Road to The Show™: Braves’ Waldrep

MiLB.com's Road to the Show Scouting Report series spotlights players who are just starting their professional careers, focusing on what the experts are projecting for these young phenoms. Here's a look at second-ranked Braves’ prospect Hurston Waldrep. For more player journeys on The Road to The Show, click here.

Hurston Waldrep features one of the best pitches in the Minors, and it’s already helped him score a non-roster invitation to big league Spring Training ahead of his first full professional season.

Atlanta’s second-ranked prospect reached Triple-A Gwinnett in September, less than three months after being drafted out of the University of Florida. Though he’s unlikely to claim a rotation spot out of camp, Waldrep is projected to join the big league staff sometime this season.

The right-hander pitched to a 1.53 ERA in eight starts across four levels of the Minors after being drafted in July. He completed more innings (29 ⅓) and struck out more batters (41) than anyone else in the 2023 Draft class.

His pitch mix is headlined by his splitter, which was dubbed “a nightmare” by fellow Braves draftee Cade Kuehler, who was Waldrep’s throwing partner on Team USA last summer. In last month’s MLB Pipeline executives poll, the pitch – which generated a 63 percent swing-and-miss rate and 45 percent chase rate for Florida last season – was voted as the second-best secondary offering among prospects in 2024.

Waldrep’s arsenal also features an upper-90s fastball and potential plus slider, but his command of all three pitches could use some development. In his final college season, he finished third among Division I pitchers with 156 strikeouts and fourth with a 13.8 K/9.

“We love the pure stuff he has,” Braves assistant scouting director Ronit Shah told MLB.com after the Draft. “He’s athletic. He’s got three plus pitches, maybe four. The splitter might be the best secondary pitch in the whole Draft for us.”

Like many Braves’ Draft targets who have stuck in the Majors, Waldrep is a Georgia native. He attended Thomasville High School near the Florida border and was a star on the school’s baseball team and one of the best kickers/punters in the state for the football team.

Waldrep led the baseball team to three consecutive regional titles and was named the regional Pitcher of the Year in 2019. He also played with Team Georgia in the Junior Sunbelt Classic that summer.

As the shortened Draft coincided with his graduation year, Waldrep opted to attend college, first heading to Southern Mississippi. He appeared in 11 games, all as a reliever, for the Golden Eagles in 2021, compiling a 3.31 ERA in 16 ⅓ innings. He notched three saves and struck out 16 batters in his first college season.

Waldrep moved into the rotation as a sophomore and helped lead Southern Miss to a Super Regional berth. He finished with a 3.20 ERA and an impressive 140 punchouts in 90 total innings. His 36.8 percent strikeout rate ranked fourth among Division I pitchers, and he was named a Third Team All-American by D1Baseball.

After two seasons at Southern Miss, Waldrep was one of the most sought after transfers in the portal when he landed at the University of Florida for his Draft year. During his lone season with the Gators, Waldrep posted a 4.16 ERA over 101 ⅔ innings in 19 starts. His 13.8 K/9 set a single-season program record and his 156 total strikeouts were one short of the program record.

Waldrep made three of his best starts in the NCAA tournament, during which he struck out 37 and allowed two runs in 21 total innings.

MLB Pipeline ranked Waldrep No. 19 in his Draft class, and the Braves were able to grab him with the No. 24 overall pick. After signing for a reported $3 million bonus, Waldrep headed to Single-A Augusta. He made just one start for the GreenJackets, recording eight of nine outs via strikeout and yielding two runs, one unearned, on three hits.

Waldrep’s next three starts came with High-A Rome, where he struck out 17 and allowed just one earned run and four hits in 12 innings. He was promoted once again in September to Double-A Mississippi, where he struck out 11 and allowed three earned runs over 10 innings (2.70 ERA) in his next three starts before wrapping up his season in Gwinnett.

In his lone outing for the Stripers and final appearance of 2023, Waldrep hurled 4 ⅓ scoreless innings, yielding four hits and three walks while striking out five.

At present, the Braves probably have about seven options for starting pitchers ahead of Waldrep on the depth chart. Considering his electric mix and ability to miss bats, his quickest path to the Majors may be as a bullpen option. He’ll be one of the more intriguing pitching prospects to watch as pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training this week.

Here's what the experts at MLB Pipeline have to say about Waldrep:

Scouting grades (20-80 scale)

FASTBALL: 65
SLIDER: 55
SPLITTER: 65
CONTROL: 45
OVERALL: 55

“After two years of showing dominant stuff at Southern Miss, one as a reliever and one in the weekend rotation, Waldrep entered the transfer portal and moved to the University of Florida for his junior year. The Team USA alum served as the Gators’ Saturday starter and continued to show off an impressive power repertoire, with uneven results. He showed enough for the Braves to take him with their first-round pick, then watched him race up the organizational ladder, touching all four full-season stops and finishing at Triple-A.

There is no question about Waldrep’s stuff playing against good competition. He left college with a career 13.5 K/9 rate, then struck out 12.6 per nine during his pro debut last summer. His bread-and-butter is an absolutely unhittable splitter, an upper-80s pitch that generated a miss rate north of 60 percent both at Florida and at the upper levels of the Braves system. He doesn’t always command his fastball well, but it has plenty of velocity, up to 99 mph consistently. He also has a hard upper-80s slider that is plus at times and misses a lot of bats as well.

Waldrep has used an up-tempo delivery with some effort in the past, something he’ll have to keep working on so he can land his premium stuff in the zone more consistently. There’s a little reliever risk here, but if he can iron things out, his frontline starter stuff could play in a big league rotation soon. Even if it doesn’t quite click, his stuff in shorter stints could be downright nasty in high-leverage bullpen situations.”