The Atlanta Braves ended their winless streak on Friday with a 10-0 beatdown of the Marlins at Truist Park. It was a much-needed decisive win after a rather meek start to the 2025 campaign. If we are being honest with ourselves, few fans were too upset about the weather rolling through last weekend as Atlanta is hard to watch right now.
It was up to youngster AJ Smith-Shawver to follow up on what was an impeccable outing from Spencer Schwellenbach for the second game of the series. AJSS impressed in spring training with the development of a cutter and he looked good on the mound...for the most part.
Disgusting stuff from AJ Smith-Shawver.
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) March 31, 2025
22 Inches of Horizontal Break. pic.twitter.com/nvGhYdFao6
The start of AJ Smith-Shawver's 2025 season with the Braves brings familiar concerns
However, Saturday's outing didn't go as well as he'd hoped. AJSS allowed three runs on seven hits over 4.2 innings with three walks and six strikeouts. The Marlins were aggressive and hunted for his fastball.
Xavier Edwards had a line-drive double on the first pitch of the game. However, Bryan De La Cruz and Austin Riley pulled off an incredible double play to get the first two outs. This is when the trouble started.
Smith-Shawver walked Otto Lopez and Matt Mervis, who homered twice on Saturday, launched a first-pitch fastball into the right field seats. AJSS walked another batter before getting the third out. It was a tough start but credit the Marlins for having an aggressive plate approach.
The Braves offense should have been able to cover a three-run deficit but there was a troubling pattern with Smith-Shawver's second outing of the season. He continued to struggle with command which led to multiple walks and he allowed way too many barrels.
While he didn't make many starts between 2023 and 2024, these are areas he has struggled in. In his first MLB season in 2023, he made six starts over 25.1 innings with 11 walks and 20 strikeouts. This gave AJSS a 10.5% BB-rate and his barrel rate that season was 9.6%.
2024 he made just one regular season start and he also appeared in the postseason after Chris Sale's injury. Smith-Shawver had an impressive average fastball velocity of 96.2 mph. But again, his walk rate was 11.1% and his barrel rate was 8.3%, which is an improvement from 2023 but still not great.
That brings us to 2025 where the story is much of the same. His fastball velocity is lower at 94.8 mph but that will certainly change the longer into the season we get. The whiff % is impressive right now at 35.9% but that hardly means much when you're issuing walks 13.6% of the time. He also has a 14.3% barrel rate and a 46.4% hard-hit rate.
He is missing bats but when hitters do make contact, it's barreled up and leaving at an extremely high velocity. This is not a recipe for continued success in Major League Baseball. However, the Braves don't have a choice but to use him at least until Spencer Strider returns.
The talent is there for AJSS and he's still young at 22. The season is also still very young and pitchers are known to struggle during their first couple of starts. Undoubtedly, he has a bright future, but you can see some areas of development are still needed.