Braves Star Has Single Best Strikeout Pitch in All of Major League Baseball

The Atlanta Braves developed a young stud that's already one of the best pitchers of this generation

The Atlanta Braves, sometimes, just know. 

Atlanta just knew when they took a pitcher that had both a 4.71 ERA and Tommy John surgery at Clemson in the 4th round of the 2020 MLB Draft and turned him into one of baseball's preeminent strikeout artists. 

Spencer Strider led all of baseball with 281 strikeouts last season, and MLB.com recently called his slider baseball's "nastiest" pitch. 

Going through all 30 teams and identifying the single best pitch among their pitching staff, MLB.com singled out Strider's slider for its dominance - of Strider's 281 strikeouts last season, 139 of them came on the slider, the most strikeouts for any single pitch in all of MLB. 

Strider's slider isn't the only pitch on the leaderboard - coming in 3rd place is his fastball, getting 124 strikeouts in 2023. 

Spencer Strider, 99mph Fastball and 87mph Slider, Overlay.

Yes, his mechanics are overlaid too. pic.twitter.com/ibdIGs3HWI

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) September 1, 2023

(Strider's two primary offerings, collectively thrown over 90% of the time, sandwich former Brave and current Toronto Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman and his splitter, which accounted for 127 strikeouts last season.)

Both pitches rate among the best in baseball from sheer volume of strikeouts, yes, but also most other metrics you can find for pitch quality or effectiveness. 

Strider's slider allowed a .154 batting average against in 2023, up from 2022's .139 but still one of the best marks in all of baseball. It has a Stuff+ rating of 124.7, which is surprisingly worse that the fastball's 138.3 Stuff+ but got better results, as the fastball gave up a .256 average. 

How to Improve the Fastball

Locations for the fastball are going to be the differentiator for Strider taking that next leap into winning a Cy Young. Of his 22 homers allowed in 2023, a disproportionate number (17) came on the fastball, when according to the pitch distributions (59% FB/34% SL/7% CH) it should have been closer to 12 homers on the fastball. 

Diving into those 17 fastball homers, 6 of them came on fastballs that went middle-middle, with only two of those (a full count and a 3-1 count) coming on a do-or-die strike situation where he HAD to throw into the zone.  

Strider's 2023 homers off of the fastball, sorted by strike zone location / Baseball Savant

And on four instances in the sample, it was multiple fastball homers in the same game that plagued Strider, with the Diamondbacks (7/20), Mets (6/08), and Adolis Garcia (Rangers, 5/17) getting him twice and the Tigers getting him three times (6/14). 

Should He Add Another Pitch?

There's been plenty of discourse about "you can't survive with only two pitches in MLB", but Strider's two pitches are unique in that they're both amongst the best individual pitches in all of baseball. 

We've written before about how Strider has been historically unlucky with batted balls so far in his career, with the difference in his career ERA (3.37) versus his Fielding Independent Pitching (2.48) being the highest since baseball switched to overhand pitching in 1884. 

We've also discussed Strider's biomechanical motor preferences and why they've forced him to admit that the changeup won't likely improve to where it can become more than a change of pace.  

The fact of the matter is, forcing a new pitch for the sake of adding a pitch could actually lower the quality of his existing offerings, a fact that Marquee Network Player Development Analyst (and friend of the site) Lance Brozdowski broke down recently on his YouTube channel: 

So it's up in the air as to what Strider will do. There's a thought that doing nothing and waiting for positive regression in the batted balls could improve the results, but a cerebral pitcher like Strider isn't likely to sit back and do nothing. 

We'll have to wait and see, but it'll make for appointment viewing. 

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