Minter on struggles: ‘I wish I knew the answer’
While the Atlanta Braves established themselves as a perennial National League powerhouse over the past five seasons, some of the biggest outs over that stretch belonged to reliever A.J. Minter.
This season, Minter’s reliability has been anything but a given over the first two months. With one bad outing after another in May, the lefty is trying desperately to diagnose the problem.
It is a process that has left him bewildered at times.
“I wish I knew the answer,” Minter said. “I feel like a lot of people have kind of been searching for that answer for me as well.”
The last vestige of Atlanta’s vaunted “Night Shift” stable that included Will Smith, Luke Jackson, and Tyler Matzek — that last of whom is still with the Braves, but is out for the season following Tommy John surgery — Minter has not enjoyed the kind of success both he and the team have grown accustomed to.
Through the first two months of the season, Minter has a 2-5 record and a 6.66 ERA, a far cry from the numbers he posted during a career year in 2022. That is when Minter set full-season bests with a 2.06 ERA, 70 innings pitched and 94 strikeouts, while allowing just 49 hits and walking only 15 batters.
Conventional wisdom might dictate that Minter is not throwing enough strikes, simply not throwing as hard, or that he is reluctant to challenge hitters the way he has in the past.
All of that could not be further from the truth.
“Last year, my thought process was just throw it over the plate and see if they can hit it. And they couldn’t hit it,” Minter said. “This year, it’s kind of the opposite. I’m throwing over the plate,
but they’re hitting it.”
After holding opponents to a .198 average in 2022, they are batting .295 against Minter this season. The biggest jump has come from left-handed hitters, a group Minter has routinely dominated throughout his seven-year career. Lefties are batting .321 against Minter in 2023 after managing a meager .132 average in 2022.
Minter’s average four-seam fastball velocity has been down slightly, dipping from 96.6 mph in 2022 to 95.6 mph this season, according to MLB’S Statcast data. While a drop in velocity may or may not be notable on its own, Minter is more concerned about the movement and placement of the fastball because he is not getting the swings and misses he needs to make the rest of his arsenal more effective.
“Just got to go back to the drawing board and see if I can work on my command and my mechanics to get my fastball velocity back up,” Minter said. “Not that it’s super down, but I just need a little more life on it. Same thing with the cutter. There’s not some sharp bite on it. It’s a little bit flat, and the hitters are picking it up.”
Brian Snitker has managed Minter since the lefty debuted with Atlanta late in 2017. Over that time, Snitker has seen Minter go from a highly regarded prospect to a key piece of the pitching staff.
While the ups and downs are part of the journey, Snitker admitted it doesn’t make it any less difficult to watch someone go through them.
“That’s kind of why this game is so hard to play,” Snitker said. “A.J. has been one of the top relievers for us, and in the game, for the past few years. He’s going through kind of a rough spot now. That will test your mettle a little bit. You’ve just got to hang in there and keep fighting it.”
Though Minter was a major contributor in Atlanta’s recent postseason runs, even that did not come without some struggles along the way. He was optioned to the minors in July 2021, only to return with a new lease on life.
“The problem I feel like in 2021 was that I didn’t believe in my stuff,” Minter said. “Once I finally believed in it, I saw better results. Now, I still believe in my stuff, but I’m just getting different results. It’s kind of confusing. It’s frustrating because I am throwing strikes, but at the end of the day these are big league hitters, too.”
Those hitters have made some adjustments to Minter, who knows he will have to make some of his own. To do that, he has sought the advice of Braves pitching coaches, teammates and friends who know him best.
“Everyone you can think of,” Minter said of the net he cast for help finding his form again. “Everyone kind of keeps telling me the same thing — I’m running into a little bad luck here and there, and that’s going to eventually turn, but I’m never going to use that as an excuse. There’s something wrong. Bad luck isn’t the major factor in it.”
The bad luck Minter refers to is the quality of contact, or lack thereof, on some of the hits he has allowed this season. Minter is not going to leave it all up to chance, however. He believes there is one change he must make in order to unlock the secret to his past success.
“I need to get back to my fastball, establish my fastball,” Minter said. “Because once (hitters) have to be on time with the fastball, then that opens up the cutter and it opens up the changeup. They’re just feeling a little too comfortable up there. I’ve just got to get back to that (fastball).”