The Braves may have another pitching gem on their hands in Briggs McKenzie, but the fast-track hype around him comes with a big asterisk.
Atlanta used an over-slot $3 million bonus to pry McKenzie away from his LSU commitment in the 2025 MLB Draft, betting big on one of the draft’s most talented high school arms. The club’s faith has already been rewarded in a hurry. McKenzie opened 2026 with a sharp run that earned him two promotions in quick succession before nerve irritation in his throwing elbow shut him down in late June.
Even that didn’t end his year. McKenzie headed to the Arizona Fall League with a group of Braves prospects to get more game action, and after shaking off some early rust, he’s started to turn heads again. The attention has gotten loud enough that some are floating Chris Sale comparisons.
There’s enough in McKenzie’s profile to understand why. He’s a left-hander with a lower arm slot, and his breaking ball carries the kind of nasty movement that can wreck an at-bat.
McKenzie’s pitch is more slurve than Sale’s sharper slider, but it plays a similarly important role in his arsenal. Both pitchers also generate solid extension because of their long builds, though Sale stands a good four inches taller.
Still, the comparison has its limits, and velocity is the biggest one. Sale lives in the mid-to-upper 90s.
McKenzie sits more in the low-to-mid 90s with his fastball. He could add more speed down the road, but at the moment that gap matters.
That’s where the caution comes in. Slapping a superstar label on a young pitcher can distort expectations before he’s even settled into pro ball, and McKenzie is still in that stage of his development. The Chris Sale talk may set the bar too high for some fans if they’re expecting the same kind of power stuff.
McKenzie, though, doesn’t seem bothered by the noise. He’s leaning into it, even while acknowledging he still has plenty to prove.
He has been open about studying pitchers like Sale and Nolan Ryan, trying to pick up what he can from greats who came before him. The lesson isn’t that he has to match their velocity to borrow from their game.
It’s that he can still learn from them and carve out his own success.
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