The Braves’ Star Rookie Starter
With just a month remaining in the 2022 regular season, some of the awards races are coming into view. The National League Rookie of the Year balloting will be a two-man show, with Braves teammates Spencer Strider and Michael Harris II battling one another for the hardware. Neither player entered the season as a favorite, but they’ve pulled away from the field with spectacular performances.
Harris didn’t even reach the majors until a few days before June, but he’s started his career on a .309/.352/.538 tear. That’s elite offensive output, and while it’ll probably be difficult to keep hitting at that level while swinging and missing as often as he does, there’s far more to his game. Harris has rated as a plus defensive center fielder, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if he eventually takes home a Gold Glove Award. He’s also a plus baserunner who has gone 16 of 17 as a base-stealer. The Braves cemented Harris as a key piece of the core by signing him to an eight-year extension last month.
Great as Harris has been, he may be trending towards a runner-up finish in the ROY race. That’s a testament to how dominant his teammate has been on the mound. Unlike Harris, Strider got his feet wet in the big leagues last season. Atlanta called him up in October, and he came out of the bullpen twice during the final week of the regular season. The call-up was seemingly geared towards gauging whether Strider would be a playoff option, but the Braves left him off the postseason roster. After winning the World Series, they’re certainly not quibbling about that decision, but there’s no question he’ll be a major factor in the playoffs this time around.
Strider didn’t open the season in the rotation. Atlanta initially turned to a primary five of Max Fried, Charlie Morton, Ian Anderson, Kyle Wright and Huascar Ynoa, with Strider on hand as a multi-inning relief option. The 23-year-old thrived in that capacity, pitching to a 2.22 ERA while holding opponents to a pitiful .167/.263/.214 line through 24 1/3 frames. It may have been tempting to keep him in that role, particularly since many scouting reports on Strider had suggested a bullpen future may be his best fit.
Through two months, however, the Braves weren’t getting great results from the bulk of the rotation. Fried was excellent, as was Wright. Yet Morton and Anderson had some early-season struggles, and the fifth spot proved a revolving door between Ynoa, Bryce Elder and Tucker Davidson. On May 30, the Braves turned to Strider to make the first start of his big league career. He struggled, allowing five runs in 4 1/3 innings in a loss to the Diamondbacks. The Braves stuck with him, and he reeled off three solid starts in a row. Strider then took a six-run drubbing at the hands of the Giants on June 21, but he’s been arguably the best pitcher in the game since that point.
Strider twirled six scoreless innings against the Dodgers his next time out, kicking off an ongoing stretch of 10 of 12 starts in which he’s allowed two or fewer runs. Over that time, Strider has a 2.15 ERA and surrendered only a .176/.233/.258 slash line. He’s struck out nearly 40% of batters faced while only walking 6.1% of opponents. The righty has eclipsed double digit punchouts on four occasions, including a masterful 16-strikeout gem against the Rockies last week.
While Strider’s late entrance to the rotation has kept him from accruing as many innings as the game’s top arms, he’s been among the league’s best hurlers on a rate basis. No other starting pitcher with 90+ innings has a strikeout rate anywhere near his 37.8% mark since he moved to the rotation. The next closest pitcher, Shohei Ohtani, checks at 33%. Strider’s among the top 20 starters in ERA (2.79), has allowed the fourth-lowest opponents’ on-base percentage (.249) and the lowest slugging percentage allowed (.276). Only Shane McClanahan, Dylan Cease, Kevin Gausman and Ohtani are generating swinging strikes at a better clip than Strider, who’s gotten a whiff on 15.2% of his total pitches out of the rotation.
Strider’s approach is a bit atypical for a starting pitcher, a big reason evaluators questioned whether he could stick in a rotation. He leans extremely heavily on his fastball, turning to the four-seam more than two-thirds of the time. Strider pairs that with a slider and barely turns to a third offering, rarely deploying his changeup. It can be tough to navigate big league lineups with only two pitches, but the fastball-slider pairing has been dominant. Strider is averaging an absurd 98.2 MPH on his heater, while hitters have come up empty more than half the time they’ve swung at his mid-80’s slider. The shallower repertoire has neither inhibited Strider from handling left-handed opponents (who have a .200/.256/.284 line against him this season), nor from maintaining his effectiveness multiple times through a lineup.
It’s probably too soon to call Strider a true ace. A 2020 draftee, he’s still only in his second full professional season. This year’s 114 2/3 innings are already a personal-high, and it remains to be seen whether he can maintain this kind of form through a 162-game schedule and into the postseason. On an inning-for-inning basis, though, Strider has performed right alongside the game’s best. He’s already been far better than the Braves could’ve reasonably anticipated, and he has certainly secured a spot in the playoff rotation alongside Fried and at least one of Morton or Wright.
The addition of Harris and Strider to a core that is coming off a championship gives them one of the league’s more complete rosters. Atlanta is playing at a 101-win pace, and they’ve pulled within half a game of the much improved Mets for first place in a top-heavy NL East. Which team will secure the division title and accompanying first-round bye will be one of the most intriguing storylines of the season’s final couple weeks. Strider will play a big role in those efforts and in whatever postseason run the Braves can mount to follow.
Note: All stats through play Tuesday.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Braves Notes: Rotation, Jackson, Freeman
During last year’s World Series run, the Braves found themselves mixing and matching at the back of the rotation behind Max Fried, Charlie Morton and Ian Anderson. Atlanta hasn’t done much to solidify that group this winter, leaving themselves to again count on a handful of less-proven arms at the back end.
Manager Brian Snitker told reporters (including Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) over the weekend that righties Kyle Wright and Huascar Ynoa look like the favorites for the fourth and fifth spots. Ynoa always seemed to have a leg up after posting a 4.05 ERA/3.62 SIERA in 18 appearances last season. Wright, on the other hand, made just two regular season starts in the majors. The 26-year-0ld had a nice showing at Triple-A Gwinnett, where he worked 137 frames of 3.02 ERA ball. A former top five pick and highly-regarded prospect, Wright hasn’t yet had a ton of MLB success, but his minor league production and the quality of his arsenal still offer reason for Atlanta brass to believe in him as a long-term option.
The Braves are scheduled to play every day from their April 7 opener through April 20. With that heavy workload to start the year, Toscano writes the club could lean on a six-man starting staff early on. If that bears out, rookie Spencer Strider — who climbed four minor league levels last season to reach the majors in September — could assume the final spot, Toscano writes, with lefties Tucker Davidson and Kyle Muller also in that mix.
All those pitchers outside the Braves top three starters have minor league option years remaining, so any of that group could be sent back to Gwinnett throughout the season. They could also spill over into a multi-inning role out of the bullpen. Atlanta has one of the league’s strongest relief units on paper, but a key member has yet to pitch this spring.
Luke Jackson has been dealing with some forearm tightness, the team told reporters (including David O’Brien of the Athletic). The 30-year-old has been throwing on the side, so the Braves clearly aren’t concerned he’s facing a significant absence, but it’s not known whether he’ll have time to get into regular season game shape by next week. Jackson has been in the Atlanta bullpen for the past five years, but he had a particularly successful showing in 2021, pitching to a 1.98 ERA/3.75 SIERA in 63 2/3 frames.
While the Braves rotation looks much the same as it did last season, their position player shakeup was one of the stories of the offseason. Atlanta acquired Matt Olson and let Freddie Freeman walk in free agency. General manager Alex Anthopoulos and the front office were no doubt aware that decision would be a divisive one among the fanbase, and Freeman himself suggested in the immediate aftermath he was taken aback by the Olson trade. At his introductory press conference with the Dodgers, Freeman suggested Braves brass wasn’t as communicative as he’d expected they’d be throughout his stint on the open market. He also seemed to dismiss Anthopoulos’ assertion the Olson trade was the most difficult move of his executive career.
Chatting with the Journal-Constitution’s Gabriel Burns over the weekend, Freeman walked back those comments and took a brighter tone. The five-time All-Star said he chatted with the Braves baseball ops head last week and apologized for the comments he’d made at his introductory presser. “It helped to hear his side of things,” Freeman told Burns. “I won’t divulge what we talked about. But you can imagine what we talked about in three hours. It was good for us to now be good again. Now, when we see each other, we can just hug. I asked him to come to LA (for the series in April). I don’t think he was going to come to the LA series when they came out. I said, ‘Please, I want to see you and give you a hug because we did so many good things together.’”
Regardless of whether the fences are mended, the Braves and Dodgers figure to have plenty of memorable clashes over the coming seasons. The pair met in last year’s NL Championship Series, and they again look to be two of the top teams in the Senior Circuit. FanGraphs’ projections indeed forecast Los Angeles and Atlanta as the NL’s top two clubs heading into the year.
Braves Promote Spencer Strider
The Braves are set to promote right-handed pitching prospect Spencer Strider to the Majors this weekend, as first reported by Eric Cole of Talking Chop. He’ll work out of the Atlanta bullpen and give the Braves a highly intriguing postseason option. More specifically, MLB.com’s Mark Bowman tweets that he’ll be added to the big league roster today.
It’s the culmination of a remarkable, meteoric rise through the Braves’ farm system. Strider, 22, was selected in the fourth round of the 2020 draft and barely pitched in 2020 due to the NCAA shutdown and the canceled minor league season. He opened the 2021 season with the Braves’ Low-A affiliate but has skyrocketed to the Majors with outrageous strikeout numbers across four different minor league affiliates. The Clemson product pitched to a 0.59 ERA in Low-A, a 2.45 ERA in Class-A Advanced, a 4.71 ERA in Double-A and recently struck out the side in his Triple-A debut.
While the combined 3.64 ERA doesn’t necessarily jump out, Strider’s power arsenal certainly does. He’s punched out 153 batters in 94 innings this season — 39.3 percent of the 389 hitters he’s faced overall. David O’Brien of The Athletic tweets that Strider’s fastball was up to 101 mph in his recent Triple-A debut.
In the long run, the Braves will likely give Strider the opportunity to continue developing as a starting pitcher. That Triple-A debut this week was the lone relief appearance of the season, as all 21 of his other outings have been starts. That said, Baseball America noted when listing Strider sixth among Atlanta farmhands on their midseason rankings that because of his Tommy John surgery in college, a relatively slight size (six feet tall) and below-average command, he may ultimately settle in as a power reliever anyhow.
For now, Strider gives Braves fans even more to be excited for over the final weekend and gives manager Brian Snitker a potential relief weapon that postseason opponents won’t have had a first-hand look at. He’ll technically require commissioner approval to be added to the postseason roster as an injury replacement, because he wasn’t on the 40-man roster on Sept. 1. However, such replacements are reasonably common, and it seems unlikely the Braves would’ve called Strider up for the final three games if they weren’t at least contemplating him as an option for the looming NLDS.