Braves Ace Has Been Historically Unlucky So Far In His Career

The Atlanta Braves have one of the best pitchers in all of baseball, but he hasn't been very lucky to this point in his career

The Atlanta Braves have reason to believe that the luck is going to turn for one of their best players. 

Because after the start of his career, it can't get that much worse...can it? 

Braves starter Spencer Strider dominated MLB in 2023, leading the league in strikeouts (281), strikeout rate (13.5 K/9) wins (20) and winning percentage (.800), but was "only" a 4th-place finisher in the NL Cy Young voting owing to his ERA of 3.86, which would have been the highest mark of any Cy Young winner since the award was created. 

A lot of it can be attributed to luck - specifically, bad luck. 

Strider actually led the National League in Fielding Independent Pitching, at 2.85, indicating that he was dealing with bad luck when balls were put into play. 

Fielding Independent Pitching, shortened to "FIP", is a variation of ERA that isolates only what a pitcher can directly control by removing batted balls that are left to the defense to handle - FIP's only looking at strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches, and home runs. 

When a pitcher's FIP is higher than their ERA, that's usually a sign that that pitcher's batted balls are falling at a higher average than usual across the league. 

And for Spencer Strider, not only has that been happening, it's been happening a lot. 

Per Codify Baseball, the difference in Strider's FIP (2.48) versus his ERA (3.37) across his first 50 starts is the highest since baseball switched to overhand pitching in 1884. 

That's one hundred and forty years. 

Per research done at FanGraphs, there's multiple reasons for a discrepancy in FIP and ERA - defense, sequencing, and luck...and apparently none of them are on Strider's side. 

The defense's role in batted ball events

This one makes the most sense when trying to explain the issue, right? If a pitcher has a poor defense behind them, statistically they're less likely to have plays made in their favor than with an hypothetical "average" defense. Was this an issue for Strider in his first two years in the league? 

Looking at both individual and team rankings, it was! 

In 2023, Atlanta was 15th in total defense, per Fielding Bible's "Defensive Runs Saved", with a collective 16 DRS. Digging into the specifics, Atlanta's most significant struggles were on balls hit to shortstop (-13 DRS) and outfielders (-10), excluding Michael Harris II (+8 DRS).

Let's check Strider's spray charts, to see where his hits went. 

FanGraphs

What a coincidence, a lot of base hits to both left and right field, with specific concentrations in the gaps and all around the right fielder's position. 

What's that we said about Ronald Acuña Jr's defense? That he significantly underperformed on routine plays, owing to both a poor initial reaction and burst? One look at Strider's hit chart bears that out, as there's a much smaller circle of outs around right field than center or left (as well as all four of Strider's triples allowed being hit to right field).

Additionally, the impacts of Michael Harris II shading over to help the leftfielder are visible, with some balls falling between Harris and Acuña that would either be outs with a better right field jump or a more neutral centerfield positioning.   

(Or more aggressive use of defensive replacements, as Jake asked for back in September.) 

The FanGraphs research tells us that defense accounts for up to 40% of a pitcher's ERA/FIP discrepancy, and for a flyball pitcher in Strider, it's evident from looking at the spray chart.  

(I'm also noticing the plentiful green dots behind second base, but with Ozzie missing significant time in 2022 and grading out with a positive DRS, I'm guessing that might be some Vaughn Grissom impact there. More research is needed.)   

Sequencing plays a factor, as well, but it's mostly luck

Adding the impacts of sequencing brings the total share of the blame from 40% to 50%, so it's still only telling half the story. 

(It's important to note this is not pitcher sequencing, but rather game script and situational hitting. Strider only has two primary pitches - for now - and so his pitch sequencing doesn't change much, but we're talking about players changing their approaches to match the game situation. You don't swing for the fences when tied in the bottom of the 9th with a runner on 3rd and only two outs, as a base hit wins you the game there.)

So that leaves 50% for luck. Luckily, we have some ways of checking that. The MLB average for Batting Average on Balls In Play last season was .300. Strider's BABIP for the two year sample was... just barely above that at .304.   

But looking into his performances, it's clear that Strider's wins and losses are significantly influenced by his luck - his BABIP in wins is .242, while it's .337 in no decisions and an absurd .480 in losses. 

Now, some of this might be sample size noise - he's only lost ten regular season games in his career, with only twenty-three no decisions, so I don't quite know if this is a statistically significant number yet. 

(And I think that just might be how this works - Fried's three BABIPs in those situations in his career are .259/.325/.372, so similar to Strider's but not nearly as extreme.)

But Strider's got a few other luck measurements that show he's just had some bad luck that should eventually stabilize. 

In his starts with zero to two runs scored by the Braves (which there isn't many, admittedly - did you see that offense last year?), his BABIP is .446. So when he's not getting run support, he's also unlucky with balls put in play. 

(Aside: He's also given up extraordinarily hard contact late in the order, specifically with #6 hitters having the best numbers of the entire lineup against him. They're batting .262/.326/.437 with five homers and a .431 BABIP against Strider. It's 138 plate appearances, but just a weird trend.) 

So this is conclusive, right? 

Afraid not. Ultimately (and unsatisfyingly), I don't think we definitely know what's happening. Recent research from PitcherList has figured out that BABIP doesn't stabilize for a pitcher until 2000 balls in play, which is about four full seasons of starts for anyone in a five-man rotation. 

But in the meantime, we can hope that he starts to get some better luck, because an ERA that's closer to his FIP and his usual strikeout & win totals should be enough to get Strider a Cy Young award. 

Not that he'd tell you that the Cy Young is what he's gunning for. He wants to hoist that World Series championship. 

Spencer Strider: "No acceptance of anything less than winning a World Series"

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