Sunday Notes: Spencer Schwellenbach Isn’t Just Throwing the Ball Anymore

Spencer Schwellenbach had just two big-league games under his belt when he was featured here at FanGraphs early last June. The most recent of them had come a few days earlier at Fenway Park, where he’d allowed six runs and failed to get out of the fifth inning. Two starts into his career, the Atlanta Braves right-hander was 0-2 with an 8.38 ERA.

Those initial speed bumps quickly became a thing of the past. Schwellenbach allowed three runs over his next two outings, and by season’s end he had made 21 appearances and logged a 3.35 ERA and a 3.29 FIP. Counting this years’s 10 starts, the 24-year-old Saginaw, Michigan native has a 3.41 ERA and a 3.41 FIP over 185 innings. Moreover, he has a 23.5% strikeout rate and just a 4.7% walk rate. Relentlessly attacking the zone with a six-pitch mix, Schwellenbach has firmly established himself as a cog in Atlanta’s rotation.

On the eve of his returning to the mound in Boston last Sunday, I asked the 2021 second-round pick out of the University of Nebraska what has changed in the 11-plus months since we first spoke.

“Honestly, when we talked last year I was just throwing the ball to the catcher,” claimed Schwellenbach, who was a shortstop in his first two collegiate seasons and then a shortstop/closer as a junior. “It was really only my second year as just a pitcher, so I was very young-minded with how I pitched. Now that I’ve got 30 or so starts, I have an idea of what I’m trying to do out there. Being around guys like Max Fried, Charlie Morton, and Chris Sale last year was obviously big, too. I learned a lot from them, as well as from [pitching coach] Rick Kranitz.”

Morton, who is now with the Baltimore Orioles, helped him improve the quality of his curveball. Their mid-season conversation was the genesis of a more efficient grip.

“I was showing Charlie how I threw it,” explained Schwellenbach. “He was like, ‘Wow, man. I don’t want to sit here and tell you what to do, but you’ve got to be perfect — have perfect timing — for that pitch to move like you want it to.’ He was right. I would throw a pitch that moved like this, and the next one moved like that, yet they would feel the same. It was the grip that was giving me the hard time. So, I tweaked it a little bit; I found something in the bullpen that worked for me, and stuck with it.

“I started spiking it,” added Schwellenbach. “I also moved up the seam a little bit. “Basically, I’d been getting a lot of gyro spin on a curveball — it was just like a slower slider, pretty much — rather than a good, efficient-spinning breaking ball. That [adjustment] has been good for me, but getting the movement down is only part of it. You also have to understand where a pitch plays best and which hitters to throw it to. A TrackMan will tell you what the movement is, but if it’s not going to work against the hitter… that’s stuff you’ve got to learn. Just looking at a screen and saying, ‘That’s a good pitch’ isn’t enough. Like I said, compared to now I was just throwing when we first talked.”

One day after uttering those words, Schwellenbach gave up a third-inning grand slam to Rafael Devers, then rebounded to retire 13 of the next 15 batters. When he walked off the mound after seven innings, he’d thrown just 81 pitches.

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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

William Marriott went 7 for 12 against Charlie Root.

Ham Hyatt went 6 for 10 against Wheezer Dell.

Dave Hilton went 5 for 12 against Carl Morton.

Ike Hampton went 2 for 3 against Jon Matlack.

Matt Holliday went 11 for 14 against Woody Williams.

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Tucker Barnhart has caught a lot of pitchers. Now with the Texas Rangers, the 34-year-old backstop broke into the big leagues with the Cincinnati Reds in 2014, and yesterday he reached 10 years of service time. Who among the hurlers he’s squatted behind the dish for most stand out for the uniqueness of an individual offering?

“Justin Steele comes to mind with the shape of his fastball,” Barnhart told me recently. “There are inconsistencies, but also some good cut, which provides hitters with a unique challenge. The uniqueness comes from it being the same pitch, but with three different [movement profiles].

“He doesn’t call it a cutter,” Barnhart elaborated. “But with the way he releases the ball… he doesn’t pronate well, so he kind of gets to the side of it. Sometimes it will play like a hard slider, sometimes it will play like a cutter, and sometimes it will play truer, more like a four-seam. So, sometimes depth, sometimes lateral, and sometimes a little cut-ride. He doesn’t really manipulate the pitch, he just kind of lets it rip and it does what it does.”

The well-respected backstop — a future manager if he chooses to go that route — proceeded to mention pitchers he’s stood in the batter’s box against.

“As far as guys I’ve faced, there would be Joe Ryan, because of where the release angle is and what the fastball does — what it appears the fastball does,” said Barnhart. “There is also Brandon Pfaadt’s slider. The movement profile on it… he had an ability to throw it smaller when he wanted to throw it certain places, and throw it bigger when he wanted to throw it in certain places. I found that impressive, especially for a younger guy without a lot of experience. Ryan Thompson, with Arizona, is another. His sweeper-slider is unique. I think that has something to do with where the arm slot and release are. His slider feels like it picks up speed; it creates kind of an up-shoot feel, like a Frisbee.”

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A quiz:

Harmon Killebrew hit 475 home runs for the Twins after the team moved from Washington to Minnesota in 1961, by far the most of any Twins player. Which Minnesota Twin has the second-highest home run total?

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NEWS NOTES

Miguel Cabrera is planning to play for Tigres de Aragua in the Venezuelan League, which begins its 2025-2026 season in November. The 42-year-old future Hall of Famer last played in his homeland in 2007-2008 (per Evan Petzold of The Detroit Free Press).

Mark Esser, a left-handed pitcher who appeared in two games for the Chicago White Sox in 1979, died on May 12 at age 69. The Erie, Pennsylvania native allowed two hits and three runs over an inning and a third. One of the four batters he walked, Cleveland’s Horace Speed, swiped second base.

Rod Nichols, a right-hander who pitched for three teams — mostly the Cleveland Indians — across the 1988-1995 seasons, died on May 14, at age 60. A native of Burlington, Iowa who played collegiately at the University of New Mexico, Nichols made 100 big-league appearances and went 11-31 with a 4.43 ERA.

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The answer to the quiz is Kent Hrbek, who hit 293 home runs with the Twins from 1981-1994. Justin Morneau (221), Tony Oliva (220), and Torii Hunter (214) are next on the list.

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As of now, your AL Cy Young vote would go to…

I asked that question in a Twitter poll a few days ago, the options being Max Fried, Andrés Muñoz, Tarik Skubal, and “other.” At the time, the trio of hurlers had the following numbers:

TS: 4-2, 2.87 ERA, 2.19 FIP, 33.8% K-rate, 0.73 WPA, 2.1 WAR.
MF: 6-0, 1.29 ERA, 2.69 FIP, 23.9% K-rate, 1.78 WPA, 1.7 WAR.
AM: 1-0, 0.00 ERA, 1.74 FIP, 34.1% K-rate, 2.60 WPA, 1.0 WAR, 16 saves.

The pitcher with the highest WAR, highest ERA, and lowest WPA won the poll, while the pitcher with the lowest WAR, lowest ERA, and highest WPA finished last. The poll results were Skubal 42.2%, Fried 40.7%, other 8.9%, Muñoz 8.1%.

If I could have any of the four pitchers on my team, I’d take Skubal. If I had an as-of-right-now Cy Young vote, I’d choose Muñoz. The Seattle Mariners closer has been close to perfect.

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A random obscure former player snapshot:

Elmer Gedeon played in just five big-league games, those with the Washington Senators over a six-day stretch in September 1939. A Cleveland native, Gedeon went 3-for-15, with all of his hits coming in a 10-9 win against the Indians in front of a sparse crowd at Washington’s Griffith Stadium. He’d earlier been a multi-sport athlete at the University of Michigan, excelling in both baseball and track, and also playing on the football team. Gedeon spent 1941 season with the Piedmont League’s Charlotte Hornets, then was drafted into the Army the following winter.

On April 20, 1944, the B-26 bomber he was piloting was shot down over France. At age 27, Gedeon was the first of two major-league players killed in combat during World War II. The other is Harry O’Neill, who played briefly for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1939. O’Neill lost his life in 1945 during the Battle of Iwo Jima.

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Sandro Fabian is slashing .316/.339/.466 with five home runs and a 157 wRC+ over 180 plate appearances for NPB’s Hiroshima Carp. The 27-year-old outfielder out of Santo Domingo played in three games with the Texas Rangers last season.

Shion Matsuo is 18-for-48 with three home runs and a 217 wRC+ for the Yokohama DeNA BayStars. The 20-year-old catcher was the club’s first-round pick in the 2022 NPB draft.

Raidel Martinez has 16 saves and has yet to give up a run over 19-and-two-thirds innings for the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants. The 28-year-old Cuban-born right-hander has 182 saves and a 1.61 ERA since debuting with the NPB club in 2018.

Riley Thompson is 6-2 with a 3.07 ERA over 58-and-two-thirds innings of the KBO’s NC Dinos. The 28-year-old right-hander pitching in the Chicago Cubs organization from 2018-2024. He spent last season with Triple-A Iowa.

Steven Moya is slashing .315/.390/.742 with a circuit -best 11 home runs for the Chinese Professional Baseball League’s TSG Hawks. The 33-year-old first baseman/outfielder played in 51 games for the Detroit Tigers across the 2014-2016 seasons.

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The San Diego Padres have a ping pong table in their home clubhouse at Petco Park, and one at their spring training facility in Peoria, Arizona. Who have been the team’s best ping pong players over the past eight or nine seasons? I asked that question to JP Nolan, who was on the N.L. West club’s media relations staff from 2017-2024, and now serves in that capacity with the Boston Red Sox.

“Right now it would probably be Jackson Merrill,” said Nolan, whose own prowess with the paddle is well known by Padres past and present. “He could get me once in awhile. Trent Grisham is with the Yankees now, but he was awesome. Ha-Seong Kim [now with the Tampa Bay Rays] liked to play, and he was good. So was Andy Green [now in the New York Mets front office]. But I would say that Luis Torrens [also with the Mets] is probably the best of that whole group.”

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I’m a big fan of radio play-by-play, and by extension I enjoy hearing the best TV play-by-play broadcasters. Jason Benetti is among them, and the following call from earlier this week is an example of why.

“Three-and-one to Contreras, with hot-as-hydrogen-fusion Ivan Herrera on deck. Broken-bat fly ball, left-center field. Riley says it’s his. Javy takes the off ramp, and so do we, into the second inning.”

Not a big-moment call that you’d see/hear on a highlight show or while perusing social media, It was simply a broadcaster talking us through a routine out in the early stages of a scoreless game. Then again, it was more than that. In understated fashion, it was pure baseball poetry.

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Daniella Bruce shared an interesting piece of information during that same game. The Tigers broadcast reporter informed us that Javier Báez never uses a bat after he hits a home run with it. He gives the bat to the team’s clubhouse manager, who has it authenticated with the date and pitcher. From there it is sent to Báez’s home, where the collection of long-ball memories is stored.

Báez has 187 home runs and counting.

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FARM NOTES

Welinton Herrera has a tied-for-the-most-in-the-minors 10 saves to go with a 0.92 ERA, a 1.24 FIP, and a 44.0% strikeout rate between High-A Spokane and Double-A Hartford (one game). The 21-year-old left-hander was signed by the Colorado Rockies out of the Dominican Republic in 2021.

Juaron Watts-Brown has a 39.7% strikeout rate to go with a 3.62 ERA and a 2.01 FIP over 37-and-a-third innings for the High-A Vancouver Canadians. The 23-year-old right-hander was taken in the third round of the 2023 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays out of Oklahoma State University.

T.J. Schofield-Sam is slashing .341/.393/.474 with two home runs and a 129 wRC+ over 150 plate appearances for the High-A Lansing Lugnuts. The 23-year-old corner infielder in the Athletics system was drafted in the 12th round by Oakland out of a Brampton, Ontario high school in 2019.

Fenwick Trimble is slashing .277/.407/.429 with two home runs and a 143 wRC+ over 145 plate appearances between High-A Beloit and Double-A Pensacola. The 22-year-old outfielder was drafted in the fourth round last year by the Miami Marlins out of James Madison University.

Romeo Sanabria is slashing .320/.367/.492 with five home runs and a 141 wRC+ over 140 plate appearances for the Double-A San Antonio Missions. The 23-year-old first baseman was selected in the 18th round of the 2022 draft by the San Diego Diego Padres out of Indian River State College.

Boston Red Sox pitching prospect Connelly Early — featured here at FanGraphs earlier this week — fanned nine batters over five scoreless innings yesterday for the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs. The 23-year-old left-hander is now 4-0 with a 1.55 ERA and a 41.2% strikeout rate on the season. He’s allowed just 14 hits over 34 innings.

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John W. Miller’s excellent book, The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball includes a fun anecdote from when Weaver was at the helm of the Baltimore Orioles, and Davey Johnson was the team’s second baseman. Johnson, who would himself go on to become a storied skipper, was taking computer classes at Johns Hopkins University, and he ran a program to ascertain Baltimore’s optimal batting order.

“I don’t know whether to tell Weaver,” Johnson was quoted as telling The Associated Press, “but the sixth-worst lineup was the one we used most of the time last season.”

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The prologue to Scott Miller’s equally excellent new book, Skipper: Why Baseball Managers Matter (and Always Will) includes mention of how in 1977 Billy Martin made out his batting order by pulling names out of a hat, then later explained that “When you don’t have any hot bats, it doesn’t matter where they hit.”

Miller went on to write the following:

“Forty-eight years later, with both the sport and the world awash in a blizzard of bits and bytes… the mocking would commence before the No.9 hitter’s scrap of paper emerged from the cap. The modern and essential website FanGraphs would self-implode. Baseball Savant would turn savage. Statcast would freeze.”

Miller’s book — ditto the other Miller’s book — is a must-read.

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka took us inside the tumultuous end of Brandon Hyde’s Orioles career.

Liam Hendriks has received death threats, as have many other players, and the proliferation of sports gambling is among the reasons why. Jen McCaffrey wrote about the troubling issue for The Athletic (subscription required).

Sebastian Walcott is not only one of the game’s highest-rated prospects, he is awfully tall for a shortstop. Adam J. Morris wrote about it at Lone Star Ball.

NPB’s Central League doesn’t have a DH rule, making it a rare top professional circuit where pitchers swing the bat — but for how much longer? Jason Coskrey pondered that question at The Japan Times.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

When the Cleveland Guardians and Los Angeles Angels begin a three-game series this coming Friday, they will do so with a head-to-head record of 340-340.

Going into yesterday, MLB batters were slashing .358/.344/.608 with 10 home runs over 220 plate appearances with the bases loaded and none out. With the bases loaded and two out, they were slashing .222/.294/.387 with 19 home runs over 592 plate appearances

The Chicago Cubs have allowed five fewer runs than the Chicago White Sox. They have scored 132 more runs.

Dave DeBusschere went 3-4 with a 2.90 ERA while making 36 appearances for the White Sox across the 1962-1963 seasons. Somewhat remarkably, Chicago’s South Side club went just 4-32 in games where the basketball Hall of Famer took the mound. An eight-time NBA All-Star, DeBusschere won championships with the New York Knicks in 1970 and 1973.

Pedro Martinez had 284 strikeouts and 32 walks pitching for the Boston Red Sox in 2000. Steve Dalkowski had 262 strikeouts and 262 walks pitching for the California League’s Stockton Ports in 1960.

Nelson Cruz had 464 home runs, a 129 wRC+, and 41.2 WAR.
Jose Canseco had 462 home runs, a 130 wRC+, and 42.1 WAR.

On today’s date in 1961, Tommy Davis took Bob Gibson deep for the game’s only run as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals 1-0 at Busch Stadium. Sandy Koufax allowed three hits while going the distance for the visitors.

On today’s date in 1976, Carl Yastrzemski hit a two-run homer as Luis Tiant outdueled Mark Fidrych in a 2-0 Boston Red Sox win over the Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park. It was the first loss for “The Bird,” who went on to win his next eight starts — going the distance in all but one of them — on his way to a 19-9 record and Rookie of the Year honors.

Players born on today’s date include Will Pennyfeather, an outfielder who logged nine hits in 46 at-bats while appearing in 40 games for the Pittsburgh Pirates across the 1992-1994 seasons. A native of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Pennyfeather played 19 professional seasons, including eight in indie ball.

Also born on today’s date was John Montefusco, a right-hander who excelled with the San Francisco Giants in 1975 and 1976 before incurring arm issues and proceeding to put up mixed-bag results with multiple teams through 1986. “The Count” copped Rookie of the Year honors, pitched in the All-Star Game, and tossed a no-hitter in his first two full seasons. He homered off of Charlie Hough in his first big-league game.