The Braves May Need a Different Spencer Strider

Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images Spencer Strider made a big splash entering the majors, finishing second in the NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2022 to his teammate Michael Harris II. In just 131 2/3 innings that season, Strider struck out 202 batters against only seven homers allowed, for a sterling 2.67 ERA, an even better 1.83 FIP, and 4.9 WAR. He showed it wasn’t a fluke the following season, making the NL All-Star team and doing enough to pop up on more than two-thirds of the Cy Young ballots. But two starts into his 2024 campaign, his velocity was down and he reported elbow pain, and that was that for his year, prematurely ended by an internal brace procedure. Since then, he hasn’t been the same pitcher. Now out again with an elbow ailment, MLB.com’s Mark Bowman gives credence to the talk that Strider won’t return in 2026, at least as a starting pitcher. I’ve heard the same insider buzz myself, but Mark has way better Braves sources than I do. So what happens for Strider now? What does his projection look like after an injury-shortened 2026, and how would his numbers look if he were converted to the bullpen full time? Not all of Strider’s missing time this year has been due to his elbow. An oblique injury delayed his season debut until May. But after returning, he clearly still wasn’t back in his early-career form. While he can still whiff batters, he’s done so at a rate nearly 30% off his 2022 peak, and his fastball is down to an average of 95.1 mph. Walking 4.6 batters per nine innings was enough to launch his FIP up to 5.36, nearly identical to his 5.31 ERA, though Statcast’s xERA was more optimistic at 3.49. In his eighth start of the season, against the New York Mets, Strider started off throwing 96-mph heaters to Carson Benge and Bo Bichette, but he quickly lost velocity as the game went on, and by the third inning, he was throwing sub-90. His last one, to MJ Melendez, was clocked at 87.8 mph, which is only really a fastball if you’re Tyler Rogers. Strider was promptly pulled from the game and shut down for four weeks. Little has been heard about Strider in public since. Given his injury history and the rapidly dwindling time remaining on the calendar, it’s getting harder and harder to see scenarios in which he’s plopped back in the rotation for five-inning outings. I reran the 2027 projections (and beyond) for Strider, with the assumption that he would not return this season. There’s only so much specificity a projection system can have about injuries, but we do have a lot of broadly generalized information about historical injury rates that these algorithms can use. ZiPS Projection – Spencer Strider Year W L ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR 2027 7 6 4.04 16 16 89.0 77 40 13 32 107 103 1.2 2028 8 7 4.04 18 18 100.3 87 45 14 36 118 103 1.3 2029 8 7 4.08 18 18 103.7 91 47 14 37 119 102 1.3 That’s the projection of a useful pitcher, a league-average starter who you’re not sure you’ll actually get for 160 innings. But it’s a shell of what Strider once was. The names of his top ZiPS comps are significantly less exciting now (Kevin Foster, Melido Perez, Tim Belcher) than they were entering the 2022 season (Don Drysdale, Dizzy Dean, Erik Hanson, though that’s a worrisome trio from an injury standpoint). You Aren't a FanGraphs Member It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed. We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member. 1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other. 2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off. 3. Dark mode and Classic mode! 4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them. 5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects. 6. 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There’s always some talk about conversion to the bullpen when you’re discussing an oft-injured starting pitcher, and it’s hard to dismiss it in this case. While the MRI for Strider only showed inflammation rather than structural damage, it does feel like the writing’s on the wall a bit for him. Strider’s 2024 procedure was his second major elbow operation; at Clemson, he missed the 2019 season after undergoing full Tommy John surgery. While the current revival of Jacob deGrom could be a potential comparison for Strider and a reason not to give up hope that he can continue as a starter, deGrom still pitched extremely well in the rare instances he was healthy from 2021 to 2024. Strider has been decidedly more “meh” when he’s taken the ball. Unlike deGrom, who has made a purposeful decision to cut a little heat off the top of his fastball over the last few seasons in order to stay healthy, Strider’s lost velocity doesn’t appear to be intentional. That lost velocity, though, is part of the reason why I personally feel that Strider would do well as a reliever. The bigger concern with his velo is not that it’s down, but that it tapers off much earlier over the course of his starts. If he knows he’s only going to have to go one or two innings, maybe he can let it rip from the jump and then be done well before his velocity diminishes. Another thing: Strider has always had something of a reliever’s arsenal. He was basically a fastball-slider pitcher at his peak, and even now, his curveball and changeup are mostly used to fight off lefties, so it wouldn’t require a lot of repertoire editing to target shorter appearances. While one can point to his rather poor career first-inning numbers as an argument against a move to the bullpen, I’ve found historically that this specific split isn’t actually predictive of future performance for starter-relief conversions. ZiPS has a lot of data on moves from the rotation to the bullpen and vice versa, and it believes that Strider would fare well in relief. ZiPS Projection – Spencer Strider (Relief) Year W L S ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR 2027 3 2 0 3.35 52 0 53.7 41 20 7 20 75 124 0.8 2028 3 2 0 3.40 54 0 55.7 42 21 7 21 76 122 0.9 2029 3 3 0 3.30 55 0 57.3 44 21 7 22 77 126 0.8 Is a solid, but not elite, reliever as valuable as no. 2 or no. 3 starter with a low number of innings? That’s debatable, but if it keeps Strider healthier, it’s a hard thing to resist. That’s what the Braves did with John Smoltz, who suffered from elbow pain in 1998 and 1999 before missing 2000 with Tommy John surgery. Smoltz gave the Braves four excellent years out of the bullpen, and they eventually felt comfortable enough to move him back into the rotation in 2005. He proceeded to pitch like an ace for three more seasons, wrapped up a Hall of Fame career, and then became a frequently infuriating broadcaster. As Mick Jagger sang in 1969, you can’t always get what you want, but you might find you get what you need. The Atlanta Braves really want to have the 2022-2023 version of Strider at the top of the rotation along with Chris Sale. But what they really need is to get Strider back on the mound somewhere, and if using him in short, high-leverage bursts in coming seasons means less time spent on the IL and less time consulting with orthopedic surgeons, the Braves should be happy with the tradeoff.