AJ Smith-Shawver has his longest start of the year, pitching well in AAA Gwinnett against the Durham Bulls

We've documented the meteoric rise of RHP AJ Smith-Shawver, the pitcher who began the year in the low minors and rose all the way to AAA Gwinnett in just two months, plenty on Braves Today.

Well, let's continuing building the legend of what Jake Mastroianni and I jokingly called the "Spencer Strider Starter Kit" that is AJ Smith-Shawver.

The righty made the longest start of his career on Thursday night in Gwinnett (with GM Alex Anthopoulous in attendance), going seven innings with four hits, two runs, and three walks to eight strikeouts on only eighty-six pitches.

AJ Smith-Shawver impressed on his home debut in Triple-A.

7.0 IP l 4 H l 2 R l 3 BB l 8 K pic.twitter.com/InvtvhuxZy
— Gwinnett Stripers (@GoStripers) May 26, 2023

The twenty year-old out of Texas, who was a 2021 7th round by the Braves, has rapidly developed in his short time as a pro - in just over a year as a full-time pitcher, he's scrapped his ineffective change-up for a curveball and hardened the movement profile of the slider, to the point where Baseball Savant claims he's added a cutter. He's also worked on the command of his slider, although it's still touch and go and you can trace many of his struggles to when he focuses on integrating the slider (and newer curveball) into his sequencing.

Early in the outing, Smith-Shawver featured the fastball and slider almost exclusively, dropping the curveball exactly twice (once to get Osleivis Basabe swinging, and once to get Jonathan Aranda looking). Things reversed in the 2nd inning, where after a Kyle Manzardo groundout and a Ruben Cardenas single, Smith-Shawver began dropping sliders early in the at-bat and then finishing the hitters off with fastballs, getting Tristan Gray to groundout and Niko Hulsizer to swing and miss at a strike up and away.

The fourth inning is where Smith-Shawver had a bit of trouble. A leadoff single by Oselvis Basabe, which really should have been a groundout to Vaughn Grissom (Yeah, I know), got a runner on. AJ quickly got two outs, striking out Kyle Manzardo on a fastball and getting Ruben Cardenas to fly out, but a hanging curveball to Tristan Gray was smacked for a 112.6 mph ground-rule double, putting Durham on the board. Niko Hulsizer then drove in Gray thanks to a slider left in the top of the zone, and that was all the runs Durham needed as they won 2-1.

AJ Smith-Shawver lived up to hype tonight.
7 IP/4 H/2 ER/3 BB/8 K
2 walks to start innings & a hanging curve, but otherwise, AJ was stellar.
86 P/58 S(67.4%)/26% whiff/30% CSW
FB: 95/t97 good ride 4-7 in of run
SL: 85 36 in hMOV/5-6 in hMOV
CU: 78-80 56-61 in vMOV/5-10 in hMOV 🔥 pic.twitter.com/1IZtAYUgRi
— Chris Clegg (@RotoClegg) May 26, 2023

Smith-Shawver struck out eight in the outing, including lefty Kyle Manzardo twice on fastballs, and can go back and point to the command of the secondaries as most of the issue behind the three walks and two runs scored in the outing. Here's the statcast board from the outing:

As you can see, Smith-Shawver hit the 30% CSW goal (that's Called Strikes + "Whiffs", or swing and miss), with the four-seamer coming in rather close to 30% despite fastballs typically not doing as well in that regard and with the curveball (which is very promising, but raw) only being used eight times. As he gets a better feel for that new curveball and continues to improve the slider command, he should continue to improve.

Also noteworthy is that he was able to hold the velocity deep into the outing - his fastball average was 95.1 mph, and his next-to-last fastball thrown in the outing came in at 96.1.

AAA uses the same ball as the majors, so there's some change for him to deal with there there - combine that with the fact that it's the third ball Smith-Shawver's used this season (lower minors ball, the AA Southern League "tacky" baseball, and this one), it's understandable to expect a longer adjustment period to get back to the precision and shape of the early-season slider we saw in the low minors.

As we mentioned earlier, Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos was in attendance for the contest, telling friend of the program Chris Clegg of The Dynasty Dugout that Smith-Shawver was already (in his mind) at the level of the other arms in AAA, like Michael Soroka & Dylan Dodd, and the goal now was side-by-side comparisons of all of Atlanta's pitching options.

He's not the first in line for a promotion to Atlanta - remember, he'll be twenty for the entire season, and was in high school at this point two years ago - but it's reasonable to assume he's a candidate to get a few innings in at the Major League Level late in the year if everything goes well this season in Gwinnett.

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