Braves right-hander AJ Smith-Shawver has been diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow, reports Mark Bowman of MLB.com. It is still being determined whether the righty will undergo Tommy John surgery or an internal brace procedure. In either case, he should miss the remainder of this season and part of the 2026 campaign as well.
The news is devastating but not surprising. Smith-Shawver started the first game of yesterday’s doubleheader against the Phillies. He was removed in the third inning and it was quickly reported that he felt a pop in his throwing elbow. He was placed on the 15-day IL before the second game of that twin bill with an elbow strain. “It doesn’t look good,” was manager Brian Snitker’s assessment of the situation. He was transferred to the 60-day IL earlier today, only enhancing the sense that bad news was coming.
All the warning signs have now proven to be accurate. Smith-Shawver will go under the knife and the only thing left to determine is if he’ll require a full Tommy John procedure or the internal brace variant. The latter generally comes with a slightly lesser return timeline, but even that reduced time frame is generally around a year or so. He will therefore spend the rest of the year on the 60-day IL and will perhaps start the 2026 season there as well.
He will collect big league pay and service time while on the IL but that’s a small consolation. He was in the middle of establishing himself as a true big league starter. He had logged 44 1/3 innings over nine starts this year with a 3.86 earned run average. His 10.9% walk rate was on the high side but his 21.9% strikeout rate was slightly above par for a starter. He’ll now have to wait until 2026 to build off that showing.
For the team, they are now down two starters. Reynaldo López had arthroscopic shoulder surgery earlier in the year and seems unlikely to return until late in the season, even in a best-case scenario.
Bryce Elder will be recalled to start on Sunday, per Bowman. Elder seemingly cemented himself in the big leagues in 2023 when he posted a 3.81 ERA over 31 starts. However, his results backed up last year, which bumped him down the chart to being a frequently-optioned depth piece. He was only able to make ten big league starts last year with a 6.52 ERA. He has continued to be shuttled to Gwinnett and back here in 2025. He has a 4.50 ERA in eight big league starts as well as an 8.76 ERA in three Triple-A starts.
If Elder falters, he still has options and the club has other arms available. Hurston Waldrep, Nathan Wiles and Davis Daniel are all on the 40-man roster and pitching in the Triple-A rotation. Ian Anderson and José Suarez are not on the 40-man roster but both have major league experience and are pitching in the Triple-A rotation as well.
Photo courtesy of Bill Streicher, Imagn Images
Gutted for him. Credit to Strider for catching that he might have been injured though.
Agreed. You know Snit wouldn’t have noticed.
The 2026 manager has made zero lineup or bullpen mistakes. EXTEND HIM NOW
Such a ridiculous comment
Poor kid. Feel better.
And another one bites the TJ dust.
ATL has had a bad luck this season then I look over at Baltimore…and think ATL at least is giving it good try to overcome it.
They are also one of the most competent organizations in all of baseball so that helps
Very very very depressed I’m so sry AJ I was wishing for the best which was not this speedy recovery I hope. 😢
Its just brutal whats happening to young pitchers
At this point you have to assume every single pitcher will undergo TJ atleast once
This is insanity
You can’t go max effort on pitches every pitch and not expect issues. That would be like driving your car at top speed every time you drive it and wonder why it wears out.
Going have to go back to pitchers pitching and not just throwing the ball as hard as they can going for strikeouts.
Or what is more the norm now. High velo and calculate TJ at some point as a probable cost of doing business. Soft throwers usually don’t make it out of the minors now, for better or worse. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If I were a GM I’d be looking for the next Maddux and Glavine.
There will never be a Maddux again. Never.
@padam GMs have been looking for the next Maddux and Glavine for decades
I agree with you, the elbow probably wasn’t designed to throw max effort, 80-100 times every few days year round. The weird thing to me though is, the first guy to have the surgery, the guy it was named after, wasn’t really a hard thrower.
That plus pitchers pitch year round now, once the offseason they are back to throwing, lots of pitchers go to driveline and other places to get that extra rpm or mph on their FB.
There’s no downtime anymore. Its not just the professionals, all the way down to little league level pitchers are throwing way more than they ever have, with travel ball. But the time you to the get to the minors, they have more mileage on their arms than ever before which leads to an exponential growth in TJ surgeries.
Scouts only look for flamethrowers, if you dont have hit a min mph they wont even look at you cause teams wont draft pitchers who dont throw hard. So its a vicious circle and im not sure how it can fixed.
I think this may stem from young players in travel ball
being over extended/used by hot head coaches that will use them for every last throw to win.
Interesting thing about AJSS is that he didn’t pitch until his junior year in high school. Turned down a scholarship to play football (QB at Texas Tech) when he was drafted in the 7th round (2021) by the Braves. Extremely low mileage on his arm.
I know mileage on the arm can certainly be an issue but I personally think it’s just as likely a guy would get hurt because he hasn’t thrown that many innings (we’ve seen Crochett and Schwellenbach have Tommy John). Sometimes, especially with high velo guys, it takes an injury for them to start being a bit more cautious and more aware of the body. I think if you can throw 99 as a SP you should probably just dial it down to 96-97. He has excellent movement on his fastball and an excellent split. But I truly think many injuries are not about the past (the mileage) and more about just a particular time in the person’s life where maybe the body is not quite 100%, or the mechanics, or they are feeding on extreme adrenaline as a rookie, etc. We all go through stretches where we feel really good and others where we can’t get away with any indulgence or overuse. At least I do.
Just as he has a breakout too. Real shame.
Maybe teams need to start looking for the Greg Maddox type pitchers
Driveline about to put a bounty on you
I think every team has been looking for the next Greg Maddux type for some time now.
Yep. Maddux is in the HOF and plenty of guys who throw upper 80s-low 90s with decent command are minor-league innings eaters. If that.
Guys got bigger, stronger, the ball’s probably livelier, and when your MIers can hit 20-30 HR and swings are (boringly) optimized for production, Maddux clones don’t really cut it any more.
There was only one Greg Maddux. Pitchers like him don’t grow on trees.
Several Pitchers could throw hard and never suffered any real issues because they knew how to pitch. These days just throwing til your arm falls off is not sustainable for long-term success both for individual pitchers and the game itself. Contrary to what must be a popular belief in MLB, there is no never ending supply of pitchers…
its the downside to statcast and all the info they have now on their pitches. They want to get more and more spinrate, a few more mph on their FB. Then go max effort and yeah injuries are going to pile up.
To miss that much time, might as well have TJS and get it fixed. The brace procedure is just postponing the inevitable. Feel for him.
Probably Mark Prior’s fault.
To sit out the rest of the season and not be part of this trainwreck is a blessing. Hope he won’t miss some of his teammates as they are all traded away very soon. Sale probably will be the saddest loss, but he deserves better.
Do you have anything better to do than to post constant every day negative comments about the Braves? By the way Chris Sale isn’t going anywhere. Atlanta will easily pick up that option they have on him for next season
You must be young if you think this season is a train wreck
Braves are playing pretty good, Sale had a great start the other day. Have to like what you are getting out of Drake Baldwin. Verdugo has been serviceable. Jurickson Profar is back in a month. Love him or hate him, Acuna is a big time player.
Braves still have a nice rotation if Strider returns to 80% of what he was. Sale, Schwellenbach, Strider, Holmes. Lopez could be back later in the season but it looks like the Braves fans favorite whipping boy Bryce Elder will be back in the rotation.
I have the Braves somewhere in the top eight in my rankings. I cant see the Braves making any trades other than possibly adding a starter and a SS.
Give it a rest. This team is not very good, and they are ‘healthy’ now with Acuna and Strider back, yet they are still 3 games under .500 because they can’t beat the Dodgers or Padres. Strider is not good, and people need to accept it. He proves it time and time again, he can’t pitch well in big games.
Everybody below the 5th spot in the lineup needs to be traded or released.
Time to sign Madbum?
So you’d trade or release Sean Murphy and Michael Harris II? Why don’t you ever give us your “thoughts” on who the Braves should acquire by trading Acuna, Albies, Harris II, Strider and all the other Braves that you hate? That’s a rhetorical question. No need to answer because you don’t have a clue. You’re only here to whine.
Murphy is expendable now that Baldwin is here. Harris and Albies are among the worst hitters in baseball.
Murphy w/an OPS over .800 and excellent defense. Braves probably have the best catching tandem in baseball and you want them to weaken it? Harris’ defense keeps him in the lineup until he finds his bat again. They need a SS and LF’er along w/better relief pitching. Everything else is fine.
mostly because of a horrendous start, they have played well above .500 in May
Not really, depth at catcher, and having a catcher or two that can DH and put respectable stats as a DH, its a nice way to construct your roster. Having two nice catchers is one of those unappreciated strategic advantages.
@bwmiller79 correction, the Braves are PITCHING pretty well. The offense is inconsistent, at best.
Of course.
Meh…hate this for the kid but hes so inconsistent and a 5th starter at best. Elder will be fine in that role until Lopez comes back.
Would have liked to see your comments on Smoltz and Glavine when they were breaking in. Probably would have called them busts.
You’re probably right but I trusted the Braves front office/scouting back then way more than I trust this current regime.
John Schuerholz > Alex Anthopoulos
@bhambrave true, but not by much
Greg Maddux said that he threw a lot harder in the minors because that’s what got you noticed. Once he made it to MLB, he slowed down and focused on pitching.
He was throwing mid 90’s when he won his first cy young with the Cubs. He hit 95 regularly then. He still hit the low 90’s through his early years in Atlanta too. Idk if he ever hit 97 or anything like that but I know he could hit 95 and say 92-93 through his Cy Young years. As he got older it did go down and late in his career in was upper 80’s. Don’t forget not everyone in the 90’s could throw 97-100 consistently like they do now.
I don’t know his numbers, I’m just going by what he said in an interview.
And yet he was only K’ing 5-6 per 9 most years, winning Cy Young awards with seasons of 6.3, 6.7, and 6.8 K per 9.
Fwiw, most guys don’t now “throw 97-100 consistently.” Even the speed of the average fastball thrown is ‘only’ 94 mph.
Kris Medlin all over again. IMHO you should take out a pitcher when they suffer a comebacker to their throwing arm or to either of their lower legs. You should then slowly work them back to make certain the mechanics are not affected.
The first is obvious and Medlin’s career was basically destroyed by the Braves allowing him to pitch again too quickly. Now AJSS blows up his arm, which was almost certainly due to his mechanics being affected by the 96mph comebacker that caught him flush on the ankle.
Just silly. It’s not worth the risk. There are probably many other examples, but Medlin’s still nugs me because I really liked him and feel bad for the young man.
The kid was looking like a ROY candidate and a future ace. Hopefully they don’t have to do TJ surgery and he can come back next year mid-season. That said, I still can’t believe AA didn’t go out and get a starter for the rotation. It’s not even the All Star break and the Bravos have already lost two of their starters for the year, and we have ticking time bombs in Sale and Strider. Ugh
Wiles has pitched very well at AAA and will likely get a shot in some capacity eventually. Waldrep is not doing well. Anderson is still walking a bunch of people. Daniel is pretty low on the list probably. Suarez is probably still a relief option. So Elder pretty much has the job unless he is really bad and then Wiles will get it probably.
Braves have been terribly unlucky they have lost around 14 games by just 1-2 runs. Losing AJSS is a big hit just when most the team was getting healthy. I like both Albies and Harris but they are both having very bad years. Acuna looks good so far. Baldwin and Schellwenbach are big time positives. The relief pitching has been very spotty. Kimbrel not being on the MLB team at this point is almost criminal. Braves are going to have to make a trade to get a solid SP or this season is over. Not the garbage 4-5 depth starters they have swung for trades over the past 10 years either. Sale is the only big starting pitcher trade I can remember working out great since Tim Hudson. Braves could easily be fighting for or in 1st place in the NL East if luck had swung their way. There is still lots of baseball left but if they don’t do something on the trade front it’s is probably hoping for a wild card spot. Snitker probably needs to go though.