Impressive Braves Pitching Prospect Being Promoted to AA Mississippi

The Atlanta Braves are moving one of their most impactful pitching prospects to the upper minors

Atlanta Braves pitching prospect Spencer Schwellenbach represented the National League in last year's Futures Game / Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves have strategically lined up their pitching prospects. 

Talking to MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis in spring training, Braves assistant general manager Ben Sestanovich described the “layers” to Atlanta’s plethora of pitching prospects, with designs of getting specific prospects coming up to the majors in specific years after traveling through the minor league system together, competing with one another. 

Atlanta’s beginning to get the 2025 layer moving with the news that pitching prospect Spencer Schwellenbach is being promoted from High-A Rome to Double-A Mississippi. 

Schwellenbach, 23, was a 2nd-round pick by Atlanta in 2021 out of Nebraska. Missing the 2022 season while rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, Schwellenbach returned to the mound and spent most of last season in Single-A Augusta. Pitching in sixteen total games, thirteen in Single-A, Schwellenbach went 5-2 with a 2.49 ERA across 65 innings, striking out 55 and walking 16. His best performances came after the late-season callup to High-A Rome, however, striking out 14 and walking only 1 across 13.2 innings in his final three starts of the year. 

The time in Rome last season showed that the swing-and-miss stuff, which had been behind the control in an odd reversal of the typical Tommy John rehab and return for most pitchers, was improving the farther out Schwellenbach got from the procedure. 

That improved strikeout rate has carried over to this season - in his first six starts in Rome, Schwellenbach is 2-1 with a 2.53 ERA, striking out 34 in 32 innings against only nine walks. After an abbreviated outing to start the year, he’s consistently pushed pitch counts into the mid-80s, typically completing five innings and getting into the sixth before being removed. 

Tuesday Roster Move

RHP Spencer Schwellenbach has been transferred to Mississippi from High-A @GoEmperors.

Schwellenbach is the @Braves No. 3 prospect, according to @MLBPipeline. Atlanta selected him in the 2nd round in 2021 out of @HuskerBaseball. pic.twitter.com/r6wZIxtR44

— Mississippi Braves (@mbraves) May 14, 2024

Listed as Atlanta’s #3 prospect by MLB Pipeline, the industry consensus for Schwellenbach is that he’s an uber-athletic but raw player - he won the John Olerud Award as the nation’s best two-way player after adding closing to his normal duties as Nebraska’s starting shortstop. His four-pitch mix is promising but a bit underdeveloped; an improvement in swing-and-miss of one of the secondaries, either his hard slider or his slow curveball, would do wonders towards raising the ceiling of his future in a major league rotation. 

But several across baseball, including us here at Braves Today, have predicted that this is the breakout year for Schwellenbach to rapidly move through the system. Sestanovich confirmed as much to Callis back in spring, mentioning that Schwellenbach was “on a similar path as AJ (Smith-Shawver) after his first full year in 2022."

Smith-Shawver, one of Atlanta’s top pitching prospects along with righty Hurston Waldrep, was a 2021 prep draftee (7th round) who spent all of 2022 in Single-A Rome before skyrocketing from High-A all the way to the Major Leagues in 2023, making his MLB debut in early June.