Is he going to continue stalling, or break out? Or, something in between?
By this point, everyone is probably on board with Drake Baldwin being the pride and joy of this minor league system. But, AJ Smith-Shawver, who was maybe the pride and joy before Baldwin, is still kicking around, falling into the top 50 of the recently-released FanGraphs prospect list.
Smith-Shawver flew through the system in 2023, going from High-A to the majors, but his major league work was, in aggregate, not great — and he wasn’t impressive at Triple-A either, at least as far as actual pitching goes. Last year was mostly the same, and he only got one start (and one playoff start) in the majors.
Development and progression for prospects, especially young and raw guys, is nonlinear. Things might click for Smith-Shawver, or they might not. What I’m asking you is which you think will happen in 2025 — because he has options, he probably won’t be in the majors until injuries strike or the Braves make some decisions on their out of options bulk arms (Ian Anderson, Grant Holmes, to name a couple) — there’s a lot of possibility, and this is very much a guess.
Smith-Shawver’s projections are actually pretty good, which is interesting, but he might fall into that “projected as a fourth starter” tier that pretty much all good prospect pitchers seem to fall into. Anyway, have at it.