NORTH PORT, Fla. -- To quote famous fictional pitcher Nuke Laloosh, “I love winning, it’s like… better than losing.”

Perhaps that’s not a philosophy one can build a farm system around, but Braves farm director Ben Sestanovich certainly couldn’t help but notice a slightly different tone as Minor League camp got cranking.

“It certainly doesn’t hurt the mood around here,” Sestanovich said.

Maintaining a strong and deep farm system while winning at the big league level is no easy task. The Braves have graduated a lot of homegrown players who played huge roles in bringing the 2021 World Series trophy to Atlanta. And while they’re not afraid to use prospect pawns in trades, general manager Alex Anthopoulos and company did a remarkable job in not -- pardon the obvious pun -- giving away the farm, to bring in help in '21.

• Q&A with Shea Langeliers

It can take some time to restock when there’s been a stretch of winning, and the Braves have a nice little four-year postseason streak going on. Even with astute trades, that’s going to thin your system out some, a reason why the Braves find themselves more in the back half of most organizational rankings. Being officially out of the penalty box from previous international signing infractions doesn’t hurt, with Atlanta being able to spend its full international bonus pool this year for the first time in several years.

“On the development side, we're always excited to get around talented players,” Sestanovich said. “So yes, the more avenues we have to add talent, the better.”

The balance of the scale that measures a system’s strength can be tough to figure out, but as Sestanovich hits the ground running in his second full Spring Training (his first, 2020, was obviously hampered by the pandemic-induced shutdown) as the assistant GM in charge of player development, he’s liking the influx of talent he’s seeing here.

“I think that's a difficult question to answer, exactly where a pendulum sits, particularly given we had a lost season in 2020,” Sestanovich said. “I think what's exciting for our group is the players that we've been able to bring into the system over the last couple of years. The work that the amateur staff has done injecting talent into the system has been great to see. I think we're trying to develop good players regardless of where the big league team is at.”

Camp standout: Braden Shewmake
Because of the 2020 shutdown, teams really couldn’t see what they were getting from their 2019 Draft class. Top pick Shea Langeliers made a strong impression catching arms at the alternate training site, then went out and hit a bunch of home runs in Double-A last year, finishing the season on the Braves’ taxi squad for their entire postseason run.

He’s understandably received most of the attention, but it would be a mistake to forget about the “other” first-round pick from ’19, Shewmake. The Texas A&M product also made the jump to Double-A last year, but with less success, at least offensively, hitting .228/.271/.401 with 12 homers in 83 games. He’s shown up to camp in great shape, with his usual excellent defense and incorporating some mechanical changes that have him looking like a much more complete player in the early going.

“Both with the work he did offensively in the offseason and also I think everything we're seeing thus far defensively, is sort of a continuation of last year when he went and really impressed us with his defense at short,” Sestanovich said. “He had a few things with his lower half that he's made adjustments on. Last year at times, there was a toe tap, sometimes there was a leg lift. He's committed to the leg lift now. I think sometimes you don't appreciate the power that's in there and I think the ball’s coming off the bat really well, so it’s exciting.”

Prospect we’ll be talking about in 2023: Jesse Franklin V
From the Braves perspective, Franklin had a breakout in '21 by hitting 24 homers in his pro debut in High-A Rome, generally considered one of the worst ballparks for left-handed hitters to homer. He scuffled a bit in the Arizona Fall League, but the Braves think the rest of the industry is going to take notice of his very real left-handed power. They consider his output all the more impressive because he missed the shortened 2020 college season with a broken collarbone and wasn’t able to get any competitive at-bats because of the pandemic after the Braves took him in the third round of that year’s Draft.

“It's been an uneven path for him,” Sestanovich said. “I still think we're probably not yet aware of all the effects that 2020 had on our players. But he's definitely an example of a guy who missed out on a lot of baseball and then gets challenged with a high level right out of the chute. He’s a guy who has the chance to open some eyes here.”

Something to prove: Spencer Schwellenbach
Schwellenbach isn’t really a bounce-back candidate in terms of putting up numbers this year, but considering he’s yet to do anything pitching-wise, just throwing at all will prove something to the Braves.

The club’s second-rounder from last year’s Draft, Schwellenbach was an exciting two-way player at Nebraska, one who would play shortstop and then come into the game as the closer. The Braves liked that part of his game more, thinking Schwellenbach had perhaps the stuff to start. But he had Tommy John surgery right after he signed, so he’s going through the process of getting himself healthy now, with an end-of-summer/instructional league return the most likely scenario.

“He's marching through his rehab really well right now,” Sestanovich said. “There is no rush, but I think we're excited to just see him start to get healthy and get a ball back in his hand. That may not mean breakout in the sense that he's going to go put up numbers somewhere, because I don’t know when that’s going to be. We're going to know so much more about Schwelly here over the course of this year.”