When the Braves signed Drew Smyly in November, it’s safe to say that my reaction was on the lower end of the satisfaction spectrum. It’s difficult to deny how good Smyly was in 2020, but it’s similarly hard to forget how profoundly awful he was in over four times as many innings in 2019, or the fact that he had thrown literally one professional inning across the two years before that. From my perspective, the Braves seemingly paid extra for the privilege of finding out whether he’d look more like the 2020 version of himself rather than the pre-2020 version, and that’s definitely not a thing I’d personally be interested in paying extra for.
Drew Smyly’s curveball is backwards
