What are realistic expectations for AJ Smith-Shawver in 2024?

As a young pitcher moving into the Major League rotation, what should we expect from the top prospect?

Author:
Lindsay Crosby
Dec 22, 2023 2:26 PM EST

Atlanta Braves fans have been clamoring for the team to acquire a starting pitcher via free agency, one that can take the ball in the postseason.

But what if that pitcher's already on the roster?

The team's top prospect, righty AJ Smith-Shawver, could be the 5th starter coming out of spring training. The 21 year-old debuted in MLB last season after a meteoric rise through the minor leagues, starting in High-A Rome in April and pitching in a major league game in June.

If Atlanta's unable to come away from this offseason with another starter, either via free agency or trade, then Smith-Shawver projects to be that 5th starter as the team breaks spring training. What's a realistic expectation for his 2024 season?

As I expected, president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos declined to give specific statistical numbers when I asked him this at the MLB Winter Meetings earlier this month, but he still gave us some insights into the young pitcher and his potential.

Monitor his workload

One of the noteworthy comments from Anthopoulos was about Smith-Shawver's age and relative inexperience compared to most other pitching prospects.

"He just turned 21 (on November 20th). He pitched all of last year at 20 years old, which is incredible. He would have been a (college) sophomore, so he's going into his junior year."

With that youth comes some inexperience - Smith-Shawver hasn't had very many opportunities to build innings in his professional career, with only two full seasons in the minor leagues. He pitched 68.2 innings (all for Single-A Augusta) in his first year, followed by 87.1 regular season and 2.2 postseason innings in 2023.

Jumping from 70 to 90 innings from year to year, an increase of 28.57%, isn't that unusual and isn't anything that should hold him back next season.

But what is a realistic amount of innings for Smith-Shawver in 2024?

If we add another 30% (for ease of rounding), that gets you to 117 innings. Again, let's round it to 120 innings for ease of discussion. If you assume he's a "five and dive" candidate, that's 24 starts.

Most teams will allow an increase of anywhere from 30 to 50 innings from season to season - adding 50 to Smith-Shawver's 2023 gives you 140, which could be 28 five-inning starts (which is practically an entire season - last year's leader in starts was St Louis Cardinals righty Miles Mikolas, with 35 starts and 201.1 innings.)

Now, Smith-Shawver's a good athlete and is reportedly doing the requisite physical preparation this offseason to handle the workload, and so I'm inclined to assume he can successfully hold up if he added between 30 and 50 innings next season.

But interestingly, it turns out this is already over the innings count from some of the projection systems out there - Steamer (Fangraphs) has Smith-Shawver at 93 innings, putting up a 4.74 ERA and a 6-5 record. (They also assume he only makes 13 starts out of his 34 total games, so they have him either starting in the bullpen and moving into the rotation later or vice versa).

But does Atlanta need AJ Smith-Shawver to make 24-28 starts?

I don't think they do.

There's two kinds of starting pitchers for Atlanta, in my mind - guys who would start a playoff game and those who wouldn't. Spencer Strider, Max Fried, Charlie Morton? Obviously in that first group.

The second group, as of now, is pretty easy to identify as well: Dylan Dodd, Darius Vines, Allan Winans, et al.

(Bryce Elder's at the top of that second group, for the record.)

You need that second group of pitchers to get through a Major League season - there's 162 starts to be made, and even if you assume those are all just five inning starts, it's still 810 innings to be covered.

But you don't want that second group starting postseason games, if you can help it. That's why Atlanta (reportedly) went after Aaron Nola in free agency.

Sure, Smith-Shawver's postseason debut didn't go according to plan - 2.2 innings in relief, with three hits and three runs allowed (all on solo homers), walking one and striking out three against Philadelphia.

But at the Winter Meetings, Anthopoulos cited an earlier start Smith-Shawver made as one that showed the his potential, referring back to his final regular season appearance against the Chicago Cubs on September 28th:

"That last outing against the Cubs: The Cubs were playing for something. They had a great offensive club last year, and how he performed was fantastic. That was very encouraging."

Smith-Shawver got the start that weekday, going 3.2 innings of hitless ball with one walk, two strikeouts, and one run scored.

(To start the game, Smith-Shawver walked the first batter, who stole second, advanced to third on a groundout, and scored on a fielder's choice. Earned run, but no hits, and yet another example of free baserunners coming back to bite a Braves pitcher.)

But after that 1st inning run, Smith-Shawver sat down ten straight batters before giving way to Kyle Wright with two outs in the fourth inning. He threw 64 pitches in the outing.

There's your glimpse of what he could do, if everything breaks right.

There's a model here for how to use AJ Smith-Shawver in 2024

He's going to have an opportunity to earn a rotation spot in spring training, and very well could win the job.

But if he doesn't, there's an easy model to emulate when figuring out how to use Smith-Shawver in 2024: Spencer Strider in 2022.

The Braves started Strider off in the bullpen to 2022, with him pitching in eleven of the team's first 44 games. All but three of those were multiple-inning outings, with Strider sometimes logging pitch counts into the 60s.

And after a 2.22 ERA (and 1.43 FIP) in those games, Atlanta moved Strider into the rotation in late May.

(And for the record, Strider finished with 131.2 regular season innings in 2022, a season after pitching a combined 96.1 as he went through all four levels of the minors and made two late-season MLB relief appearances. Lines up with Smith-Shawver's projections, huh?)

So it's entirely reasonable that Smith-Shawver's able to both stick at the major league level all season and not be significantly over his previous workloads by the time the postseason comes around.

It's all up to him, I guess, to make the case that he deserves to stay in MLB.

And I'm pretty confident that he can.