The Atlanta Braves skipped Drew Smyly: other changes coming?
The extra off-days this week allowed the Atlanta Braves’ rotation and bullpen to rest, but it appears that additional changes are in works.
The last start that Drew Smyly made for the Atlanta Braves was a week ago: Saturday, August 21st. His next start… is uncertain, at best.
With normal turns, his spot would have come up again tonight, though the next three starts appear to belong to Huascar Ynoa, Ian Anderson, and Touki Toussaint.
Beyond that, ESPN’s schedule has an odd arrangement penciled in on their schedule page (source of their information is unknown, so take this for what it’s worth):
- Monday in Los Angeles: Touki Toussaint
- Tuesday: no pitcher listed*
- Wed and following: Morton, Fried, Smyly, Anderson, Toussaint (which makes little sense)
*What’s more likely is that Morton should face Max Scherzer on Tuesday, and then use Max Fried for the Dodger finale on September 1st… and then we’d see how things progress from there.
The real point here: Drew Smyly is being set aside for at least one full turn out of the rotation.
That’s probably a good thing.
Smyly’s Struggles
I don’t know whose bright idea it was to define a pitcher’s “Quality Start” as any outing of 6+ innings while yielding 3 earned runs or fewer. This reference suggests an origin.
At the time the term became etched into our vernacular (during the 1990’s), the Atlanta Braves were still setting their standards a lot higher than that, so maybe we were just spoiled as fans.
Nonetheless, it’s still instructive to use that generalized metric as a yardstick to measure the kind of season we’ve seen from Drew Smyly and his stable-mates.
Smyly has recorded 6 such outings this year and 3 of these barely met the standard. On 3 other occasions, he fell one out short… due to fear that he wouldn’t successfully make it through the inning.
How is the rest of the staff faring?
- Charlie Morton: 14 quality starts
- Max Fried: 13 (barely got another one Friday night)
- Ian Anderson: 8*
- Huascar Ynoa: 5*
- Touki Toussaint: 3* (had 3 other instances of at least 5 innings that might have qualified)
- Kyle Muller: None* (pitch-count management stopped him from getting between 1 and 3 QS’s)
The asterisk indicates all pitchers with fewer innings than Smyly — Ynoa has roughly half the mound time that Smyly has logged; Toussaint and Muller much less than that.
Not the Braves’ inning-saver
On no occasion has Smyly pitched into the 7th inning this season. In fact, that hasn’t happened since the last week of the 2019 season. You have to go back even further (April of 2016) to find a time when he completed 8 innings… in a 1 hit shutdown of the Red Sox.
That’s a bit of a problem for someone hired as either a bounce-back candidate or an ‘innings eater’. While Smyly does have 111 innings this season, he almost certainly won’t reach 150… but then that’s been consistent with his career: only exceeding that mark twice (in 2016 and 2014: 175 and 153 innings, respectively).
Smyly is averaging 92.1 mph on his fastball this season, which actually meets or exceeds the speed of every other season he’s been in the majors (excepting 2020, which was obviously highly unusual).
That said, the charts at brooksbaseball.net do suggest that he’s been fading in recent weeks. Also: these days, he’s only been throwing that fastball, his curve (almost equally often), and the occasional cutter. That limted mix doesn’t help him get past the 5th or 6th inning, either.
All of these pitches are running slower than at the beginning of the year… over 1 mph slower in the case of the fastball and cutter.
Another aspect of Smyly’s result is tabulated over at baseball-reference.com. Among Braves’ starters with at least Muller’s innings, Smyly now ranks…
- 5th in Runs above Replacement level
- 7th in Runs scored Average per 9 innings (ERA, but adding all runs scored)
- 5th in pitching WAR
- 7th in ERA
- Last in strikeouts per 9 innings
- Last in WHIP
All of these things appear to be conspiring together to the point that the Atlanta Braves are giving Smyly a break… at least.
Who Pitches in October?
If you’re looking towards a playoff scenario, then it’s most likely that the Braves are hoping for the trio of Morton, Fried, and Anderson to lead the way, with some combination of Ynoa and Toussaint in support roles.
But before getting there, that means that the roster is now carrying two pitchers that have fallen out of favor: Smyly and Josh Tomlin.
September 1st is right around the corner, and roster can expand by 2 additional slots… but carrying players who aren’t being used is still problematic.
Smyly’s case is different from that of Tomlin: as Fred suggested over a week ago, it’s time to let Josh Tomlin go.
But Tomlin’s role — the ‘multi-inning/break glass in case of emergency/mop up’ guy should go to Smyly for the last month of the season.
We recently talked about the need to change Smyly’s role in these pages… it appears that the Braves may be heading toward that kind of a change… and for good reasons:
At this point, the numbers are speaking loudly about the best course of action:
- If Smyly gets through a first inning unscathed, his ERAs in the 2nd-4th innings of work are 2.45, 3.68, and 4.50. Overall: 3.82 for the first three innings of an outing.
- After that… watch out: innings 5 and 6 are both over 6.00, and innings 4-6 combined result in an ERA of 5.60.
Those aren’t the numbers supporting a major league starting pitcher who ‘eats innings’. This is why both Ynoa and Toussaint are now getting ahead of Smyly in the rotation.
So the recommendation for September for the Atlanta Braves?
- release Josh Tomlin
- move Drew Smyly to his seat in the bullpen
- bring up a third catcher — William Contreras
- add a rotating player from Gwinnett depending on the ‘need of the day’. Given 40-man roster considerations, the best candidates are likely Orlando Arcia or Johan Camargo for infield support.
But the primary message here is that Drew Smyly’s days as a member of the rotation … eh, while they may not be over… should be considered to be on life support.