Left-hander Justus Sheffield has found a new organization, as the former top prospect has signed a minor league deal with the Braves, per the transaction tracker on his MLB.com profile page.
Sheffield, who will celebrate his 27th birthday tomorrow, was the 31st overall pick in the 2014 draft, taken by Cleveland in the first round. Sheffield was long a staple of top 100 prospect lists as he made his ascent throughout the minors, appearing on Baseball America’s top 100 list as early as 2016 before eventually climbing to the 27th spot on the ranking ahead of the 2019 season. In addition to his prospect pedigree, Sheffield was a headliner in multiple significant trades: the Yankees acquired him in the 2016 deadline trade that sent Andrew Miller to Cleveland before sending him to Seattle in the deal that brought James Paxton to the Bronx ahead of the 2019 campaign.
Unfortunately for both Sheffield and the Mariners, the dream of Sheffield anchoring the rotation for the next competitive team in Seattle was never realized. Sheffield struggled badly during the 2019 season, posting a 5.50 ERA with a 4.71 FIP in his first 36 innings with his new club. While he would see a stretch of success during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, with a solid 3.58 ERA and an excellent 3.17 FIP in ten starts, he was unable to carry that success over into the 2021 season. In 92 innings between 2021 and 2022, Sheffield struggled mightily to a 6.46 ERA, 37% below league average by measure of ERA+.
Those struggles led the Mariners to outright Sheffield to Triple-A during the offseason. Unfortunately, Sheffield’s struggles grew even deeper in the early going of the 2023 campaign. In 10 outings with Seattle’s Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma, the lefty surrendered 17 runs in just 8 1/3 innings while walking more batters (11) than he struck out (4). That lead the Mariners to pull the plug on their former top prospect at the end of April, releasing him to pursue opportunities in another organization.
Two weeks later, Sheffield has found a home in the Braves organization. Atlanta has seen its rotation ravaged by injuries in recent days, with both lefty Max Fried and right-hander Kyle Wright expected to miss significant time due to injury. That said, Sheffield figures to be below Michael Soroka, Dylan Dodd, and Jared Shuster on the organization depth chart at the very least, and has worked primarily out of the bullpen in recent years.
While Sheffield seems unlikely to provide the Braves useful rotation depth that can solve their current conundrum at the big league level, a minor league deal for a player with Sheffield’s prospect pedigree is rarely a bad decision, given the lack of risk associated with such a deal and the massive potential upside Sheffield showed as a youngster. While it would be a surprise to see Sheffield rebound to the heights he was expected to reach as a prospect, it’s certainly possible that a change of scenery from the organization Sheffield spent the past four seasons with will help him recapture some of the talent that made him such a tantalizing prospect earlier in his career.
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