Spencer Strider is next up as we take a deep dive into the Atlanta Braves farm system giving a detailed overview of some of their top prospects.
The 2020 MLB Draft was a short one, but it’s shaping up to be a very successful one for the Atlanta Braves even though they only made four picks.
We already talked bout Jared Shuster, who they took in the first round. And Bryce Elder who was selected in the fifth round. I plan to do a report on Jesse Franklin as well, who I’m also really excited about.
But today we’re going to focus on maybe the player from that draft with the most upside in Spencer Strider.
A fourth-round pick out of Clemson in that 2020 draft, Spencer Strider has already made his big league debut pitching across five levels in 2021.
In the minors, he had a 3.64 ERA in 94 innings with 153 strikeouts, a WHIP of 1.106, 3.8 BB/9, and 14.6 K/9.
The Braves called him up at the end of the year as an audition for the postseason bullpen and he gave up 1 earned run (a solo home run) on 2 hits with a walk and no strikeouts.
He threw 51 innings as a freshman at Clemson and 25.2 innings that summer in the Cape before missing all of 2019 after having Tommy John surgery.
And then he threw 12 innings at Clemson in 2020 before the season was shut down, so it wasn’t a great sample size in college but the Braves took a chance on him anyway.
As I began my research on him I was all prepped to say he was destined to be an elite reliever and can’t make it as a starter without a secondary pitch.
But then this article changed everything for me. So do me a favor, stop and read that FanGraphs article and then come back — you won’t be disappointed.
Hearing the way he thinks about the game and knowing what he needs to do with his pitches to be successful gives me hope that he could be a frontline starter one day.
And maybe I’m being naive and reading too much into one article — maybe everything other pitcher is that knowledgeable with what they need to do with their pitches — but he had me Googling things I’d never heard of.
After reading that I can’t wait to see the next evolution of Spencer Strider.