CHICAGO — Between AJ Smith-Shawver, a former Texas high school star quarterback who’s only pitched for five years, and Jarred Kelenic, a former high first-round draft pick who’s spent parts of four injury- and slump-plagued years in the majors, the Atlanta Braves have a couple of guys with vast talent far from fully realized.
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Each showed flashes of that promise Thursday at Wrigley Field, where Wisconsin native Kelenic hit the only home run of the game on a day the wind was blowing in and Smith-Shawver showed he’s developing more than an electric fastball while working 4 1/3 innings of three-hit ball in the Braves’ 3-0 win against the Chicago Cubs in his season debut.
“Just getting the experience I did last year was huge for me,” said Smith-Shawver, 21, who had a 4.26 ERA in six games including five starts last season for Atlanta. He was working on his secondary pitches in Triple A before getting called up for Thursday’s start. “Having that confidence coming in, knowing my stuff plays at this level, just go do my thing — it was great.”
Smith-Shawver had two walks and four strikeouts and topped out at 99.3 mph with his fastball. The Braves were especially pleased with Smith-Shawver’s secondary pitches, including his changeup, which accounted for 20 of his 87 pitches. He used the changeup for strike 3 on first-inning punchouts of Mike Tauchman and Cody Bellinger, each swinging.
“I’ve been working on that all year, just trying to throw it more (for) strikes down in the zone, just kind of executing it more often,” Smith-Shawver said.
#Braves' AJ Smith-Shawver in his season debut, with wind blowin in at Wrigley: 4 1/3 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 4 K, threw 55 strikes in 87 pitches.
ATL leads 1-0 to start bottom of the 6th, Dylan Lee back for a second inning.— David O'Brien (@DOBrienATL) May 23, 2024
His 6.10 ERA in eight Triple-A starts didn’t concern Braves officials because they knew he’d been working on his off-speed pitches, rather than just mowing down minor-league hitters with 98-100 mph heaters. “That (changeup) is what I’ve spent the majority of my time down there working on,” he said.
Of nine whiffs that Smith-Shawver got on 42 swings, four came on 25 swings at fastballs, three on eight swings at changeups, and two on nine swings at curveballs.
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“He’s getting better, he’s maturing,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “The secondary stuff was a little better than what I was expecting, quite honestly. … Very impressive.”
Despite going 3-for-31 with runners in scoring position in the series, the Braves won two of three games including a three-hit complete game by Max Fried on Wednesday and a majors-leading eighth shutout in the series finale.
“It’s a tough series, nice to win it,” Snitker said. “I saw a lot of positive things from the offense and different individuals, and hopefully we just continue to build on it.”
They didn’t get the kind of six- or seven-inning (or more) dominant start Thursday as they’ve gotten on a regular basis from Fried, Chris Sale and Reynaldo López. But Smith-Shawver and five relievers — four retired all three batters each faced — was enough to offset missed opportunities by a lineup still trying to get consistent production from hitters other than Marcell Ozuna, the National League home run leader and major-league RBI leader.
“I don’t think we’re doing anything different or trying to do too much. I just think that’s the way baseball goes,” said Kelenic, one of several Braves who’ve struggled mightily in recent weeks or, in his case, for more than a month. “It comes in waves. I think it’s only a matter of time before somebody leaves pitches over the heart of the plate for us and we hit the ball in the right spots … We’ve got to kind of ride this wave and keep doing what we’re doing, and I think we’re going to be just fine.”
Back in business 🔥#BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/MuziokjcjT
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 23, 2024
Kelenic’s fifth-inning leadoff homer accounted for the game’s first run and came against right-hander Hayden Wesneski. The reliever had just entered after Ben Brown held the Braves scoreless on one hit and two walks over four innings with six strikeouts. Braves hitters struck out 11 times, their 25th double-digit strikeout game (out of 47), including seven in the last eight games.
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The Braves had 46 double-digit strikeout games in all of 2023 when their record-setting offense never endured a slump like it has in the past month. They got their second and third runs Thursday off Kyle Hendricks, the veteran who’s been pummeled by the Braves in the past, and who lost his spot in the rotation last week.
Hendricks made only his second career relief appearance in 255 games in an 11-year career spent entirely with the Cubs. Coincidentally, the other was also against the Braves — two hitless innings on July 7, 2016, on two days’ rest after a start. Hendricks led the majors with a 2.13 ERA in 190 innings that season and finished third in the NL Cy Young Award balloting.
Before Thursday, the Braves hit .343 (60-for-175) with 30 extra-base hits and a 1.070 OPS in nine games (eight starts) against Hendricks, his highest OPS allowed against any team, and he’s faced all of them.
Braves catcher Chadwick Tromp had two hits in two innings against him Thursday, including a leadoff single in the eighth to start a two-run inning that featured an Ozzie Albies RBI single and Ozuna sacrifice fly to the left-center wall that would’ve been his 16th homer if not for the wind.
That wind couldn’t halt Kelenic’s drive to right-center, though. It was his fourth homer in five career games, including four starts, at Wrigley. With the Seattle Mariners last season in an April series, he homered in three consecutive games including a colossal 482-foot drive to straightaway center that was one of the only balls to ever reach the second seating deck below the hand-operated scoreboard.
“I love playing here,” said Kelenic, who had eight family members and friends from Wisconsin at Thursday’s game. “The stadium is just so iconic, and fans are right on top of you. Day game in Wrigley is like what you dream of as a kid, playing at some point.”
In his 96 games since that April series, both with Seattle and the Braves, Kelenic had hit .227 with three homers and 31 RBIs before Thursday, including a .180 average in his past 29 games.
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“Yeah, I’m working on some things. It’s just going to take some time,” he said. “I’ve just got to be patient and not read into any of the results too much.”
Kelenic elaborated: “Just try to be a little more uptright. My posture can get bent over sometimes, and it hinders some of the pitches I can get to. So I’m just trying to be a little more loose, a little more athletic. Today was a perfect example, I put the ball in play four times, and that’s what I’m trying do. Put the ball in play, good things will happen.”
Snitker believes good things happen with strong-armed young pitchers when they improve their entire arsenal, rather than rely on velocity in their adrenaline-filled first starts in the majors — or a season debut.
“You didn’t see just 99 all the time,” Snitker said of the radar readings Thursday for Smith-Shawver, a 6-foot-3 right-hander who can throw a football 75-80 yards and has topped out at 100 mph several times in Triple A. “He’d reach back and get that every now and then. To me, that’s kind of a good sign, when you’re at 94, 95, 96, and every now and then you reach back and get it. It kind of shows me you’re progressing in the right direction.”
Smith-Shawver also displayed improved composure. The Cubs had runners on the corners in the third inning when he induced an inning-ending flyout from Bellinger, and had a runner on first with one out in the fourth when he coaxed a Nico ho*rner pop-up and Michael Bush inning-endinggroundout, the latter with the runner at second after a stolen base.
Tromp, who caught Smith-Shawver both in Triple A and the majors last season, was asked how far the kid had come.
“A long way, I think, especially the staying-composed part,” Tromp said. “That’s one of the things about young pitchers coming up — they’re very excited, very emotional for them every time they can throw in the big leagues, especially at a field like this, against a team like this.
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“You never know what they’re thinking when they’re coming up here, so it’s my job to keep him as calm as possible, and I think he did a great job today just staying calm and composed throughout those first four innings. Those are really, really important for us, and for him too. It’s going to give him that confidence that keeps going in the summer, and we’re going to need that.”
(Photo of AJ Smith-Shawver: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
David O'Brien is a senior writer covering the Atlanta Braves for The Athletic. He previously covered the Braves for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and covered the Marlins for eight seasons, including the 1997 World Series championship. He is a two-time winner of the NSMA Georgia Sportswriter of the Year award. Follow David on Twitter @DOBrienATL
