Spencer Strider’s Velocity Was Down, but His Fastball Shape Is BACK | Atlanta Braves Podcast

Spencer Strider didn't have his mid-season VO on Saturday, but he still feels good about his fast ball. Let's talk about it. [music] [music] Yes, welcome on in to Braves Today, your source for news, notes, and updates on your Atlanta Braves. I'm your host, Lindsay Crosby, award-winning baseball writer and podcaster. You can follow me on social media at Crosby Baseball. And you can find all my written work, bravestoday.com. That's the Bravestoday Substack, as this is both a podcast and a newsletter. We're proudly part of the Believe Podcast Network and presented to you by FanDuel. Download the FanDuel app or go to fanduel.com to get started. I want to talk about some of the impressive prospects we've seen. The split squad setup on Sunday gave us a chance to see a lot of guys who have not yet gotten into games this spring. I want to talk about how the offense has impressed so far this spring and what we've seen from them. And I want to talk about Hen Waldrip surgery and the news we got from that. But before we do all of that, the biggest story from the weekend was Spencer Strider making his spring training debut. He used 32 pitches to get through two innings. Uh allowed one run on one hit, struck out two, no walks, some hard-hit balls against Spencer. Like, let's be completely honest. And the big takeaway afterwards from a lot of I guess national people and some Braves fans was that Spencer Strider's fastball has seemingly gotten worse this season than it was last year. I mean, the whole the long story short on this is as a part-time reliever, he averaged like 98. Part-time reliever, part-time starter. And then in that 23 season, he averaged like 97. And last year, he was sitting in the 95 range. And you know, the fastball, it was 95.5, I think. And the fast ball just wasn't the same. Like guys were getting on it more and all of that. And on Saturday, he averaged uh right around 93 miles an hour on that fast ball. And there's a lot of kind of confusion on this, right? There were some bad faith actors who were taking this and saying like, "Hey, Strider's watched." Uh but there's a couple things we need to know about here. First, he threw 14 fast balls. It's a very small sample. The second thing is that this was his very first start of spring training. It was February 28th, which is honestly way too early to make any sort of overarching conclusions as to an individual pitcher's quality going into the year after 14 fast balls. But the biggest thing that I feel like there are a lot of people who either didn't they didn't know about this or they intentionally chose to ignore it because I guess they have some sort of agenda or something. I don't know bias whatever is that Spencer told us this was the plan. He talked to friend of the show Chad Bishop of the AJC. This came out on I believe it was Thursday. Chad published a story breaking the news that Spencer was going to start on Saturday and they had a lot of there's a lot of quotes in there from Spencer about how he was deliberately taking it easy that he was trying to go a lot slower with his ramp up and he's like the one of the many quotes here quote you got to keep in perspective just how long of a season it is. you can't be what you want to be at the end of the season if you're not in a position to grow leaving spring training. And like he actually talked about like he said, "I don't expect to hit my record velocity in spring. I hope I don't." His goal in spring is to start getting high intensity reps and gradually warming like warming his body up to where he needs to be for the regular season. Uh, and he specifically said he wants to balance adding volume and intensity and monitoring how his body and his mechanics are responding to that increased workload. And to me, a little bit of this was Spencer Strider kind of acknowledging, hey, Schwellenbach had surgery on his elbow. Waldrip had surgery on his elbow. Spencer is really important. His ability to get back to strikeout king Spencer Strider is immensely important when you look at the fact that two of Atlanta's potential playoff starting options Schwenbach for sure Walrip probably have gone down and we don't know there is no official timeline for when they'll be back. We'll talk more about Waldrip in a minute. But what's good is when you look at what he did on Saturday with those 14 fast balls, he was more focused on locations and shape than his velocity. And when you watched the outing, it was very clear he was not trying to go max effort. Like you could see he was not throwing with 100% intensity or intent. But you could see improvements in the induced vertical break, which was the shape of the fastball that plagued him so much last year. In 2023, 18.4 in was his average. And reminder, if you're kind of still new to this, induced vertical break is in essence because of the back spin of the fast ball, how much less it looks like it drops versus what it should do, right? The illusion that it's not dropping because of gravity. Clearly, gravity still affects the ball, but the induced vertical break number, MLB average is right around 16. He was 2 in better than that in 2023, which is virtually elite. Last year, he was 16.4, right at average. When you factor in the lower velocity and the lower induced vertical break, it became a very ordinary and hitable fast ball. On Saturday, per statcast, he averaged 18 inches of induced vertical break. The shape was back. And it's not just it's to quote Becky Lynch. It's not just me saying that. Statcast is saying that. Walt Weiss is saying that. Chris Sail is saying that. They were all quoted in the AJC and Ken Sagura's article. Uh he wrote from Sarasota. He was at the game. Another friend of the show, Walt Weiss said, quote, "It looks to me early on when I've seen him throw the fastball's got that giddy up again." Chris Sales said, quote, "It's starting to jump. It's kind of expected. Everybody agrees that the shape of the fast ball is back to where it needs to be. And Strider said that was the goal. Like the corre correction, he said on Saturday the goal was to be in the zone, but he said in the past, he said this last year, we wrote it up on the newsletter, that the fast ball shape needs to be there. And it almost doesn't really matter what velocity he's throwing if he doesn't have that shape back. We saw on Saturday the shape is back. And so now it's a matter of building the velocity before opening day, but you've got just under a month before opening day. He has plenty of time to get there. The quote from Spencer how he felt about Saturday. The goal was to try to be in the zone. Everything's coming out of my hand, right? The slider was really good. The curve balls good. I got a strike out with the curve ball. Laid one in for a strike. Change up side of the hand were good. That was really the goal. Try to narrow it in. Kind of set the ball in the zone. He's cementing the mechanics. The shape is back. The locations are there. He's comfortable throwing those other pitches, right? You know, he got he got a whiff on the curveball. He didn't elicit any swings on the two change ups. Both of them came out went out of the zone for a ball, but he's comfortable throwing those pitches. The shape is back. The locations are back. He just has to build the VO. And the national folks who were saying like, "Hey, Strider's wash. Strider's cooked." first start of spring. First start of spring in February. It doesn't make sense to me to say, "Hey, he's throwing below his average last season, so he's clearly in trouble. He's got time." I still maintain the confidence especially seeing that he was able to get the shape all sorry all the way back all of the induced vertical break that he'd lost that was back at this lowered velocity gives me confidence that as that velocity ramps up even if he only gets back to the 95 96 he was last year, which again I don't think is going to happen. But even if he only gets back there, that shape is going to be enough. Remember, we talked about this maybe two weeks ago. He had a really poor stretch in the middle of the season last year. They gave him some extra rest. He went to uh Maven Baseball Lab in Atlanta and it was all hands on deck to fix Spencer Strider. and he came out of that start with better induced vertical break. It wasn't back, it wasn't back to where it needs to be, but it was better. He got half of the missing and induced vertical break back after that. And in the next four starts, he allowed six earned runs in 24 innings with 25 strikeouts. It's a 225 RA. And that was throwing 95. If Spencer Strider can has all of the induced vertical breakback, even if the VO doesn't come back, and again, I am very confident it will. If this is what he's doing at 90% or so in that first start of spring, I'm confident it'll be there. He's going to be back to the Spencer Strider that we all expected him to be. In just a minute, let's talk about the offense. Let's talk about Hursten Waldrip. Let's talk about some of the impressive prospects. We'll do that next right here on Braves Today. But first, today's episode's brought to you by a new sponsor, IQ Bar. That's our exclusive snack, hydration, and coffee sponsor. There's uh IQ Bar protein bars, IQ Mix hydration mixes, and IQ Joe coffees. It's the delicious low sugar brain and body fuel you need to win your day. They have an ultimate sampler pack. Great way to try all their products. You get nine IQ bars, eight IQ mix sticks and four IQ Joe sticks. And what I love, all of their products clean label certified, entirely free of gluten, dairy, soy, GMOs, and artificial ingredients. And with over 20,000 five-star reviews in counting, more people than ever are fueling their busy lifestyle with IQ Bars, brain and body boosting bars, hydration mixes, and mushroom coffees. And again, the ultimate sampler pack includes all three. Right now, IQ Bar is offering our podcast listeners 20% off all IQ Bar products, including the ultimate sampler pack, plus free shipping. to get your 20% off. Text MLB to64,000. That's MLB to64,000. Again, you're texting MLB to64,000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. Welcome back to Braves today. Lindseay Crosby. We got I want to talk about the offense. Real quick before we do that though, we did get an update on Hen Waldrip. Again, shout out to friend of the newsletter, Ken or Ken of the friend of the podcast, Ken Seagura. He asked Walt Weiss about this. I reached out to him was like, "Hey, we haven't got an update. Have have you heard anything?" And he's like, "No, but I'll ask for you." He asked, "The surgery was successful." The quote from Weiss here, quote, "Had the procedure, everything went as expected. Had the loose bodies removed. There was no there was no surprises in that." And so the thought process here is that he should be able to make a full recovery. There wasn't additional damage. There wasn't UCL issues and any of that. Now, they don't have a timetable for him to come back. That's the thing to remember is the team is not officially setting some sort of expectation up front for when they're going to be back. But a lot of guys who have had this similar kind of elbow cleanup of loose bodies, you know, it's sometimes 3 to four months. And so, I mean, that could be mid June, that could be technically May, but probably mid June. It might stretch to the All-Star break. Who knows? But if, and again, not an official time frame from the team, but if this responds the way that other MLB guys have responded to theirs, Hen Waldrip could be back in mid-season. And Walt Weiss did kind of say like there's a whole process that has to take place, especially with a starting pitcher. That was a quote. I should have up front said that was a quote. So, they're trying to be cautious and they're trying to not set expectations of we definitely will have this guy back at this date or that date, but it's very clear that this is not automatically they are out for the season. So, it's just kind of let's kind of remember that [snorts] the Braves offense this spring, I personally have been impressed with what the starters have done. Mike Estrrimsky looks to be the real deal. Atlanta's home run total is actually second in all of baseball to the Yankees. Um, and you know, Micah Strimsky has three of those. Matt Olsen has two, Austin Riley has two, Ronald has one, Drake Baldwin has one, John Heale has two, which is nice. But it's the way that the offense has looked, right? We and think about what all we've seen so far this spring on those home games when you have almost the entire starting lineup in there. It's been a lot of either Jerks and Profar or Drake Baldwin batting second. We had a whole show about that maybe last week. So, go check that out. It's in your feeds. But Ronald has been able to get on base. He's stolen bags. He had one he had one game where he stole both second and third in the span of one at bat to Jurixen Proofar and then got driven in. He then came back around and hit a grand slam in that same inning because the Braves were pouring it on. We've seen Austin Riley hit two home runs and both of those home runs have been just tank shots to center field. Like he's hitting them out in the deepest part of the ballpark. And I do think that means something. These are not wall scrapers that are barely getting out down the line. These are just absolute missiles. He's put six balls in play this spring. Six batted balls. Statcast calls them batted ball events, BBEs. Four of them have had an exit velocity of at least 102. So, he is ripping the baseball. Matt Olsen, same thing. He is absolutely ripping the baseball. A lot of Atlanta starters, granted it's all they're all small samples. Everything in spring training is a small sample, but a lot of Atlanta starters early in games when they're facing major league pitchers have looked really good. And so, and I talked about this maybe last Tuesday, the offense being much better, I think, gives you a little bit of gives me a little bit of confidence in the rotation, even without Schwenbach and Waldrip. And again, it could only be half the season, the rotation being enough that the guys you have are good enough for you to still win 90 games. Like there's a reason why the Braves are projected with like the second highest win total on fan graphs behind the Dodgers and it's because this core is still really good. And I know that 2023 is partly in there, right? The 2023 season is accounted for in those projections, but it's not weighted nearly as much as 24 and 25. And we saw in both of those seasons, Braves hitters not quite look like the same guys in 24. Ultimately, it cost Kevin Citer his job. And then in 2025, it took a while for them to get going. adjusting to the Tim Hires pitching or offensive strategy, being more selective, taking more pitches, working deeper counts, but still pulling the trigger on your pitches, getting a swings off on those pitches. We saw it take a while, but in the second half of the year, even after you lost, even after you lost Riley, right? second half of the year, it still looked like a much better offense than we saw in the first half of 25 and that we saw in 24. And going off of this spring, it looks like these guys are seeing the ball a lot better. I think we talked about this. All the ABS challenges Atlanta's offense have won. They're see they're very getting and part of this is Walt Weiss is encouraging them to challenge a little bit more and get used to it. But they're still winning these challenges though. Like that's important. They are challenging pitches they normally would not be challenging in the regular season. But they're also winning them all. Like Atlanta's guys are seeing the ball really well. They're getting really high quality contact. They're drawing their walks. They're not striking out too much. There are still Riley's five strikeouts to one walk. that's kind of always been his thing. But like Matt Olsen's three walks to one strikeout, you know, like a lot of these guys are they're seeing the ball well. They're drawing their walks. And so it gives me a little confidence in the rotation. I actually wrote about the rotation. It's on today's newsletter. We're not going to go into it here, but long story short, like you have a ton of options, and the question is who is a top of the rotation option? like you don't have as many of those. You have quite a few mid-rotation starters. You have quite a few back rotation starters. Next year you look to have even more of both of those categories. But the question is going to be who becomes your top of the rotation guys to go along with Chris Sale. Does Swellenbuck make it back? Does Strider make it back there? Does Walrip make it back there? Does Lopez step up into that group, etc. So interesting kind of perspective on Atlanta's like Atlanta's offseason next year. They're probably not going to go sign a big name starting pitcher. I'm sorry. They're probably not going to go sign a depth option like they did in this off seasonason because there's a lot of guys there from a quantity perspective. They're going to look for quality again. So, go check that out. braves.com. Your subscriptions over there help out a ton. In just a second, let's talk about some prospects. There's been some really, really impressive prospects this spring. We got a lot of comments about J.R. Richie specifically from Walt Weiss and other guys, but a lot of other players that we've seen impress and some spring training debuts on Sunday in the split squad. We'll do that next right here on Braves Today. But first, today's episode's brought to you by our friends at Fan Tracks. This is the absolute best fantasy baseball platform you can ever imagine. We're coming up on four weeks until opening day. If you haven't gotten your fantasy league set up, now is the time. Go to fantrax f- a nt r ax.com/braves today to sign up for a free account. And when you do that, you get access to the most customizable league platform that there is for fantasy baseball. Tons of scoring options, roster construction options. You can set limits on how many starting pitcher innings you can stack up in a a week or set a minimum of how many innings you have to have. Just tons of different options there. The player pools the absolute deepest in the game. And if you're the type of league that has a buyin, you know, fee for the season, Fantrax has a treasurer option that will manage that for you and integrate it with the league versus needing to have a third-party app and the commissioner manually track all of the money. Fantrax can do it for you. It's built into the platform. So, fantra with anx.com/bractoday. It's f a nt r ax.com/bravestoday to sign up for your free tracks fantasy baseball account today. Final segment of Braves today. Lindsey Crosby. Let's talk about the prospects cuz holy cow there have been some impressive impressive prospects. The number one here, the number one guy that is the story out of camp from the prospect side is J.R. Richie. We saw him get some time in Triple A and I don't necessarily know if he's ready. Like I don't think he's going to make the opening day roster. He probably shouldn't given the roster crunch, right? Given how many guys you have that are out of options, but I do think he's been good enough where you you're going to see him this season. And a lot of the comments about about Richie from the players and the staff have been really good. Drake Baldwin talking to Mark Bowman of MLB.com said quote, "I faced him in lives talking about live batting practice and I didn't see the pitch well either." Um, talking about his his change up. He has changed the grip to like a Vulcan change or a Vulcan split is what he calls it. He's doing similar to Star Trek and you know the Vulcans the live long and prosper sign. He's making a V between his ring and his middle finger. Uh quote, "I faced him in lives. I didn't see the pitch well either. It's definitely a good pitch. A good change is tough to hit and he has a good change up." That is a feel pitch. But Richie has a ton of stuff. He throws six pitches. He throws all three fast balls. He throws a sweeper. He throws a cutter, I'm sorry, a sweeper, a slider, and this Vulcan split change up. The cutter is part of all three fast balls, sorry. And he said, quote, "I've always wanted to be a guy who throws a lot of pitches. I take a lot of pride in being able to do that while throwing strikes and getting outs. He can he can he gets a lot of ground balls with these things, especially the sinker and the change up." And Walt Weiss said that the package is really impressive. Quote, "That was impressive. Multiple plus pitches. There's some power there as well and some pitch ability. He looked really good. The change has a chance to be a really good pitch. Sandy Leon, who caught him in Gwynette, uh said like, quote, "His stuff was really good. To be young and be in big league camp and do that, it says a lot about a guy. In his two outings so far, he's been going in the Chris Sale games. He has one run on four hits in his four innings. the one run came on a solo homer. Uh, six strikeouts, one walk. He's been in the zone about 65% of the time. He got a lot better from the first to the second outing at getting whiffs. I talked after the first one, I wasn't really impressed with his ability to miss bats. He stacked up. He had five strikeouts versus Boston in two innings in the second outing. He did face more backups in that game than he did in the first one, but absolutely appears to be a guy that you're going to see at some point in time this season. Like they are going to call him up because he does I mean he he is honestly good enough to get you through starts. Now, now the thing is again, you're not going to go to him right away because one, you don't want to force it, and two, you have too many guys already who are out of options. Like, I saw somebody speculate, hey, could he make the opening day rotation? From a skill perspective, he probably could, but you're already in a situation where you have like nobody with options outside of um Spencer Strider, who you're not going to option down. Dylan Lee, who you really don't need to option down. Just about everybody else is out of options. And so if you add J.R. Richie, that means you have to get rid of somebody. And right now, the player that you would probably end up getting rid of, I I think the final spot on the roster, and we'll we'll do a roster projection tomorrow on Tuesday's off day. Um, I think right now the player that is probably like in the final spot in the pin, it's probably down to some combination of James Karen, Ian Hamilton, and Jose Suarez. I think Karen Shacks look the best of the three. I think Suarez has the best chance of getting the spot simply because they've told us Joey Wentz is probably making a start the first week of the year. You have 13 games in 13 days. they're probably going to have to use Joey Wentz to make a start in that stretch. And so because you do that, you're in essence, you're going to have a six-man rotation. You need to have a long man in the pen. And maybe they're comfortable making Aaron Bummer that long man temporarily. And you can add Karen, but it feels like Joey Joey Jose Suarez is probably going to be that guy with Joey Wentz in the rotation. So if you try to add J.R. Richie on opening day and again based like from a quality of how well he's pitching you could you could get away with that. You could do that, but to do that now you lose another depth option, right? Your final bullpin spot goes to Bryce Elder probably. And so because of that, no Jose Suarez, no Ian Hamilton, no James Karen check. All those guys are gone. And then sure, you can use Elder as your six starter, but like you lose a depth piece that you could use in the course of the season. This is not about having the best possible rotation on opening day. It's about having enough rotation depth and bullpin depth to get you through 162. Spencer said it great when he talked to Chad Bishop last week. You don't want to peak on opening day or in spring training. You want to peak in the second half of the year as you head into like the stretch towards the postseason and then October. Having J.R. Richie on the opening day roster does not help you peak later in the year because it sacrifices depth. And we've already seen how quickly you can have guys go down and need that depth. You're missing four starters from your opening day roster in Shawn Murphy and Hassan Kim on the position player side and in Schwenbach and Waldrip on the pitcher side. So I think J.R. Richie could I think you'll probably see J.R. Richie. Unless a lot of guys stay healthy and you get those guys back, you probably see J.R. Richie make 10 starts this year. Unless he just completely falls apart at the major league level. I don't think he will. But having him on the opening day roster is not the best decision from a prioritizing depth everywhere else and keeping enough pieces to get through the regular season. Um, outside of that, John Heel, I think, has looked really good. The Braves have been really averse to letting him play shortstop. He's played in, I want to say he's played in eight games so far this spring, and I think I've only seen him at shortstop once. He was in the starting lineup for the split squad game yesterday on the road versus the Twins, but he was the DH. And we've seen him at third. We've seen him at second. We've seen him sub into the DH spot. We've seen him pinch run. We haven't seen him a lot at shortstop. And that's frustrating. I'm choosing to believe they think that there's no question he can handle shortstop at the major league level. And so they're prioritizing getting other guys looks at shortstop who they're still not sure about. That's how I'm choosing to think about it. But he's already hit two run two home runs. There was a and three walks to three strikeouts. Like he's a teenager and he's holding his own in these games. There was a stat out there that Connor Griffin, the teenage number one overall prospect who's playing for the Pirates, I think he has like three home runs this spring. Two of them came in the same game that like he has the most home runs by a teenager in spring training in a while or whatever. John He's one home run behind him. Like John He's right there. That's how impressive he's been this spring. I still think he'll start off at high A versus double A to start this year simply because he skipped high A last year. The very end of the season, they wanted to get him more more a higher level of competition and they put him in double A for the final week of the year or for his like yeah for the final week before the season ended. They could have put him in high A. They chose to send him up another level to double A. And again, that's probably a competition thing, but I expect him to go to high A to start the year. And I'm curious another thing, how does he and Alex Lodis, who I assume is also going to be at DoubleA, how do they share time at um at shortstop? I could see Loode being shortstop and second. I can see John Heel being third in shortstop. Where does Cody Miller go? Do they have Cody Miller who got into a game for the first time over the weekend? Do they have him in high A? Do they have him in single A? We also saw Diego Tors, the outfield international free agent from last year who was super impressive. We saw him at home yesterday sub in for Michael Harris. Drew like a five pitch walk. Really good at bat. Lot of pitches low in the zone and below the zone. Not really chasing. Did a good job. So like we're seeing some of these prospects look pretty good. He's on a prospect. Ben Gamble has three home runs in like 11 and a half bats. It's nuts. But been great to see some of these guys in spring. Pitching wise, we've seen Garrett Bowman and Owen Murphy. They haven't been as impressive as Richie, but you can still see why the Braves invited them to spring. They've held their own. They've looked respectable. I do think they're probably not going to be options in 2027, barring either in a lot of injuries again or a massive jump by one of those guys. But they are they have been pretty impressive so far and it's been good to see them get reps against major leaguers. This has been Braves today for Monday, March 2nd. Do me a favor. Listening on audio, five star reviewed be fantastic. Apple, Spotify, wherever get your podcasts. 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2026 Content Survey can be found HERE: https://forms.gle/7UeTDq2pZWRuUfWa8 Host Lindsay Crosby breaks down Spencer Strider’s spring training debut (2 innings, 32 pitches, 1 run, 2 Ks) and argues concerns about his reduced fastball velocity are premature, given the tiny sample and Strider’s deliberate slow ramp-up plan. The key takeaway is that Statcast showed Strider’s fastball induced vertical break back near his 2023 level, with coaches and teammates noting the pitch is “jumping,” suggesting effectiveness can return as velocity builds. Crosby also shares an update on Hurston Waldrep’s elbow procedure, the Braves’ offense looking strong in small spring samples, highlights, and spotlights prospects JR Ritchie and John Gil. 01:53 Panic about Strider's velo is dumb 13:16 Waldrep Surgery Update 15:16 Spring Offense Impressions 22:59 Prospect Standouts Subscribe to Braves Today on audio wherever you get your podcasts Join our NEW Discord: https://discord.gg/wksQqVNEpX Follow the show on Twitter: @braves_today Follow Lindsay on Twitter: @CrosbyBaseball Read our written work: bravestoday.substack.com Send us questions: contact@bravestoday.com Get 10% off at Chinook Seedery with promo code "Braves" Get 20% off at NCase Cards with promo code "BravesToday" Rocker Chicks by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/