Second Coming

The rebuilding Braves have already produced several quality big league players from their farm system, but the best may be yet to come in 17-year-old Venezuelan shortstop Kevin Maitain

- Bill Ballew

It’s a thrill every scout wants nothing more than to experience. The sensation is akin to champagne bubbles running through their veins when they lay eyes on a special talent for the first time.

Paul Snyder felt that excitement when he traveled to Curacao and saw Andruw Jones.

“Any one of the scouts’ wives would have been in awe,” the long-time Braves scouting director told Baseball America in 1995 while comparing the outfielder to Roberto Clemente. “Great body control, could slide on his spikes if he wanted to. Then when I watched him throw and hit and everything else, it was obvious he was a 21-year-old in a 15-year-old’s body in terms of baseball talent.”

Three years after the Braves signed Jones, he made a splash in the 1996 World Series, when as a 19-year-old he hit home runs in his first two trips to the plate. He proceeded to win 10 Gold Gloves, play in five All-Star Games and earn a Silver Slugger in 2005 when he hit a major league-leading 51 home runs.

Jones was one of the most highly anticipated prospects of the 1990s. Two decades later, another Braves minor leaguer is blazing a similar trail.

Gordon Blakeley remembers well the first time he saw shortstop Kevin Maitan. A special assistant to Atlanta general manager John Coppolella who has long been considered one of the premier evaluators of international talent, Blakeley was scouting a player he does not recall who also trained with Henderson Martinez in Venezuela when Maitan stepped to the plate.