By: TJ Hartnett

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

There may not be any actual baseball being played right now but the march of business continues on, as the 2020 MLB Draft has come and gone.

For the Atlanta Braves, it’s a chance to restock the farm system as more and more of their highly touted prospects show up to the big-league club.

All signs were pointing to Alex Anthopoulos aiming for high school pitching as his focus – let’s see how that played out and what kind of potential gold Atlanta struck last week.

The first pick for Atlanta, and the number 25 pick overall, was Wake Forest lefty Jared Shuster.

An interesting pick, without a particularly long track record. Shuster broke out last summer during the Cape Cod League and continued to impress during (an albeit shortened) spring.

He may not end up being an ace, but the potential is there for a solid middle-of-the-rotation guy. The kind of draft pick that’s not very sexy, but one that could pay out in a big way.

Quick note: what would have been Atlanta’s second pick was given to the Cardinals after the Braves signed Marcel Ozuna.

It’s always a calculated risk when a team signs a player that costs them a draft pick, but this one will sting a little extra since at best Ozuna will play about half-a-season’s worth of games or at worst won’t play a single game for the Bravos.

So, with what should have been their third, but in reality, was their second pick, Anthopoulos and company took outfielder Jesse Franklin from Michigan.

An injury that COVID-19 never left Franklin recover from might be the only thing that kept this power and speed guy from going top 50 in the draft (a skiing accident shut him down for a month or two, and had Michigan played their whole season he would have been able to show off his recovery).

He’s shown the ability to hit for power, but he’ll need to couple that with a higher average to sniff the Majors.

Spencer Strider, a right-handed pitcher from Clemson, came off the board as the Braves’ fourth-round pick. Yet another guy who could be seen as a risk, Strider was a huge recruiting get for Clemson and played a lot as a freshman, though he struggled with his command.

Tommy John surgery took him out of the game last year, though he did make it back to show off in a short sample size this season before it was shut down.

Strider didn’t appear to be on a lot of radars since he hit the college circuit, but the Braves liked his live arm enough to pull the trigger and hope he shows more of what made him so highly-sought-after in high school.

Lastly, we have Bryce Elder right-handed pitcher from Texas. He’s been the Longhorns’ ace despite not being an overpowering-type pitcher.

However, he’s got a good mix of all of the things that made a good pitcher and could be a rotation mainstay for a lot of years if he develops right.

So, as you’ve probably noticed, there were no high school pitchers drafted.

This is a very interesting class; it’s not a flashy group, and a couple might have needed more time to prove themselves, but given the situation baseball is in, a lot of teams had to take leaps of faith in this draft.

It isn’t the greatest class Atlanta has ever seen, but there’s potential here to supply the Braves with valuable pieces in the future.