It wasn’t the prettiest pitching line, but Smith-Shawver rolled through eight innings.
AJ Smith-Shawver threw eight one-hit innings, no-hitting the Reds through seven, as the Braves used a single scoring inning to topple Brady Singer and the Reds on Monday night. While Smith-Shawver mostly let the defense behind him do the work and walked four, it was still a scintillating outing for a guy whose major league performance had been uneven, if intriguing, thus far. Meanwhile, on the offensive end, the Braves didn’t do much, but benefited from a gruesome injury turned inside-the-park homer as part of a four-run inning that was the only scoring frame in the game.
When the game started, it sure didn’t seem like Smith-Shawver was going to be en route to an eight-inning performance, as he walked two in the first frame before striking out Spencer Steer on three pitches. He benefited from a barreled out in a 1-2-3 second, and then had Nick Allen make an amazing defensive play behind him for a perfect third.
The Braves weren’t doing anything against Brady Singer up to that point, but jumped on the board in the third. Allen turned a hanging sweeper into a hard liner single, and Alex Verdugo turned on an inner-third pitch and smashed it into the ground, down the right-field line for an RBI double. Austin Riley then got revenge on the pitch that was tormenting him mightily a few days ago, taking a lower, away two-strike fastball and lining it into center to plate Verdugo. What followed then, was… hard to watch.
With two outs, a full count, and Riley on first, Matt Olson took an inside-out swing on a sinker running in on him and elevated it towards the left-field corner. Reds rookie Tyler Callihan, just recently called up and making his third career start, rumbled and tumbled and caught the ball on a slide, but then banged into the wall at full speed, breaking his arm in the process as the ball trickled out. As Callihan lay crumpled in pain, cradling his arm, Riley and Olson circled the bases in one of the saddest “home runs” I’ll probably ever see live. Reds skipper Terry Francona challenged and tried to argue, but to no avail, as the inside-the-parker call stood and the Braves had a 4-0 lead.
That was actually all the scoring in the game, all in that one frame, which maybe makes the rest of this recap anticlimactic (but do people really read the recap without knowing the score? It’s in the headline, anyway…). Smith-Shawver actually issued back-to-back two-out walks in the very next frame, as his command temporarily abandoned him, but got Jake Fraley to pop up a hanging splitter for the third out.
After that, pretty much nothing happened, save for the drama about whether Smith-Shawver and/or the Braves could complete the no-hitter (no), and whether Smith-Shawver might actually push his strikeout total above his walk total for the night (yes). The Braves, meanwhile, stranded a smattering of runners for the rest of the game: a leadoff single in the fourth, a leadoff double in the fifth, and a leadoff walk in the seventh among them. The Reds, though, were pretty helpless after those two walks — for the rest of the game, their only baserunner against Smith-Shawver came as a result of Santiago Espinal’s leadoff single in the eighth, which broke up the no-hitter, but was eventually erased on a double-play ball anyway. Enyel De Los Santos closed out the game despite a two-out walk with little trouble.
Before this game, I noted that Smith-Shawver’s limited action thus far was funny because his peripherals were really good, but his xERA was inflated, because he was being killed on contact. In this game, his peripherals weren’t all that good (5/4 K/BB ratio, relatively few grounders), and he certainly benefited from the defense behind him multiple times (especially Allen’s sterling glovework at short), but he also got multiple innings’ worth of weak flyouts tonight. If nothing else, this should keep him around in the majors, where he can really refine his craft against the best competition.
Offensively, the Braves didn’t really do much, as they put the ball in play without impressive oomph against Brady Singer (2/2 K/BB ratio over six innings) a bunch, finishing with just seven non-ball-in-play outcomes during the game. Verdugo clogged up the box score with two doubles, a walk, and a steal, but the only other Braves’ extra-base hit was Olson’s sad “homer” and no other Brave reached base multiple times if that homer is excluded.
But hey, a win’s a win, and the Braves could use a ton more of those at this point. The series continues tomorrow with Chris Sale taking on the Reds’ Andrew Abbott.