Without fail, there are going to be some surprises when it comes to the Atlanta Braves in 2025 like there is every year. While fans were treated to the unpleasant surprise of a large portion of their core going on the injured list last season, they were also treated to Spencer Schwellenbach’s breakout as well as Chris Sale’s improbable Cy Young season. Sometimes, you just have to take the good with the bad.
Surprises can come from veterans going wild or cratering against all odds, but a lot of more unexpected contributions come from younger players who aren’t exactly on fans’ radar just yet. We saw it with Schwellenbach last season and Michael Harris II before that. If you are betting on a guy coming out of nowhere to do something, the young guys are the safest bet.
ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel recently went through each MLB team and provided breakout candidates for each of them. While his pick for the Braves in Drake Baldwin isn’t all that surprising given how this spring has gone, that he named Drue Hackenberg as a “deep sleeper” is a bit more shocking.
ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel names Braves prospect Drue Hackenberg as a potential breakout candidate in 2025
The obvious name to pick here is Baldwin and McDaniel was right to go in that direction. Not only is Baldwin coming off a strong 2024 season, but he is raking down at camp and just had his path to playing in the big leagues opened thanks to Sean Murphy’s unfortunate injury. If you are looking for an easy pick, Baldwin is the guy.
However, mentioning Hackenberg is really interesting here as he hasn’t really been mentioned as a call-up candidate in 2025 by many thus far. He had a strong season across three levels of the minors last season with a 3.07 ERA in his 25 starts while striking out 144 batters in 129 innings of work. However, he only has 13 starts at Double-A or higher and his walk rate last season didn’t exactly inspire the most confidence that he was knocking on the door.
With Hackenberg, this feels more like a bet on his trajectory for later in the season than predicting an early season call-up. He still has some things to work out down in the minors, but he has a very interesting fastball/curve/changeup mix (with some cutters thrown in) that should play in the majors if he can continuing to make command improvements and throw the ball a bit harder. Assuming he stays on track, a mid or late season call-up to the majors could come to pass. After that, as we have seen in the recent past, anything can happen.
