Who is Ricardo Sanchez?

Yesterday, the Atlanta Braves traded a pair of minor leaguers (Kyle Kubitza and Nate Hyatt) to the Los Angeles Angels for 17-year-old left-handed pitcher Ricardo Sanchez, in a move that is consistent with everything John Hart has done this offseason.*

Hart traded the 24-year-old Kubitza, who was ranked by Baseball America as the No. 10 prospect in Atlanta’s system, along with non-prospect Hyatt for the upside of Sanchez. With the move, Atlanta’s minor league pitching depth is bolstered with yet another upside arm.

As BA’s Vince Lara-Cinisomo notes, Hart has added Max Fried, Manny Banuelos, Arodys Vizcaino, Tyrell Jenkins and now Sanchez. All of these pitchers can be linked in that they are all current or former highly regarded arms, and all of them are fairly risky in one way or another–whether that’s injury history or youth.

In Sanchez’s case, it’s youth.

The 5-foot-11 southpaw from Venezuela is just 17 years old at the moment (he’ll turn 18 in July) and has logged just 38.2 innings of professional ball in the U.S. with Los Angeles’ rookie club last season. The Angels signed him two years ago for $580,000 and at the time he was traded, BA had him pegged as the club’s No. 2 prospect. As I’ve said multiple times on twitter, that means next to nothing as LA has one of the worst–if not the worst–farm system in the game.

Still, Sanchez is an exciting young pitcher who can dial it up into the mid-90’s and has a breaking ball with good spin, which projects to be another plus offering. He’s struggling with location and control so far, but that’s to be expected at his age. Most 17-year-olds are still in high school in case you forgot.

In addition to the fastball and breaking ball, Bill Mitchell writes in Baseball America’s scouting report that Sanchez was also starting to show some feel for a changeup:

"Sanchez needs to improve his 82-85 mph changeup so as not to rely on the breaking ball as much, and he’s slowly been developing more of a feel for the pitch."

Sanchez isn’t anywhere close to the big leagues at this point, and this deal further solidifies the assumption that Atlanta is actually committed to a rebuild for 2016-17.**