As a whole, the Braves starting rotation appears to be improving as the season progresses. Sure, Grant Holmes unfortunately paid for a few mistakes in Wednesday night’s 4-3 loss to the Reds, but following a one-out home run in the third inning (his second allowed in the game), Holmes did end up settling in a bit, surrendering just one other run over his next 13 batters faced before exiting with one out in the sixth.
Holmes, along with veteran Chris Sale and the young up-and-coming AJ Smith-Shawver, make up a trio of Braves starters that’s been more consistent of late, hence the team’s recent flirtation with a .500 record for the season. And with Chase indicating that Spencer Strider is possibly just a week or so away from re-joining the club, we could see the starting staff really hit its stride in the coming weeks.
But one starter in the Braves rotation that just hasn’t yet managed to put together a string of outings to show he’s on his way to joining Holmes, Sale and Smith-Shawver, is Spencer Schwellenbach.
Don’t get me wrong, Schwellenbach’s numbers for 2025 are fine. In seven starts so far (41.1 IP), he’s pitched to a 3.92 ERA / 3.53 FIP to go with eight strikeouts per nine and less than two walks per nine. There’s certainly nothing wrong with stats like that.
However, other than his first two starts to begin the year, in which he combined for 14 shutout innings against the Padres and Marlins, there’s really not much that jumps off the page. And in his most-recent outing versus the Dodgers (albeit the worst lineup to try to “get right” against), Schwellenbach got hit around to the tune of six runs from eight hits, failing to get out of the fourth inning. It’s been rough for the 24-year-old lately, illustrated by his 7.17 ERA in his last four turns on the mound.
But Thursday’s matchup against the Reds looks like the perfect get-right matchup for Spencer Schwellenbach. Not only is Cincy’s lineup considered a bottom-ten offense overall so far in 2025 (per wRC+), it also struggles to hit the very thing that Schwellenbach has done well this season.
Schwellenbach wields a six-pitch mix, featuring a four-seam fastball, slider, split, cutter, curve and sinker, in that order in terms of usage. Of those offerings, it’s his split that’s been the most successful, ranking as the tenth-best per FanGraphs’ Runs Above Value among MLB starting pitchers. Opposing batters have only hit .120 against it so far this year, and its 35.3 Whiff% is the highest in Schwellenbach’s arsenal. The split is his main secondary versus lefty-batters, but against righties, Schwellenbach leans on his slider – an offering that’s giving him similar results (.171 AVG / 32.9 Whiff%).
Unfortunately for the Reds, this is a team that struggles against both of those pitches. In fact, per FanGraphs team rankings for pitch values (Runs Above Average per 100 pitches), Cincinnati as a whole is dead last versus the splitter with -3.62 runs above average. For context, the Braves rank roughly in the middle at 14th, with -0.33 runs above average. While not quite as bad as the splitter, the Reds also rank among the bottom-ten teams (23rd worst) against the slider (surprisingly the Braves offense is second-best, behind the Cubs).
If the matchup comes down to his pitch mix, it looks like Spencer Schwellenbach would be wise to lean on his two-best secondaries.
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Photo: David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire
