Welcome everyone to another year of Braves baseball, and with that comes one of our favorite things to do: our Top 30 rankings. After another strong draft where the Braves went heavy on position players, we’re starting to see these players rise up the ranks and fill out a roster that has been dominated by weapons as of late. While the Braves remain near the bottom of all farm rankings, there is hope for the near future as the young talent continues to develop and make substantial progress in multiple areas.
As we have done in the past, the Battery Power Top 30 Prospects is a composite of a great minor league staff with Matt, Brady, Garrett and myself. We kick off this week’s shenanigans with the players who narrowly missed our top 30. In what is mostly filled with reliever arms, our honorable mentions feature some intriguing players with ceilings that are much higher than you might think for players outside our Top 30. Let’s start this week’s fun by taking a look at those 6 players.
Jeremy was a bit of a surprise, coming in just a few decimal places behind our #30 prospect, who you’ll learn more about tomorrow. He was a surprise because of his significant lead. Although he sometimes suffers from sore arms, there is no disputing what Jeremy can do on the mound. Jeremy is only twenty years old and entering his third full season in professional baseball. He played in 18 games for the Augusta GreenJackets, but registered an ER of 2.71 with a batting average of just .181. We saw him present five pitches throughout the season with a fastball in the low to mid 90s, a high 2-seam in the 80s to low 90s, a biting slider, a strong changeup and a cutter that he really started throwing a lot more last year. The main issue with him is that he remains on the mound as he has suffered from shoulder pain at times, which has limited his innings. Last year it appeared that the Braves limited how deep he could get into games, as he was often limited to 2-3 innings. When fully healthy, Reyes has one of the biggest upsides for a pitcher in the system due to his ability to generate whiffs on multiple pitches while consistently locating his four seams at the top of the zone. If health is on his side, Jeremy is likely to move up the list quickly.
Like Reyes, it was a bit of a surprise to see Sears appear in our honorable mentions, especially after a season that saw him go from Low-A Augusta to Gwinnett in just 25 games. He’s entering only his second full season of professional baseball this year, but he also turns 26 in May, which hurt his stock a bit. Overall, Brett only played five games this season in Augusta, six games in Rome, and then spent most of his season in Columbus, where he played in 15 games. He got a cup of tea with the Gwinnett team, but that didn’t sit well with him as he compiled a 10.24 ERA, but only in nine innings. Like Reyes, Sears gets it done in different ways with a low-to-mid 90s fastball, a low 90s two-seam, a high 80s cutter and then a slider, curveball and changeup. He works between the mid-70s and mid-90s, which makes for an awkward at-bat when he gets them all clicking. At times he struggled with his slider, often throwing it too low in the zone. If he can square that, along with sustained execution of his fastball in the upper third, Brett is another candidate to rise up the rankings and potentially see himself in a Major League role.
A good surprise on this list is Juan Mateo, who was signed out of the Dominican Republic for just $10,000. Coming in at 6-foot-1, Mateo showed versatility and very strong contact skills in his debut year in the DSL in 2024. This surprisingly saw him enter the 2025 season in the FCL, where he showed the same skill again, compiling a slash line of .277/.352/.319 with a 10% walk rate and just a 16.2% strikeout rate. After 51 games, the Braves saw enough in him to move him once again to Low-A Augusta, where he spent the second half of the season at age 18, playing against players older than him. Although the strikeout rate increased, it was still at a commendable 23.7% and the walk rate still remained about the same at 9%. He was a bit overmatched, but we saw his groundball percentage drop, while his line drive percentage increase from 19% to 23% versus the older competition. Although he is listed as a shortstop, versatility is his calling card, as international scouts I spoke with said he could play all over the field, including the outfield if necessary. With a relatively high floor, Juan Mateo, thanks to his great contact ability, looks like someone who can make a name for himself if he adds some power to his skill set. If he doesn’t, you’re still dealing with a player signed for $10,000 who has good contact skills, the ability to draw a wide and play all over the field – a very useful type of player.
After being considered one of, if not the best positional prospect for the Braves in recent years, David finds himself outside our top 30 despite having one of his best statistical seasons. He ultimately stayed healthy for a full season and played 133 games last season, hitting .286/.379/.434 in 105 games for the Columbus Clingstones before being promoted to the Gwinnett Stripers, where he hit .235/.321/.398. David got the start at third for Columbus a few times, but was just okay and showed quite limited range. As a result, he was primarily a 1B/DH after his promotion to Gwinnett. David saw his line drive rate drop and his fly ball rate drop, while his ground ball rate increase to nearly 50%. So despite the marked improvement we saw last year, David now profiles as an on-base trader 1B/DH who doesn’t get significant power, which lowers his overall profile. After going undrafted during the rule-5 draft while unprotected, he needs an extremely strong 2026 with significantly more power in his age-26 season if he wants to have a shot at earning his way onto a Major League roster.
Landon, a starter for Arkansas last season, was drafted by the Braves in the sixth round of the 2025 draft after a solid season for the Razorbacks, where he had a 4.82 ERA in 61.2 innings pitched. It was his strikeout and walk rate that really stood out, as he had a dynamic rate of 10.2 K/9, while showing good command with only a 2.92 BB/9 rate. The Braves liked his pitching mix enough to select him in that sixth round, and he appeared in two games for the Augusta GreenJackets, where he continued his strong strikeout rate (11.37 K/9, 2.84 BB/9) but continued his struggles with the long ball. Although he has three pitches, Landon is primarily a two-pitch, four-seam, slider pitcher – he’s mostly in the low 90s with his fastball, and in the low to mid 80s with his slider. His third pitch, a changeup, is still a work in progress as the release point differs substantially enough from the two pitches to make it easier for hitters to identify. While he has shown flashes with it, it is still below average if there is still work to be done. Landon will enter the season at age 22, and his college experience will likely see him rise quickly if he finds good success. That said, he certainly profiles more as a reliever than a starter, which hurt him in our rankings, dropping him out of our top 30.
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