For a guy that is pitching reasonably well this year, Spencer Schwellenbach is a very hot topic amongst Atlanta Braves fans right now. After an iffy outing against the Diamondbacks on Sunday where he got little defensive help behind him, Schwellenbach sports a 2.87 ERA in six starts, but has looked pretty vulnerable lately.
It honestly isn't very fair to compare Schwellenbach to his stellar rookie campaign especially the last couple of months or so when he was one of the best pitchers in baseball. Some of what we are seeing could easily be small sample size weirdness and Schwellenbach doesn't seem worried whatsoever.
However, a closer look suggests that one of Schwellenbach's pitches in particular is holding him back a bit this year and that poses a problem.
Opposing hitters are not fooled by Spencer Schwellenbach's cutter this year
If you look at Schwellenbach's Statcast profile, you see a lot of similarities to what he did last year. One difference is that his fastball is struggling to finish hitters out which Schwellenbach has already eluded to being a location execution problem that he is working on. However, the other thing that stands out is that his cutter is getting torched in 2025.
Schwellenbach's cutter has always been a bit of a change of pace pitch that he usually only throws in certain counts. Last year, it was his third most used pitch with a pretty even distribution against lefties and righties and opposing hitters hit .270 against the pitch. In 2025, Schwellenbach's cutter is his least used pitch, he is throwing it more to lefties than righties, and the opposition is hitting .455 and slugging .818 against it.
Again, this could be a small sample problem as he has only thrown 53 cutters this year so far. However, his usage rate is way down over last year and the results are markedly worse. When you have a pitcher like Schwellenbach who pounds the strike zone, having pitches that is a slightly different look and velocity to his four-seamer can disrupt hitters' timing and keep them from sitting on his heater.
Perhaps the decline in the cutter's usage is recognition by the Schwellenbach and the Braves that the pitch can't be relied upon or is too predictable as to when he throws the pitch. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like they have settled on a suitable replacement in it's role nor on an effective way to deploy the pitch. Until that is figured out, Schwellenbach's living in the zone could prove to be problematic at times.