Spencer Strider threw a 20-pitch bullpen session on Friday as he works back from the oblique strain that shelved him to begin the season. Braves manager Walt Weiss tells reporters (including Chad Bishop of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) that the righty will probably need a rehab start before he’s ready to return to the big league club.
There’s a decent chance Strider will need to throw a live batting practice session before he heads out on a minor league assignment. That’s usually the intervening step between a bullpen session and rehab stint. Strider seems to be progressing nicely, though, and he looks to be on track to make his season debut within the next couple weeks.
Strider worked 8 1/3 innings over three appearances during Spring Training. The final of those came on March 11 before he tweaked his left oblique. A healthy Strider would have followed Chris Sale in the season-opening rotation. Grant Holmes and Reynaldo López have stepped into the second and third spots, respectively. They’ve pitched well through the first two turns. López’s fastball velocity has ticked back up into the 94 mph range after sitting at worrisome levels in Spring Training.
The final two spots are still questionable. Bryce Elder had a nice season debut against the A’s earlier this week, working six scoreless innings with five punchouts. He’ll go against Michael Soroka tomorrow in the third game of their four-game set in Arizona. The Braves have yet to announce who’ll oppose Brandon Pfaadt in the series finale.
José Suarez took that spot the first time through the rotation. He didn’t escape the fourth inning, allowing four runs on five hits and four walks in a 5-2 loss to the A’s on Tuesday. Martín Pérez followed with 4 1/3 scoreless frames and three strikeouts in a mop-up role.
Neither pitcher has taken the ball since that appearance, and Mark Bowman of MLB.com writes that it likely sets up for the Braves to flip their roles in this turn. They could temporarily tab Pérez as the fifth starter while using Suarez in a low-leverage relief role. Dylan Lee is the only of their current 13 MLB pitchers who has minor league options. Barring intervening injuries, at least one of Pérez, Suarez or Osvaldo Bido will probably be pushed off the roster once Strider returns.
Didier Fuentes is something of a wild card in those pitching plans. The 20-year-old broke camp in long relief and reeled off four innings of one-run ball with four strikeouts in his only appearance. The Braves optioned him after that outing, a prearranged plan to allow him to build as a more traditional starter in the minors.
Fuentes made his first start of the season with Triple-A Gwinnett this evening. He struck out seven while allowing just two baserunners (one hit and walk apiece) across 3 1/3 innings. Fuentes got up to 72 pitches after a 56-pitch outing in his MLB appearance. He’s probably only one or two starts from being built up as a rotation candidate.
The Braves will need to decide how best to use Fuentes without overworking him. The Colombian-born righty tossed 70 innings last year between the minors and a four-start look in the big leagues. He has yet to reach 80 innings in a professional season.
Atlanta isn’t going to fully unleash him for 150+ innings and surely wants to see continued development in his command and secondary pitches. That said, Fuentes has an excellent fastball and has had a dominant few weeks going back to Spring Training, where he struck out 18 of the 43 batters he faced. After looking overmatched when the Braves hurried him to the majors last summer, he seems much better positioned to carve out an MLB role this year.
Keeping Fuentes in the minors has nothing to do with saving his arm. He’s pitching down there just as much as he would be in the majors. Might as well use him up as much as is reasonable in the majors. In all likelihood he’ll pull his left pinky toe & need 6 weeks on the injured list at some point anyway.
I love AA the scout but they need to limit their pitchers more. This isn’t the 90’s with Glavine, Maddux, and Smoltz. You can’t just throw everyone out there for max effort and pitch count in April. Strider had some of the best stuff in baseball and they burnt his arm out. Alex has built a good club it’s time to manage it well.
Strider had TJS in ’19 while at Clemson before being drafted by ATL in ’20. Considering he’s already gone 130 IP (while starting that year as RP and transitioning pre-AS Break), then 180 IP the next year — was that too much, too fast? I wouldn’t think so. Considering both of those seasons he broke the record for quickest (per IP) to 200 K’s, he was not going to have as many IP as he should considering the amount of swing-and-miss stuff, than as someone like Maddux who wisely pitched to contact and could rely on a sound defense behind him and get him a “Maddux” (CG in less than 100 pitches). It’s not like Strider was healthy when we got him and he’s been a wreck ever since. He wanted to avoid a 2nd TJS and may have, but we haven’t seen him 100% partially because of this oblique injury. Offseason reports with PC Hefner stated that he’s actually learning to pitch and not overly rely on missing bats, which really hurt his control and limited his starts.
>already had TJS in college
>IP went up by more than 33%
>doesn’t pitch to contact/high K%
Do you realize you’re making my case for me?
Braves should be protecting the pitcher they gave a huge contract to. That’s my point and your post only illustrates that more
War sucks, but WAR is very helpful.
I notice that Michael Harris II is holding his hands up high in his batting stance, just like last year when he struggled. Then he lowered his hands and got hot. Does our new batting coach know this….and does Michael remember?
Good call! If you remember that and I remember that, dear lord I hope at least one of those two people remember that too!
@dwaynerice
It was actually the exact opposite. His hands were higher when he won roomie of the year.. Then Kevin Sietzer had him bring his hands down. Last year his hands were down low and began to creep up in July when he got hot.
youtube.com/watch?v=vgMZgMKTu54&si=RcURMbf76z…
Great point.Bob Costas did an interview many moons ago with George Brett,Rod Carew and Tony Gwynn.The topic low hands.All basically said with your hands held high there was absolutely positively no way of hitting Goose Gossage.
Jose Saurez is terrible. I hope they DFA him before he gives another game away.
Indeed. But they may just try and get just a little bit more out of him as a RP instead, where he may fare better than as a SP, giving way to Perez — at least to get them through this opening stretch. Didier pitched on 4/3, so he’s unavailable for Sunday. I imagine it’s Martin starting, giving way to Suarez.
Please give Perez the start. He’s already listed on CBS as the starter but he also was when Suarez ended up starting so who knows….Suarez is one of those starters thats drives you nuts, gets 2 quick outs and looks good, then walks the whole stadium it seems like every inning.
So far, the Braves are looking great, especially their starters, who i was most concerned
for. Getting Strider back and stretching out Fuentes will help their depth. Braves may have some good problems (too many good players) if Strider, Murphy and Kim can come back before others get injured.
Not sure people remember this but Fuentes struggles often came going through the order a second time last year, with the exception of his A’s start where he was just blasted from the get go.
That said I don’t know his relief appearance to start the season has taught me that much. You can point to his ST and that’s fine, but it’s also still ST no matter how much you want to play it up.
The current situation they are in I’m not opposed to him bumping Suarez out and seeing what happens but my honest opinion is that what’s best is more time at AAA this year.
Week 2 and our pitching situation is anyway starting to wobble.
Our pitching situation isn’t “starting to wobble” at all. They have all pitched well except for Suarez.
Having 3 shoutouts out of 8 games too wobble for you?
After the first 8 games. It is looking like both Walt Weiss being the manager, and Jeremy Hefner being our pitching coach has been moves that have worked out well.
I am glad Snitker hung it up. He inherited sine very talented players. I don’t think he was any better than average a coach with a ton of talent just like Bobby Cox and teams loaded with future hall of famers. It was a joke all they won was 1 championship in the 90’s. I put that on Cox and leaving his starting pitchers in too long.
They went to five WS from 1991 to 1999. That’s pretty good.
Cox was a great manager. It’s not all his fault that they had a lot of bad luck in the playoffs and World Series. Lonnie Smith’s base running error pretty much cost them the 1991 Series. Cox also took Toronto from being a horrible expansion team to winning their first division title in 1985.
Braves pitching was not bad last year despite a ton of injuries. Made this point multiple times. It was the offense that let them down. They should be 7-1 right now, but the offense is still mediocre at best.
Fuentes, I think should be brought up after he stretches out but I would limit his innings. What’s wrong with pitching him as a starter but letting him throw 60 pitches and turning it over to the bullpen. We do not need any pitching injuries.
Weiss is already showing he’s not another Snitker. He’s not afraid to let RP pitch multiple innings if they’re effective, easing the workload for his high-leverage guts. Hope he continues this.
olereb: your argument makes sense. Our bullpen, other than Bido and Payamps, has been flawless going into tonight’s game. Let Fuentes throw his 60 pitches up here where it counts.
Two good starts from Bryce Elder. Braves fans lovin’ them some Elder and Martin Perez is going to give them good innings too. The bullpen strategy works out if those two step up this season.
I have been backing Elder more than most, in general because he still isn’t so old that he can’t right the ship and he was really good for a full year way back when. That being said, I have very little true faith in him keeping it up. He just doesn’t miss as many bats as he needs to in today’s game. So far, teams haven’t strung many grind out walks against him, but when that happens, his ERA will jump.
Still, it is a nice start and I would love to see him keep it going.