Jared Shuster is gunning for the 5th starter role
It was all new to Jared Shuster and yet, very familiar.
The 2020 1st round pick was making his way through his very first Spring Training with the ballclub, a by-product of the delayed and shortened spring trainings that have occured in the last two years, but Shuster was enjoying his chance at facing big league action.
“It's been a great experience so far, just being able to be with big leaguers,” Shuster told MLB.com. “It’s been great to learn from them and face them and see how my stuff plays against them. It's been really awesome. I'm really grateful for the experience.”
It may be a new experience, but it looked easy for Shuster. Because in the end, it's just baseball.
And Jared Shuster is good at baseball.
Shuster continued his impressive spring with yet another dominant outing, this time against the Pirates, holding their primary lineup to one run (the first of the spring for Shuster) in 3.2 innings. Across the Grapefruit League schedule, Shuster's put up 8.2 innings of two hit, one run baseball with one walk and nine strikeouts, with his only blemish coming via solo home run by Pittsburgh's Bryan Reynolds.
Said Shuster, “Reynolds saw my best (changeups) all day. [...] I just threw him a crappy one there.
Braves skipper Brian Snitker, a long-time veteran of the organization that has seen many top pitching prospects take the bump over the years, admitting enjoying Jared Shuster's outings, “I love watching him pitch. He’s efficient, and he works fast.”
Shuster comes into spring with new confidence in his third pitch - a slider - and an outside shot at the final rotation spot.
Working primarily as a fastball/changeup guy, Shuster started trusting the slider more when he increased the velocity on it - now sitting around 85-87, it rests solidly between the two-seam fastball at 92-94 and the phenomenal changeup that sits around 80-81, giving him three different speeds and three different movement profiles to set up a hitter with.
Shuster put up a 2.78 ERA in 90.2 innings in AA Mississippi last season, scuffling a bit early in his time at AAA Gwinnett but finishing the year with a 3.29 ERA in 139.1 innings with total 145 strikeouts to only 38 walks.
And right now, there's plenty of openings for Shuster to earn that 5th starter's role. The main competition for the job, narrowed to Ian Anderson and Bryce Elder after Michael Soroka strained a hamstring when camp started, have not ran away with the job.
We can officially call it a three man race for that 5th, which is perfectly fine with Snitker. The fact that Shuster hasn't yet debuted or isn't on the 40-man roster isn't a concern to the manager, “If you’re ready, you’re ready. It’s very impressive what he’s doing.”
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