The Braves Just Saw a Glimpse of the Old Spencer Strider

Braves fans might just be watching an ace rediscover his groove

Just because someone returns to play from an injury doesn’t mean that they’re fully recovered from it.

Atlanta Braves starter Spencer Strider is the current poster child for this. Navigating around two stints on the injured list, one for his 2024 elbow surgery that delayed his season debut and another for a hamstring strain that sidelined him after just one start, he has pitched to a 4.86 ERA with a rather pedestrian 9.56 strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) this season.

It’s a far cry from his stellar 2023 campaign, one in which he recorded a franchise record 281 strikeouts and led baseball in wins (20), winning percentage (.800), and K/9 (13.5) while leading the National League in Fielding Independent Pitching (2.85 FIP) and finishing as the 4th-place vote-getter in the NL Cy Young voting.

But recovering from an injury isn’t linear - there are twists, turns, and setbacks. And occasionally, leaps.

He took one of those leaps last night. Let’s talk about it.

Spencer’s problem was the fastball

We broke down the issues with Strider’s heater at length back in early August after the Chicago White Sox tagged him for seven runs on ten hits in just three innings of a 13-9 Braves loss.

If you’ve got time, I’d recommend reading it - there’s some good stuff in there, and I’m somewhat proud of how that one came out.

But if you don’t have time or would prefer some highlights, here’s a brief list of the problems we identified at the time with the fastball:

• Diminished velocity - in his 2023 All-Star season, Strider averaged 97.2 mph on his four-seamer. This season, he entered Tuesday night averaging just 95.6 mph.

• Reduced movement - The fastball’s induced vertical break, or backspin, was down from his elite 18.4-inch measurement to a relatively pedestrian 16.3 inches.

The combination of these two factors, combined with the generally reduced in-zone rate for pitchers in their first season coming back from major elbow surgery, resulted in his fastball allowing a batting average of .280 with a .473 slug.¹ The pitch’s -6 Run Value and -0.7 RV/100 are easily the worst marks of his career and tied for 2nd-worst among qualified Braves starters this season.

But there was some growth last night.

The fastball’s movement improved yet again

Strider’s outing last night was a quality start: two earned runs in six innings. But more impressive than the results was how Strider got there. Let’s talk about it.

Spencer’s average fastball velocity of 95.6 mph was the exact same as his season average. But the movement profile wasn’t - Strider’s fastball averaged 17 inches of induced vertical break, touching a high of 20 inches in the outing. Not the highest max he’s had all year, as he’s thrown two pitches with 22 inches IVB this year, but one of the higher game averages of the back half of the schedule. Also, not quite his elite 18.4 from 2023, but better than the low-16s he was sporting previously.

But wait, there’s more.

Strider’s sequencing was better, too

In his peak form, Strider was about 60% fastball, 35% slider, and the rest was taken up by occasional changeups. You know, for fun, as one does.

He’s not in peak form, though, and so Strider needs to pitch a bit differently.

Last night’s start was the lowest fastball usage of Spencer Strider’s career, using his four-seamer just 41.2%. His slider came in at 37.1%, while the curveball was thrown a career-high 15.5% and even the changeup broke 6%. And the influence of Drake Baldwin was clear, too - unlike Sean Murphy and his inclination to keep spamming a specific pitch until the opposite team manages to start hitting it, Baldwin frequently mixed things up.

Strider went fastball-heavy in the first, one in which he loaded the bases and allowed a run. Of his 26 pitches, 12 were fastballs, with both of the inning’s hits coming off of heaters. But through the course of the outing, with the fastball having picked up no whiffs through three innings, Strider and Baldwin adjusted - he threw only eight heaters through the fourth and fifth innings combined, leaning on the slider and curveball. Strider then went back to the fastball in the sixth inning, his last of the outing, using it at a 70% rate to finish his start.

What does this mean going forward?

It means that I have even more confidence that Strider’s going to be a lot closer to his 2023 form after a full healthy offseason to work “in the lab”.

Atlanta adjusted the rotation last week for this reason, bumping Strider from his scheduled Sunday start to Tuesday so that he had time to throw a second bullpen in between his outings. As we’ve previously discussed on the podcast, he also spent some time at Maven Baseball Lab in Atlanta recently, where I’m told it was “all hands on deck” to get him the resources and information he needed to make the adjustments required to bring that IVB back in the above-average range.

If Strider could do this after two additional bullpen sessions, what can he do with a healthy offseason? While we won’t know until next spring, I’m definitely not betting against him.

1. And that’s with Strider being lucky - his xBA was .300 and xSLG was .531 entering Tuesday night.