Spencer Schwellenbach Is The Real Deal

The Atlanta Braves, sometimes, just get it right.

The team bucked expectations in the 2021 MLB Draft, waiting until the second round to take a two-way collegiate player that some thought they'd reach for in the first round.

I'd say Spencer Schwellenbach worked out. The Braves righthander put up yet another quality start last night, allowing three runs on six hits in seven innings while striking out ten. The outing is also noteworthy for something Schwellenbach didn't do: Walk a batter.

Schwellenbach now has just ten walks in his 64.2 MLB innings, a walk per nine of just 1.4. That's not the lowest in baseball, but it's close. Among qualified starters, only three pitchers have a lower BB/9 than Schwellenbach: Shota Imanaga of the Chicago Cubs (1.315), Zach Eflin, now with the Baltimore Orioles (1.009), and George Kirby of the Seattle Mariners (0.993).

(Note: Schwellenbach is not currently qualified for league leaderboards - MLB requirements are one inning pitched per team game, so any Braves pitcher would require 109 innings pitched to be represented.)

But the overall season results don't paint the full picture of just how special Schwellenbach has been, owing to his .

In his last five starts, "Schwelly" has struck out 38 with just one walk. And he set a few pieces of history with that dominant stretch.

Schwellenbach's the first pitcher in franchise history with a five-start stretch that had both 38 or more strikeouts and one or no walks. It's only been done by an age 24-or-younger pitcher two other times in the Wild Card era: Noah Syndergaard of the New York Mets in 2016 and Julio Urías of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2021.

But wait, there's more.

Per OptaStats , Schwellnbach is the first rookie in MLB's modern era to strike out eight or more batters without a single walk in three consecutive starts. Tying into the stat above, he's also the only rookie in the modern era to log 25 or more strikeouts and no walks over a three-start span.

As usual, Schwellenbach threw six pitches last night, and none of them allowed more than one hit. Only the fastball was used more than 20% of the time, coming in at 31% usage (29 of his 94 pitches). He picked up seventeen whiffs, and it wasn't even fair at times - six whiffs in eight swings on the curveball (14 total thrown) and five whiffs in nine swings on the splitter (out of 12 total thrown).

It's not just pitching where Schwellenbach shines

To baseball purists, pitcher defense matters.

And Schwellenbach can continue a rich tradition of exceptional pitcher defense for Atlanta.

Max Fried has his streak of three consecutive Gold Gloves on the mound broken last season, when he pitched just 77.2 innings due to three different injured list stints. Prior to Fried, Mike Hampton won one for the Braves in 2003 and Phil Niekro won five for the Braves from 1978 through 1983.

But we skipped one, mostly for dramatic effect.

MLB's career leader in Gold Gloves, for any position, is a former Brave: Greg Maddux, who won an absurd EIGHTEEN Gold Gloves in his 23-year career, including thirteen in a row from 1990 to 2002. His ten consecutive Gold Gloves with Atlanta from 1993-2002 is a franchise record.

Schwellenbach, as a former collegiate shortstop, is an excellent defender on the mound. He routinely uses his athleticism to make extraordinary plays look rather ordinary, whether it's ranging left or right for a bunt or backing off the mound to snag a high-hopper and making the off-balance throw to first.

What this means for 2025

Right after Spencer Strider went down with elbow surgery after making just two starts, Atlanta's rotation looked a bit iffy for 2025. Strider's return is expected to be sometime around Opening Day, but no one knows how effective he'll be immediately upon returning. Max Fried and Charlie Morton are both free agents, with Fried potentially signing somewhere else and Morton a retirement risk as he'd be entering his age 41 season in 2025. Chris Sale and Reynaldo López are the only ones written in ink, but even that's erasable ink - Sale is coming off of multiple lost years to injury, while López was facing a transition from relief back to starting, with his effectiveness in that role still an unknown.

But now, given that Sale seems to be fully healthy for the first time in years (a fact he was very insistent was true over the winter in his talks with the media) and López appears to have handled the transition back into the rotation capably, Schwellenbach's addition gives the Braves a top three for 2025 that have all shown they can do it at the major league level.

Adding the returning Strider to the stable of promising young pitchers Atlanta has on the farm - AJ Smith-Shawver, Ian Anderson, Huascar Ynoa, Bryce Elder and prospect Hurston Waldrep - it's entirely possible that the Braves have seven or eight starters they trust to take the ball absent any sort of free agent signing or trade acquisition this offseason.