Atlanta Braves 2022 Minor League Player Review: Douglas Glod

The Braves are finally free of the international free agent sanctions that hamstrung them for several years, restrictions which have contributed substantially to the lack of depth in the Braves’ farm system at the moment. In their first year of being able to sign players without restriction, Atlanta put together quite a class, including one of the top 30 IFA prospects available in outfielder Douglas Glod.

Preseason Report Card

Coming into the 2022 season, we didn’t initially have Glod ranked because of when the IFA signing period took place (Glod wasn’t able to sign until after we had made our list). However, in our list that we updated for the Mississippi Braves Gameday program, we had him ranked 22nd. We like the talent, but putting him further up than that, especially with a chance that he is physically maxed out, was more of a reach than we were willing to make.

What we saw in 2022

The Braves managed to field a team in the Dominican Summer League in 2022 and Glod made his debut there. The DSL Braves were, and this is being nice, not very good in 2022, and Glod’s line of .202/.352/.356 is probably not indicative of his overall talent level. We are uniquely skeptical of short-season ball numbers from the last year or two because the layoff associated with COVID caused so many problems and downtime. However, we did like his walk rate, although the strikeouts were a bit concerning.

2023 Outlook

We feel reasonably confident that Glod will at least be in Rookie ball to start the 2023 season, with a chance for him to make it to full-season ball if things go well. Glod has a compact build that some think limits his long-term projection, but he is already quite strong and moves well on the basepaths and in the outfield. At the end of the day, it will come down to his bat and it is just so hard to figure out how much to read into short-season struggles in general over the last couple of years. We haven’t heard anything to suggest that the Braves are any lower on him now, and given that his signing bonus was substantial, we’ll bet on the Braves’ scouts being right.