Braves rookie pitcher Spencer Schwellenbach quickly ascending and impressing

ATLANTA — To say that Spencer Schwellenbach has made rapid progress as a starting pitcher in his first season in the majors would be a considerable understatement. It’d be akin to saying the rookie has made a pretty good impression on Braves teammates.

Schwellenbach had an 8.38 ERA and .981 opponents’ OPS just a month and a half ago following his first two MLB starts. He has a 3.34 ERA and .620 opponents’ OPS in six subsequent starts entering a matchup with the St. Louis Cardinals in a series finale on Sunday.

He was scheduled to start Friday’s first game following the All-Star break before it was postponed by rain. The Braves will start Charlie Morton in the first game of a doubleheader Saturday at 1 p.m., and add Bryce Elder as a 27th man to start the doubleheader nightcap at 7:20 p.m., a move that allows them to use an extra starter without making a roster move.

The Cardinals will start Kyle Gibson in the first game and Sonny Gray in the nightcap.

Eight games into Schwellenbach’s major-league career and after just 186 1/3 innings pitched above the high school level, the 24-year-old native of Saginaw, Mich., native and former University of Nebraska shortstop has his manager and veteran teammates talking about him in a manner they rarely do about someone so inexperienced. Complimenting him without reservation.

Talking about what his ascent could mean for the team not just in years to come, but in this year’s playoff race.

“That’s huge, man,” Braves catcher Travis d’Arnaud said of Schwellenbach’s progress. “He’s like a sponge. He soaks everything up and he’s able to apply it to the game as fast as anyone I’ve seen. He’s really confident in himself, and he believes in (catcher Sean) Murphy and I, and all of us.

“It’s been special to watch, and I’m excited to see what he does in the second half.”

In his last two starts before the break, in front of sold-out crowds against the Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres, Schwellenbach allowed 10 hits and two runs with one walk and nine strikeouts in 13 innings. He had six strikeouts in a 5-1 home win against the Phillies and limited the Padres to three hits in a career-high seven innings of a 6-1 win at San Diego.

After watching him hold those two teams to a .208 average and .475 OPS, manager Brian Snitker didn’t hesitate when asked whether Schwellenbach looked like someone who could help the Braves the rest of the way.

“Absolutely,” Snitker said Friday afternoon, when he was excited to see another Schwellenbach performance before it got scrubbed following a delay of more than two hours. “Those are good lineups, two of the better ones in baseball. And the game he pitched in Baltimore was inches away from him not (allowing) any runs.”

The June 12 game at Baltimore, in his third start, was when Schwellenbach showed the first signs of being ready, of having something innate, a pitching acumen to go with a big arm. He showed he could make in-game decisions and pitch better in pressurized situations than someone with so little experience might be expected.

He sailed through the first two innings against a strong Orioles lineup. Then, after giving up two runs before recording a second out in the third inning — an inning that featured two hits, a walk and a throwing error — Schwellenbach induced an inning-ending double-play grounder.

That began a stretch in which he recorded 11 outs in his last 11 batters faced, getting two double-plays in that span. He struck out Adley Rutschman for the third out in the fifth inning after a Gunnar Henderson double.

Schwellenbach allowed two runs, four hits and two walks in six innings that day, which felt like could be a turning point for him then and really feels like it was now.

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been so impressed with, the poise,” Braves third baseman Austin Riley said. “Like, he knows his stuff, he knows his craft, he knows his preparation and what he has to do. If he gets in a sticky situation, you don’t ever see him panic. You look at him and from the mental side, the mound presence, he reminds you of the guys who’ve been here for a while. That’s really cool.”

Riley paused before adding, “He looks like he’s got a plan up there and he’s pitching. I’ve been nothing but impressed.”

From the other corner of the infield, first baseman Matt Olson had a similar evaluation.

“Yeah, really composed on the mound,” Olson said. “He’s mixing up his stuff, he’s working ahead. He comes at guys, not scared of contact. Trusts his stuff. Misses barrels. But the composure is the thing that always stands out first for me. How a guy kind of carries himself on the mound. And he’s just been rock solid (in that regard) every time he’s gone out there.”

Beyond the poise and intellect, what stands out about Schwellenbach is the athleticism — he was a standout shortstop at Nebraska before adding closer duties in his third and final season there — and the pitch variety. A six-pitch mix is uncommon for a veteran, but extremely so for a first-year big leaguer who had 24 minor-league starts.

He averages 95.7 mph with his four-seam fastball and 79.9 mph with his curveball, and his other four pitches fall between that range including slider, cutter and split-finger fastball. He threw three pitches primarily in the minors — fastball, cutter, slider — and hadn’t thrown the sinker at all before adding it days before the Baltimore game.

Schwellenbach had begun throwing the sinker in early offseason workouts, but Braves minor-league pitching coordinators urged him to hone his main pitches during the winter and add others later. When d’Arnaud, Murphy, catching coach Sal Fasano and pitching coach Rick Kranitz told him they thought the sinker would help, Schwellenbach worked it into the mix with solid results and 94.6 mph average velocity.

“He’s very new at pitching,” said Braves lefty Max Fried, another who likes everything he’s seen from Schwellenbach. “He’s obviously extremely athletic; you can see from the plays that he’s been able to make. And his ability to have feel for the baseball, where he came up and was just a fastball/cutter/slider guy. And he’s had a curveball and he had a splitter and changeup, and said that he had been working on a sinker in the offseason and he hadn’t thrown it.”

Fried is a thinking man’s pitcher himself, and it pleases him to see a young guy like Schwellenbach pitching rather than just throwing.

“To just have the willingness and the confidence to go out there and be a three-pitch guy and then within a month, being a six-pitch guy in the big leagues and kind of learning on the fly, it shows his ability to make adjustments, adapt, and also just his confidence of going out there and being able to get guys out,” Fried said. “Because to be as young as he is with the experience that he has, to go out there and have that vulnerability of maybe not having the most confidence in his stuff, but putting everything on the line — you can see it. Because he’s going out there and putting together really, really good starts.”

Fried added: “Even the ones where he might have given up a couple runs, it was one swing or maybe one errant inning. But for the most part, when he takes the ball, we’ve got a great chance to win. And he’s been doing an amazing job.”

Snitker says every spring training, when asked about rookies or others who might make a surprising impact, that there is almost always a young guy who emerges and surpasses expectations, someone who was on no preseason rookies-to-watch lists.

“Every year there’s somebody,” Snitker said Friday. “We talk about this all the time, there’s going to be somebody make a name for themselves. And he’s pretty much that guy this year. I think he’s just been very impressive, what he’s done.”

Snitker likes to talk about things that “winning pitchers” do, going back to the Braves’ Big Three starters of the ’90s — Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine — and guys like Tim Hudson, right up through Fried and Strider. Now he says it about Schwellenbach.

“He’s taken to it really well, using each outing to learn,” Snitker said. “And, man, there’s a lot to like there. He does a lot of things that winning pitchers do as far as holding the runners, fielding his position, and just the aptitude he’s shown. He’s just kind of figuring himself out. He doesn’t have a whole lot to draw back on as a starting pitcher because he hasn’t done it a lot. But he was really good the other day in San Diego, that’s for sure.”

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