By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College
With the Atlanta Braves’ season on the line, pitcher Spencer Schwellenbach dominated the New York Mets. It’s yet another example of the team located in Cobb County developing a rookie better than anyone else in the major leagues could ever believe.
On September 24, 2024, Braves starter Spencer Schwellenbach threw seven innings, giving up three hits, one earned run (a late solo homer to Mark Vientos), one walk and four strikeouts. Many of those outs were ground outs, the latest evolution of this pitcher getting outs any way possible, and not just pursing K’s. He outdueled Mets’ veteran starter Luis Severino in pursuit of the playoffs, a game my son called “wilder card.”
Schwellenbach’s strikeout rate is 6.93, the highest mark in the majors among starters with at least ten starts. Among Atlanta’s pitchers, he has 121 strikeouts in his first 20 games, the highest number for anyone in the Braves franchise history (both stats are courtesy of the Truist Park scoreboard), even ahead of the great John Smoltz. In a money game, inducing easy outs, Greg Maddux-style, would put him in Cy Young contention. “He even looks like Tom Glavine walking off the mound,” a friend remarked at the game.
Gabe Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tweeted “I’ll have a story with more later, but Chris Sale told me about Schwellenbach: ‘He’s figuring out how to use his stuff & compete with what he’s got. It’s impressive because some guys, it takes 5 years to figure that s— out. It took him 5 starts. He’s smart, very aware.’”
Yet at the beginning of the season, Schwellenbach was nowhere to be seen on anyone’s major league baseball prospects. Only one Brave, Cam Caminiti, was on the last, and he barely made the top 100. Just last year, baseball experts were rating the Braves prospects among the worst. And Schwellenbach should have been on both lists.
Schwellenbach was a second-round draft pick, and did have a history of injuries. In fact, he was only sixth on the Braves own internal ranking of prospects. He could throw hard and have decent stat line (1.98 ERA with 14 strikeouts in 13 2/3 innings) but “he didn’t quite miss bats at a rate for a guy who can hit 99 MPH and has two other potentially above-average pitches with the slider and change,” according to batterypower.com.
But there’s something about the Braves staff, with Pitching Coach Rick Kranitz and some great minor league coaches, who can prepare a minor leaguer. Justbaseball.com didn’t even have Schwellenbach on the list of their preseason favorites for Rookie of the Year. Among pitchers, all you heard about was Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers, or Shota Imanaga of the Chicago Cubs, or Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates, or Gavin Stone of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Sure Schwellenbach is only 7-7, but he’s sporting a 3.47 ERA. Moreover, those 122 strikeouts go with 23 walks. His 116.2 innings have resulted in only 102 hits. Skenes and Imanaga will finish higher in the rookie of the year voting, but could any of them improved upon the Braves’ starter’s outing against the Mets?
Next year, A.J. Smith-Shawver will get his chance to join the rotation too. He’ll also probably be overlooked by those who rate prospects and rookies, but if this trend of prepping pitchers continue, Atlanta will once again have a dominant underrated staff. And maybe Schwellenbach will be in pursuit of a Cy Young Award.
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.
