ATLANTA — It’s a good problem for Braves officials, deciding which well-performing starter to bump from the rotation with Spencer Strider returning from the injured list next week.
Chris Sale and Spencer Schwellenbach aren’t going anywhere. Neither is AJ Smith-Shawver, who had another outstanding start Thursday in a 5-2 win against the Washington Nationals, the Braves’ fifth consecutive win in games started by the rookie.
“That’s pretty impressive right there,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said after Smith-Shawver allowed two hits and one unearned run in six innings, with two walks and six strikeouts. “Just how he came out of the shoot firing, boy. That was good. Just overall pitch mix, I thought that might have been better than the no-hitter game.”
He was referring to Smith-Shawver’s May 5 start against the Cincinnati Reds, when the 22-year-old took a no-hitter to the eighth inning and finished with one hit and a season-high four walks allowed in eight scoreless innings.
Smith-Shawver, who made his MLB debut in 2023 but hasn’t stayed in the majors for long until now, is 3-0 with a 1.50 ERA in his past five starts. He’s locked in, and the Braves hope he can continue this first significant stretch of high-level pitching in his big-league career, which includes 13 regular-season starts and one postseason start, plus a couple of relief appearances.
Another great day for AJ 👏#BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/SBOGipNE2i
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 15, 2025
Since the Braves aren’t going to use a six-man rotation — it would not be feasible, Snitker said, with off days that are coming up in the schedule — that left Grant Holmes or Bryce Elder as the odd man out of the rotation.
Both have pitched well in recent weeks, making the decision more difficult than one might’ve imagined a month ago. But Elder has minor league options and Holmes doesn’t, and Elder was optioned to Triple A after Thursday’s game.
The Braves can bring up a fresh bullpen arm for a three-game series against the Boston Red Sox that starts Friday. Strider, who’s been out four weeks with a hamstring strain, will be activated to start a game in another series against the Nationals starting Tuesday in Washington.
Snitker said Thursday it hadn’t been decided which game Strider would start, but the series opener seems likely, in what would’ve been Elder’s next turn. The Braves will start Sale, followed by Holmes and Schwellenbach, against the Red Sox. Sale is pitching at Fenway Park for the first time since the Red Sox traded him in December 2023.
Sale to Red Sox at Fenway
Sale faced Boston once last season and was dominant, working six scoreless innings of six-hit ball with one walk and 10 strikeouts in a 5-0 win on May 8, his seventh start after being traded from the Red Sox to the Braves.
That was his fourth game in a 26-start stretch in which the lefty went 17-2 with a 2.14 ERA, distancing himself from the rest of the Cy Young Award field.
That game last season was at Truist Park. Friday will be his first start at Fenway since his seven-year stint with the Red Sox, which began splendidly with a combined 29-12 record and 2.56 ERA in 2017-2018, two All-Star seasons in which he finished second and fourth in Cy Young balloting and had 545 strikeouts with 77 walks in 372 1/3 innings.
But it was an injury-plagued five-year slog after that for Sale, who was 17-18 with a 4.16 ERA in 56 total starts for Boston from 2019 through 2023, including an entire season (2020) missed after Tommy John surgery and only 31 starts during 2021-2023. The Red Sox traded him to the Braves in exchange for Vaughn Grissom.
The Red Sox also sent to the Braves a whopping $17 million in that swap to help offset Sale’s $27.5 million salary in 2024, which would’ve been the last year of his contract. The Braves extended Sale just days after acquiring him, signing him to a two-year, $38 million deal that superseded the previous contract and added an $18 million club option for 2026 with no buyout.
The cash that Atlanta got from Boston in the trade paid his restructured $16 million salary in 2024, and Sale is making $22 million this season — a bargain rate for a pitcher coming off the kind of season he had in 2024.
When Sale began this season by going 0-2 with a 6.63 ERA in his first four starts, including three Braves losses, there were whispers that Atlanta got his last great season in 2024 and that the 36-year-old was done as an elite pitcher. But Sale has silenced most of that talk in his past five starts, posting a 2.20 ERA with 40 strikeouts and nine walks in 28 2/3 innings, and lasting 7, 6 2/3 and 5 2/3 innings in his past three.
The Braves won three of his past five starts, and the two losses were by scores of 2-1 at Colorado and 4-3 on Sunday at Pittsburgh, where the Braves lost two of three against a reeling Pirates team.
“I wouldn’t exactly hit the panic button quite yet, but we’ve got to win series,” Sale said after that game. “Especially a game like today that would push us to .500, before going home for a short stint, a four-game set. So, again, consistency is just something that we really need to try to lock in on and get to. And I think once we get that, you’ll see who we really are and how we can really do damage as a team.”
After he said that, the Braves won three of four against the Nationals, their sixth series win in the past eight.
Drake Baldwin stays hot
Rookie catcher Drake Baldwin continues to sizzle, going 3-for-4 Thursday, including an RBI single to raise his team-best average to .360 and team-best OPS to .980.
He leads all major-league rookies (minimum 30 plate appearances) in those categories, along with on-base percentage (.407) and slugging percentage (.573), and Baldwin also has the sixth-lowest strikeout percentage (.160) among MLB rookies with 80 or more plate appearances.
More like Rake Baldwin amirite#BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/ZRPA60PNT3
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 15, 2025
He started the second and fourth games in the Nationals series — the first time Baldwin started twice in a three-game span since catcher Sean Murphy returned from the injured list April 8 — and had three hits in each, including a double and two-run homer in Tuesday’s 5-2 win.
Baldwin became the first Braves catcher with three-hit games in consecutive starts since William Contreras did it June 8-9, 2021. The Braves think Baldwin can make people get over them trading Contreras to Milwaukee in December 2022 as part of a three-team deal that brought Murphy from Oakland.
Contreras, a Silver Slugger Award winner as the NL’s best-hitting catcher the past two seasons, is hitting .238 with four homers and a .687 OPS this season.
Before Thursday, Baldwin and Murphy were batting a combined .273 with an .876 OPS. Since the day Murphy came off the IL, Braves catchers had 2.1 WAR before Thursday, according to Fangraphs, second-most at the position in the majors in that period behind Seattle catchers (2.2).
Baldwin also had a pinch-hit single Wednesday, making him 7-for-9 in the series. He’s had at least one hit in 13 of his past 14 starts, batting .458 in that torrid stretch that began April 4.
“I kind of thought I’d be able to stay in the big leagues, and they’re giving me a little bit more of a shot,” Baldwin said of his role, which is fast becoming an equal split of duties with Murphy and is likely to stay that way if Baldwin stays hot. “It just adds confidence. I’m still trying to just do the same routines and everything, and obviously, having some success really helps that, personally and with the team. It definitely adds confidence, and it makes you feel a bit more comfortable at the plate, and more comfortable behind the plate as well.”
Smith-Shawver has succeeded with each catcher, with Murphy behind the plate for his no-hit bid.
“It’s really fun to have those guys back there,” Smith-Shawver said. “I feel like they bounce things off each other really well, and they’re kind of learning together and teaching each other things. And then they’re just good guys to be around and have in the clubhouse every day. Those are the guys that you wanna go talk to if you have any questions about your stuff. You go talk to them, see what they’re seeing, and they’re always gonna come back to you with information. They do a great job with all that, and they are super detail-oriented and always putting in the work and time so that we can trust them so much. They’re doing a great job with our staff.”
Smith-Shawver credits (James) McCann
Smith-Shawver seems poised to become a rotation fixture now that he’s been given a chance to get into a big-league routine and has responded by pitching like a frontline starter.
In his past five starts, he’s allowed 18 hits and 11 walks with 30 strikeouts in 30 innings. He lowered his ERA to 2.33 in seven starts, fifth-best among NL pitchers who’ve worked at least as many innings as Smith-Shawver’s 38 2/3.
This is the kind of elite performance the Braves envisioned at some point when they brought him up to make his MLB debut at age 20 in June 2023. He wasn’t ready then and battled inconsistency, command issues and injuries last season, but now he’s finding himself as a pitcher, and it’s exciting for the tall Texan and the Braves.
He gives credit for his recent progress to a tip at Triple-A Gwinnett earlier this season from veteran catcher James McCann, a former All-Star who signed a minor-league deal with the Braves in March.
“I think it’s really just been trusting my stuff and attacking the zone and trying to get the batter out in three pitches or less,” Smith-Shawver said. “I was talking to McCann when we were down in Gwinnett, and he said, ‘Just try to get the guy out in three pitches.’ So I’ve been kind of using that, and just really trying to attack hitters. Whenever I get ahead, I feel like that gives me the best chance to go longer in games and just help the team win.”
The Nationals had bases loaded with one out in the second inning, a situation that used to unravel into a multi-run mess on Smith-Shawver. But not this season, and not Thursday, when he induced an inning-ending double-play grounder from Jacob Young to get out of the inning unscathed.
(Photo of Drake Baldwin: Brett Davis / Imagn Images)