Braves pitcher projected to win MLB Triple Crown next season

The Atlanta Braves continue to get love from preseason projections, including a rather rare award

The Atlanta Braves have had at least one starting pitcher put up some sort of league-leading performance in recent seasons, with (recently-traded) Kyle Wright leading the league with 21 wins in the 2022 season while Max Fried was the runner-up for NL Cy Young. 

And the Braves player that led all of baseball in strikeouts last season, putting up 281 punchouts at a rate of 13.5 per nine innings, is expected to reach another level of dominance in 2024. 

Spencer Strider is projected to win MLB's Pitching Triple Crown in 2024, with his FanGraphs' "Depth Charts" projections having him as MLB's leader in wins, ERA, and strikeouts. 

Per their calculations, Strider's looking at a 15-7 record, with a 3.18 ERA and 257 strikeouts. 

(For context, Strider led all of baseball in 2023 with 20 wins, at a .800 winning percentage, but had a 3.86 ERA.) 

No starter has won the pitching Triple Crown in a full season since we had two winners in 2011 - Justin Verlander took it in the American League, while Clayton Kershaw took it in the National League for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Verlander went 24-5 in 2011, with a 2.40 ERA and 250 strikeouts for the Detroit Tigers in his age-28 season, winning not only the Cy Young for the American League but also the MVP. Kershaw's season wasn't quite as dominant, but his 21 wins and league-leading 2.28 ERA with 248 strikeouts won him the NL Cy Young, the first of three in his career. 

(That year's NL MVP award, regrettably, went to Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun, who failed a drug test and attempted to get the sample collector fired by crafting a legal strategy centered around the collector's efforts to preserve the sample when it was unable to be shipped immediately. He continued to publicly proclaim his innocence, stating in 2012 that "I would bet my life that I'm clean"...only to admit to having taken PEDs in 2013 when the Biogenesis case became public and accepting a suspension from MLB without appeal or dispute.)

Shane Bieber of the Cleveland Guardians won the Triple Crown in the abbreviated 2020 season, going 8-1 with a 1.63 ERA and logging 122 strikeouts. He too win the Cy Young award that season, and was a 4th-place finisher in the MVP race for the American League. 

Strider is already the betting favorite for the NL Cy Young award in 2024, coming in at +550 on FanDuel, but is "only" 33rd in MVP odds at +15000, the first pitcher on the list. Only 11 players who exclusively pitched in MLB (so, excluding Shohei Ohtani) have won both the Cy Young and MVP in the same season, with Clayton Kershaw in 2014 the last time it was done in baseball. 

So if Strider can pull it off in 2024, it'll go down as one of the greatest pitching seasons in team history. 

FanGraphs projects an incredible season for Atlanta Braves star

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