Atlanta Braves

This will begin my 2010 MLB preview. I intend to touch every team in the major leagues in installments by division. The lineups I provide will be what I predict will be the most productive for each team for the MAJORITY of the season (e.g., Jason Heyward will be listed as the Braves RF even though he may not begin the season as the starter).

I will also provide the stereotypical letter grade to each team's lineup, rotation, bullpen, and depth/bench. Though it is trite, I think all baseball fans can identify with the letter grade system.

What I’m Reading

• The Braves’ 20-year old monster prospect Jason Heyward is already turning heads in camp . The feeling around Kissimmee is that he’ll continue this trend all the way into the regular season. The major league regular season.

 It’s no secret that Jason Heyward and Tommy Hanson are being touted as the future stalwarts of the Atlanta Braves.

In Tuesday’s 4-2 Grapefruit League opening loss to the New York Mets, the young guns lived up to the billing.

Making his spring debut, Major League Baseball’s top prospect made an immediate impact in his 4 1/2 innings of work.

1. Introduction

Buster Olney of ESPN wrote an interesting article about the analysis of each team’s schedule and how tough it is for those teams. I personally think MLB should take the article into consideration in making future MLB schedule and try to make tough team facing tougher schedule and weaker team facing easier ones, especially early in the season.

If there is one member of the 2010 rookie class that seems destined for stardom, it's Atlanta Braves rookie right fielder, Jason Heyward. In fact, stardom may be setting the bar too low for the ultra-talented 20-year-old Georgian.

Heyward will be given every opportunity to become the every day starter for the Braves this spring. The team made their intentions known when they traded former hometown hero, Jeff Francoeur in July, and let Garret Anderson depart in free agency this winter.

The baseball season will officially be under way today with games finally beginning after a seemingly endless offseason (maybe only to me, those four months are agonizing). Today the Atlanta Braves take on their biggest rival, the New York Mets. The rivalry has been a bit calmer the past few seasons as both have been chasing the Phillies for titles and both the Braves and Mets have had injury-riddled seasons in the past two seasons. 

With the first Spring Training game later today, it is time to look at the last four non-roster invitees that the Braves have in camp with them.

These four players include two infield and two outfield prospects.

Brandon Hicks

Originally drafted in the third round back in 2007, Hicks hasn’t lived up to the promise that made Baseball America project him to be the starter at third base in 2012.

Put on your slippers and get your baseball stats book ready. Dust off the remote control and get ready for endless channel surfing through spring training games as you try to get a leg up on your competition. That's right, April is just around the corner and so is fantasy baseball season.

Of course, the goal of any fantasy baseball GM is to draft only the best players from each MLB team in order to secure their own fantasy baseball title. Sometimes championships are decided by how many saves a closer gets a fantasy GM (See K-Rod, 2008) .

This past season was rough, to say the least, for Chipper Jones.

Through Martin Prado’s first 779 major league at bats he has been extremely productive, especially for a middle infielder. He has a career .360 OBP, .451 SLG, and a .353 wOBA (similar to OPS, but weighs OBP more than SLG, mean is around .330 just like OBP).

Prado also performed extremely well after being promoted to full-time status last season after Kelly Johnson and Omar Infante were injured. Despite all things going well for Prado, I am still skeptic about him starting the season at second base.