pitch and not just be a pull hitter. Pache has some Andruw Jones qualities but hits much lower in the lineup. He’s only 22, has a world of talent and he’s going to keep getting better over time. The Braves have had a lot of luck developing outfielders so expect nothing less in this case as well.
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Jesse Franklin is an outfielder who was a high school star that attended the University of Michigan. His first two seasons, there were solid; he had 10 homers and 47 RBI as a freshman while his sophomore stint saw 13 home runs and 55 RBI. In both seasons he flashed some leather with 18 outfield assists. Franklin saw no action in his junior season (2020) because of a skiing accident that happened before the season began and then COVID-19 ended the season prematurely. While he fell to the third round in the 2020 MLB Draft, his sweet swing will be heard from in the coming years.
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