2024 Braves Season in Review: Spencer Strider

The 2023 rotation star was one of the first big injury blows for the Braves in 2024.

2024 seemed poised to be a bit of a changing of the guard for the Atlanta Braves rotation —Spencer Strider earned the start on Opening Day, unseating Max Fried, who had held the title since 2021. With his 2023 campaign under his belt, the sky felt like the limit for Spencer Strider. The injury bug had other ideas, though, and as Braves fans now well know, Strider was just the tip of the iceberg.

How Acquired

The Braves selected the former Clemson Tiger with their fourth round pick in the 2020 Draft. Strider famously shot through Atlanta’s minor league system, making his MLB debut in October of 2021. After beginning his 2022 campaign in the bullpen, he went on to establish himself as a rotation stalwart by the end of the season, ultimately earning a six-year contract extension just a year after his debut. The deal, worth $75 million, keeps Strider in Atlanta through 2028 and includes a $22 million option with a $5 million buyout for 2029.

What were the expectations?

What wasn’t an expectation for Strider in 2024—except, perhaps, an injury? At the end of 2023, Steamer projected Strider to lead the majors in WAR (4.9) in 2024, edging out Zack Wheeler as the preseason “best pitcher in baseball.” His strikeout projection was a modest league-leading 257, with second-place Gerrit Cole slated to tally 225 as a central estimate. 2024 also figured to be an interesting battle between Strider and Max Fried for staff ace —isn’t it wild to think that Chris Sale wasn’t even in the same zip code of a conversation back then?

You could say, in retrospect, that Strider met enough of the criteria for needing a second serious elbow procedure that going under the knife again should have always been an expectation. But, he managed to avoid it with very few injury hiccups overall in both 2022 and 2023, so no one was expecting the bad kind of lightning to strike so suddenly in 2024, but here we are.

2024 Results

What ultimately transpired was Strider only making two starts in 2024 before being shut down in early April and undergoing elbow surgery for the second time in his young career —he had Tommy John early in fall practice in 2018 at Clemson. This time, though, Strider was able to have the internal brace procedure, as the damage to his UCL was less substantial than initially feared. Once the surgery began, Dr. Keith Meister uncovered that the issue was a bone fragment that had developed since his last surgery, rather than an issue caused by Strider’s mechanics.

Before all of that went down, not only was Strider named the Braves’ Opening Day starter, but he also wound up getting the start in Atlanta’s home opener due to poor weather during the first week of the year. He threw well enough on Opening Day in Philadelphia, limiting the Phillies to two runs on three hits with eight strikeouts and two walks over five innings.

But, things were clearly off in his home opener outing against the Diamondbacks, during which he allowed five runs on seven hits in just four innings on 88 pitches. He walked three and only struck out four in what ended up being a Braves walkoff win, but he told trainers afterwards that he was experiencing more discomfort than normal. That was April 5, and he went on to have surgery on April 12.

The poor second start, discomfort-caused or not, kind of messed up his line, not that anyone really cares. He finished with a 168 ERA-, 127 FIP-, and 99 xFIP-, as well as 0.0 fWAR, despite his good first outing.

What went right

The clear highlight of Strider’s 2024 was that his warmup song — which we regrettably only got to hear once at Truist Park — was Steely Dan’s “Do It Again.” His vinyl night in August when he got to feature local Atlanta bands remains one of the coolest promos I’ve seen. On the field, honorable mention to the fact that he was able to mostly silence the Philly faithful, in whose heads he lives rent free, on Opening Day.

One emerging development was that Strider added a curveball to his arsenal during Spring Training, and while we did not get to fully appreciate it yet, what we did see of it was nasty.

And one more, for good measure.

When Strider first got hurt, there was plenty of speculation that this new curveball — or just his flame-throwing-ness in general — may have had something to do with it, but since it didn’t, watching him hone this pitch over a longer stint of a season is going to be very fun.

What went wrong

I think we’ve probably adequately covered that, haven’t we? That second start of the year was painful in all the ways, basically.

Instead, I’d like to take this space to shout out another flew-through-the-farm Spencer S.—Spencer Schwellenbach, of course. Strider’s shoes are not easy to fill, but Schwellenbach took the opportunity provided by Strider’s injury and turned a bummer of a situation into a bright spot.

2025 outlook

Because Strider had the internal brace procedure, it was initially thought that his return timeframe might be a little sooner than we expect with traditional Tommy John Surgery. That said, though, Alex Anthopoulos said at the GM Meetings earlier this week that Strider will not be ready to return by Opening Day. At this point in the offseason, his availability is another question mark in a rotation that may end up losing Fried or Charlie Morton, or both. But, when you combine the fact that Strider’s need for surgery was not caused by anything in his mechanics with the standards that he holds himself to, it seems reasonable to expect that he’ll be back to the pitcher we know and love in due time next year.