Braves Executed Pitching Plan Almost to Perfection Against Philadelphia

The Atlanta Braves have been carried this season by their pitching.

Having lost so many members of the lineup to injury, the offense has struggled to come close to reaching the heights of the 2023 squad, currently sitting slightly below average in runs scored (545 versus a league average of 563) and just slightly above average in OPS (.721 versus a league average of .713)

But the pitching staff, with a collective 3.67 ERA that is second only to the Seattle Mariners (3.53), has consistently kept opposing offenses in check and allowed Atlanta to hang in games a lot longer than many would have expected.

A perfect example of this came in this most recent series win, a 2-1 coup of the division-leading Philadelphia Phillies. No team scored more than three runs in any one game, with Atlanta shutting down the top of Philly's order: Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper, and Trea Turner combined to go 2-33 with 14 strikeouts.

The secret was Atlanta's pitching plan: Don't throw them fastballs.

Atlanta's starting trio of Reynaldo López, Max Fried, and Spencer Schwellenbach threw Philly hitters a combined 111 fastballs out of 275 total pitches, a total of just 40.36%.

Sometimes, using fastballs was unavoidable - López, for instance, uses his 56% of the time (and gets good results with it, too - his four-seam is rated one of the best heaters in baseball, at a 97th percentile +14 Run Value and allowing only a .392 slug against) and he can't significantly cut its usage without overusing some sort of lower-tier pitch like his changeup.

But Fried and Schwellenbach, both of who have massive arsenals that they can pick and choose from, took it to the extreme.

On Thursday night, Spencer Schwellenbach threw just 27 four-seam fastballs in his 94 pitches, a 29% usage rate. That's his lowest 4S usage since...the last time he faced Philadelphia, on July 6th, when he threw the heater just 17 times in 81 total pitches (21% usage rate).

Despite not facing Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper that first time, Schwellenbach confirmed to the media after the game that the usage was intentional. “I kind of just tried to do what I did the last time with them [...] Same scouting report. Harper and Schwarber in the lineup this time around, but watching the last couple of games, they struggled with curveballs."

In fact, the only real trouble Schwellenbach faced in this one was when he deviated from the plan. Bryce Harper's first-inning single came on a cutter, which Schwellenbach throws with four-seam-like velocity (last night's cutters averaged 93.3 mph), while his two 7th-inning hits (and the run) came on a cutter to Bryson Stott and a four-seam fastball to J.T. Realmuto, respectively.

Even the Braves bullpen decisions followed this game plan - Pierce Johnson, who came in to relieve Schwellenbach with two out in the 7th, threw nothing but curveballs to strike out Brandon Marsh and then used the breaker on 16 out of 20 pitches in the 8th inning to keep Philly off the board.

The only pitcher to throw more than 50% fastballs on the night was closer Raisel Iglesias, and he was judicious with their usage: Of the six he threw, four of them were to final batter Bryson Stott, who was looking for breaking pitches and took two called strikes before swinging through a 1-2 heater for the final out of the game.

Philly's "Big Three" didn't have many chances to hit a fastball

We already established that the trio of Schwarber, Harper, and Turner didn't have much success in this series. But an examination of the sequences Schwarber got in the final game illustrates how Atlanta kept them off-balance all week.

Kyle Schwarber saw 24 pitches in his four at-bats. The very first pitch of the game was a fastball, which he took for a ball, and then he didn't see another heater until the 3rd-inning. There, Schwellenbach used the heater to get back in the count - after Schwarber took a sinker and a splitter for balls, Schwellenbach peppered in two fastballs that Schwarber took before getting him to swing through a tunneled curveball.

(It's the second strikeout in the below video)

Schwarber swung over the curve, expecting another fastball since the first two worked to get strikes for Atlanta.

The 6th inning was a similar trick - Schwarber saw two early fastballs that he obviously wasn't expecting, because he took them both for strikes, before watching two curveballs in the dirt. Schwellenbach came back and got the punch out in a splitter at the bottom of the zone, a pitch that looked like a fastball until the bottom dropped out of it.

(In the 8th inning, Pierce Johnson threw five curveballs in six total pitches against Schwarber, but walked him after Schwarber refused to bite.)

Is this plan sustainable?

A quick glance at MLB Statcast shows that multiple teams have attacked Philly in this way - since the All-Star Break, opposing teams have gone about even with fastball and non-fastball usage.

In that same time period, Philly's record is just 12-18.

Atlanta will face Philadelphia next week in Citizens Bank Park for four games, and extrapolating out from this weekend's rotation against the Washington Nationals, the pitching matchups will be Charlie Morton (Thursday), Reynaldo López (Friday), Max Fried (Saturday), and Spencer Schwellenbach (Sunday). That is a group, save López, that either features exceptional breaking pitches (Morton's curveball) or large arsenals (Fried and Schwellenbach), so it is possible.

(Chris Sale throws tonight in the series opener against Washington and would be lined up for the series finale next Wednesday against the Minnesota Twins, missing Philly yet again. His Braves regular season debut was against Philadelphia, but the rotation hasn't lined up for him to face them since.)