Spencer Strider’s velocity is a real concern

It’s becoming dark in Atlanta very quickly, as the Braves fell again last night in their series opener with the Arizona Diamondbacks by a score of 8-3.

Spencer Strider was on the bump for the good guys, making his fourth start of the season and just his third since returning from a Grade 1 hamstring strain. In his first start back, he really struggled against the Washington Nationals, but he bounced back with a brilliant performance in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, Tuesday night was much more like the outing against the Nationals.

Ketel Marte homered not once but twice, leading to three runs, and Corbin Carrol added a 438-foot blast of his own. The Snakes racked up five runs over five innings against Spencer Strider, who allowed six hits and a couple of walks to go along with just four strikeouts.

Four starts into the season, it’s fair to start sounding the alarms. Spencer Strider is nowhere close to the pitcher he was before injury, and it’s fair to wonder if he ever will be again. The fastball velocity isn’t just down a tick; it’s down several miles per hour, and the same is the case with his slider. Because of that, his misses are getting hit hard.

In Strider’s rookie campaign, he gave up just 0.5 HR/9 over 131.2 innings. That season, his average fastball velocity sat at 98.1 MPH. The following year, Strider surrendered 1.1 HR/9, with his average fastball velocity sitting 97.4 MPH. And this year, his average fastball velocity is down to 95.2 MPH, leading to a 2.4 HR/9. That’s a pretty telling trend.

Spencer Strider has never been a pitcher who relies on location. He’s always been a power arm that could muscle it past opponents, and that was easy to do with a heater in the triple digits. It was one of the best fastballs in the game of baseball, and now it’s just average. That’s a problem that is going to require a significant adjustment, one that’s not going to be easy to make in the middle of the season.

Of course, there is some hope that Strider’s velocity will increase with time; however, The Athletic’s stat guru Eno Sarris suggests that may not be the case, at least not anytime soon.

“The OOPSY projections say he’s still a top-10 pitcher, but Stuff+ says that Strider lost something in his last surgery,” Sarris writes. “The radar gun agrees, too. He went from sitting 97-plus before, to maxing out at that number and sitting 95 now. Some use 85 mph as a “magic number” for sliders, where it’s hard to have a bad one faster than that, and it’s tough to have a good one slower than that. Strider’s slider went from sitting 86 in 2023 to sitting 84 this season. Maybe the velo will come back with time, but three starts of velo coming back from the injured list is very predictive of future velocity, studies have found.”

That was written prior to Spencer Strider’s start on Tuesday night. We now have four starts’ worth of data at the major-league level, along with a plethora of outings in the minors that show his velocity isn’t anywhere close to what it was before internal brace surgery.

In the long term, counting Strider out may prove to be a foolish proposition. This is still a young arm with an unmatched work ethic. He’s more than capable of finding success while sitting in the mid-90s, but that’s going to take time, and unfortunately, time is not a luxury the Braves can afford after starting the season 27-32.