Braves takeaways: Woeful hitting, Elder on replacing Smith-Shawver, Sale on ‘Schwelly'

New York Times

2 days ago

ATLANTA — When Chris Sale was 25, as his Braves teammate Spencer Schwellenbach is now, he finished third in the 2014 American League Cy Young race after going 12-4 with a 2.17 ERA in 26 starts for the Chicago White Sox and leading the American League with nearly 11 strikeouts per nine innings.
But their paths were distinctly different, part of why Sale is so impressed by what Schwellenbach, a former college shortstop, has done in his first calendar year in the majors.
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Schwellenbach pitched 6 1/3 scoreless innings with 11 strikeouts and no walks in Saturday's win against the Boston Red Sox on his 25th birthday — his second consecutive start with 11 strikeouts and no walks. Only 15 other MLB pitchers since 1901 had at least 11 strikeouts with no walks in back-to-back starts.
Schwellenbach and a resurgent Sale and Grant Holmes have buoyed an injury-plagued rotation that helped Atlanta stay afloat and briefly get above .500 after an 0-7 start.
But even the recent return of Ronald Acuña Jr. from a year-long rehab following knee surgery hasn't done much to improve the team's offensive malaise. The Braves' 3-1 loss Sunday to the Boston Red Sox was their eighth in 11 games since getting their record a game above .500.
The Braves fell to 27-31 and fourth place in the National League East — 9 1/2 games behind the New York Mets, 7 1/2 games behind the Philadelphia Phillies and a game behind the Washington Nationals, who've won three of five against them.
Hard-throwing rookie AJ Smith-Shawver had turned a proverbial corner in his career to give the Braves another formidable starter in a unit that also returned 2023 MLB strikeouts leader Spencer Strider from a recent injured list stint for a hamstring strain. This injury happened days after Strider returned from rehab for elbow surgery.
But Smith-Shawver tore his UCL last week and is out for the season, and Strider has made only three starts and is still trying to regain elite form.
Bryce Elder was recalled from Triple A to replace Smith-Shawver and gave up three runs in the first inning Sunday on three hits and a walk, including Trevor Story's bases-clearing three-run double with two outs. He only gave up two more hits in 5 1/3 innings, but the damage was done.
Elder's 4.56 ERA includes 8.00 in the first inning — eight earned runs allowed in the first inning of eight starts.
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'This is not an excuse at all, but it's— pitching in Triple A is just different,' said Elder, whose 11 hits allowed in eight first innings include five extra-base hits, with five walks. 'It's the same game, absolutely, but your lines are different, your fields are different, you've got more adrenaline. Like I said, it's not an excuse at all. I've got to get the job done. But I felt like in the first inning, I wasn't in a rhythm at all. Then I kind of settled in and made some good pitches. But I just gotta do better in the first.'
Smith-Shawver, who tore his UCL Thursday at Philadelphia, is expected to have Tommy John surgery this week and be out 12-13 months.
'It's just terrible,' Elder said of Smith-Shawver, a fellow Texan. 'I'd rather stay in Triple A than be in here for this reason, honestly. I mean, that is the worst possible way I can get called up. I've gotten to know him very well, being in Triple A last year, and we've worked out together for a few offseasons. I've seen him since he was 19. And to see him get in a groove and really start doing what he was capable of doing, and then this happens. I'm praying for him and hoping that everything goes good in the next year.'
The strain on the Braves' starting-rotation depth — they already were without Reynaldo López (shoulder surgery) — and uneven performances from some relievers, including closer Raisel Iglesias, have made it even more imperative that an erratic offense get its act together before the NL East deficit widens.
Designated hitter Marcell Ozuna, the MLB walks leader with 48, went eight games without an extra-base hit before his first-inning homer Sunday off Boston ace Garret Crochet, who allowed only four other hits and had 12 strikeouts in seven innings.
It was the 10th homer for Ozuna, who's been hampered for weeks by a hip injury.
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'I've been kind of slow because I don't want to rotate, because my hip is kind of shut down a little bit,' Ozuna said. 'I had a tear (in the) right hip, so I just … keep battling. I'm trying to help my team. That's the most important thing. I want to be in the lineup every single day, and do everything for my team.'
Before Sunday, Ozuna had a .426 OBP while the rest of the Braves had a combined .306.
The Braves' lineup can look like one of baseball's worst on any given day. It can occasionally resemble something closer to Atlanta's historically powerful offense from just two seasons ago. But only occasionally.
'We started 0-7 and then came back and (went) over .500 and then kind of lost (it) and go back and forth,' Ozuna said. 'We didn't score early like we used to. First inning, second inning we (used to) score four or five runs. I think we're going to (get) everyone in the same page and try to do some damage to the other team. Because everyone, like, worries a little bit. Maybe talk to them — like, let's go, let's have fun, let's pull everything together. We know what we can do.'
The Braves hit .262 while averaging 4.6 runs during a 19-10 stretch through May 18 that got their record to 24-23, five games out of first place. In 11 games since, including eight losses, they hit .245 and averaged 3.7 runs, including four games with one or no runs.
'I don't know,' manager Brian Snitker said. 'I was thinking about that the other day, how quick this game can change and how things can change. And you never take anything for granted, because it's like, you can win five or six in a row, and you turn around and you've lost three in a row. It's just the way the game is. I can't explain it.'
Since making his MLB debut last season, the day before his 24th birthday, Schwellenbach has a 3.27 ERA in 33 starts with 198 strikeouts and only 35 walks in 198 1/3 innings, a stunning strikeouts-to-walks ratio for any pitcher.
What makes it all the more impressive is that until last year, Schwellenbach had not spent a full season as a starter at any level since high school. Sale said he's never seen anything like it.
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'I mean that's generally something that comes with experience, right?' said Sale, who won his first Cy Young last year at age 35. 'I guess you could say he took some of his lumps in his first handful of starts in the big leagues and then had a little bit of a rough stretch, two or three starts (early this season). But just his ability to learn, on the fly …'
It's that ability that has left even some baseball lifers unable to come up with comparisons.
'He's a special guy,' Snitker said of Schwellenbach after Saturday's game, when the right-hander threw the 10 hardest pitches of his career, including two at 100 mph.
Schwellenbach gave up 12 earned runs in 8 1/3 innings over starts at Toronto on April 15 and against the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 3. In his other 10 starts, he has a 1.90 ERA with 64 strikeouts and nine walks in 66 1/3 innings.
'He's a guy that can take some of the technology stuff and turn it into performance stuff,' Sale said. 'He doesn't get too lost in this. He doesn't get too lost in that. He knows how to blend them very well together. He doesn't rely too heavily on one or the other. He does a really good job of knowing what this stuff says, but also knows how to go out there and compete really well. And he did that (Saturday). It was really impressive.'
Unlike Schwellenbach, Sale pitched three seasons at Florida Gulf Coast University — he was the Collegiate Baseball National Player of the Year in 2010 — and pitched out of the White Sox bullpen for part of 2010 and all of 2011 before moving to the rotation in 2012 at age 23.
Schwellenbach pitched in only 24 minor league games, his only starts above the high school level before his MLB debut a year ago with Atlanta. He was a shortstop for three seasons at Nebraska and only pitched one season of college ball, when he added closer duties as a junior in 2021.
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He was drafted in the second round that summer by the Braves, who took him as a pitcher, knowing he would require Tommy John surgery. He had the surgery and missed all of 2022, and Schwellenbach's ascent since then has been dizzying for someone with so little experience.
'Yeah, I give him a hard time because his first baseball card has two positions on it,' Sale said, laughing. 'Mine never had two positions on it. Not only that, when he was pitching in college, he wasn't a starter. When you're pitching one inning in college, you can just kind of get away with just throwing. He's always thrown hard, he's always had a really good arm. So watching him, seeing him know how to pitch so well, is really impressive for not having done it (long).
'It's not like he's five years into being a starting pitcher, you know? So it makes me a little jealous about that.'
Schwellenbach is also unique among younger pitchers in that he has a varied arsenal — six pitches he uses regularly, compared to three or four for most young starters.
'But he's a baseball guy and he's freakishly athletic, in terms of how his body moves,' Sale said. 'And I think that helps him a lot. And being able to incorporate that into going from shortstop to the mound, I think being athletic and knowing how his body works, helps a lot.'
(Top photo of Bryce Elder: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)