Atlanta Braves Prospects: Spencer Strider Scouting Report

The Pitch Mix

Fastball, slurve, change-up.

You read from the article he’s going to be 60-70 percent four-seam fastball all of the time. Like Shuster, his fastball plays much better up the zone as it has some rise to it.

In the starts I watched at Mississippi he was able to maintain 95-97 deep into games. As a reliever with the Atlanta Braves, he averaged 98 MPH with the fastball.

https://twitter.com/mbraves/status/1434661901968060417?s=20

You hear him talk about his slider/curve in that article, which is why I refer to it as a slurve. Trackman data picks it up as a slider.

This is where it really becomes hard to judge because in the games I watched in the minors there was much more vertical (North-South) movement on the pitch, which is what he wants. But in Atlanta, it played much more like a slider with more East-West break.

It’s also possible the pitch I’m seeing in the minors is a change-up — it’s hard to tell when they don’t show the pitch speed on the broadcast. But here is the pitch I’m talking about, so see for yourselves.

I watched two minor league starts. In one, he was probably 80 percent fastballs and was just blowing them by hitters.

In the other, an August 6 start against the Birmingham Barons in which he struckout 12 over 6.1 shutout innings, I thought he featured that off-speed pitch a lot more and was deadly with it.

Whatever the off-speed pitches are, developing that slurve and change-up will ultimately determine if he becomes an elite-level starter or dominant middle reliever. But I have confidence he’s destined for one of those two roles.