Dominant Braves Starter Hints at Adding New Pitch This Offseason
The Atlanta Braves aren't content to "rest on their laurels" after a great 2023 season.
Despite the record setting offensive production from last year's squad, president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos has been active and aggressive on the trade market, getting Jarred Kelenic to be the everyday starter in left field and acquiring Chris Sale to reinforce the rotation.
And that current rotation is taking Anthopoulos' efforts at improving to heart, with potential upgrades of their own. Spencer Strider, speaking at last weekend's Braves Fest, hinted at another upgrade to his already devastating fastball/slider arsenal.
"You know, the changeup is something I've thrown my whole life, but as I've learned more about my body, biomechanics, and my general strengths and weaknesses, it's something I've come to learn is not an easy pitch for me to throw, mechanically. So, I think the ceiling for it is where it (currently) is - it's never going to be something I can throw 50% of the time. There are other pitches that I can learn, that I have an higher aptitude for, that I might try to learn and that may be a direction that I may move in."
Strider's changeup, which saw an increase in usage during the 2023 season up to a whopping 7.3% of his pitches, was effective in that small sample with only a .122 batting average allowed and a +2 run value (74th percentile), per MLB Statcast.
But as Strider alluded to, it's not the easiest pitch to throw for some pitchers. Since Strider throws a four-seam fastball, a pitch designed to resist gravity as it heads toward the top of the zone, he'd ideally want to throw a changeup with more vertical drop (called "sink), as compared to armside movement (called "run"), to get maximum effectiveness on the pairing. To do this, it requires pronating the hand, or rotating the hand and forearm to face down at release, imparting spin to both cause that downward movement and take away velocity. Doing that while also using the same arm speed as a fastball isn't incredibly easy to do, and the changeup is commonly labeled as a "feel" pitch for that reason.
Most pitchers feature a bias towards pronation, supination, or backspin, and Strider's definitely not a supination guy. ("Supination" is rotation of your hand and forearm so that they both face up at release.) By his own admission, Strider's past experiments with a curveball didn't go well primarily because he doesn't supinate well.
"I had to really hook it and try to get it over the top and roll out, so it didn’t have any velocity,” Strider told The Athletic's Eno Sarris back in May ($). “I was inducing a lot of movement but it wasn’t tunneling at that point," and so the switch to a harder breaking ball, a slider, allowed Strider to get negative movement on the pitch and maintain the tunnel, or identical flight, of the fastball and slider during the first half of the trip to the plate.
Strider's "motor preferences", or natural movement patterns, just don't mesh well with the movements required to throw curveballs and changeups. It happens.
But despite that, Strider made it clear that he wasn't just going to throw any new pitch - it needed to be a good one. "I understand the logic behind 'more pitches equals harder to hit', but that's not necessarily true for me. What makes me successful is really just being on time - it's difficult to react (to the slider) when you have to honor the fastball, so execution is really the biggest thing for me. I think that where I got in trouble sometimes."
In Strider's mind, it's better to stick with the primary fastball/slider pairing when they're two of the individual best pitches in baseball rather than try to force a third (changeup) pitch or a new pitch that isn't as good into the mix.
What pitch could Strider look to add?
As a pitcher that doesn't supinate, a sweeper feels like the best pitch to add if Strider's going to add something, as the mechanics aren't that difficult to pick up. But the sweeper, while en vogue last season, isn't an all-curing panacea: It has the highest platoon splits of any single pitch in baseball, owing to its extreme gloveside movement, unless you can reliably locate it inside to opposite handed batters.
There's also the possibility of a two-seam fastball, because part of the appeal of that changeup Strider (infrequently) uses now is not just the velocity difference, but also the movement. "It’s a power change because I throw hard, but I want it to be slow. I want it to be slow and more horizontal movement, I’m looking for something to move to my arm side." A two-seamer inherently features more velocity than a changeup, so it's not a perfect fit, but it does move to the armside and would feature into the power look that Strider currently gives, as well as also having the benefit of now disrupting the "sight picture" of a hitter that's been looking at fastballs up and sliders down for the at-bat.
“You throw one fastball down, all of a sudden they have to think about that,” Strider told Sarris. “Even if they are sitting on the fastball up, their brain cannot process 98 mph with 20 vertical inches of movement and still be on time every time and get the barrel to the ball, especially anyone that has a launch angle swing."
Having a natural backspin motor preference, there's also a thought that a splitter would work well with what Strider is naturally able to do already. The splitter, being such a low-spin pitch, often kills the vertical movement that a backspin pitcher can't really eliminate naturally on a standard changeup.
No new pitches yet
As of now, the fastball and slider pairing are good enough, and Strider doesn't really need to use a third pitch that often.
But when it's time to add that third pitch, it may not be as simple as picking that eventual third pitch based on what would work well with Strider's movement patterns. Lance Brozdowski, a player development analyst for Marquee Network known for his detailed pitching breakdowns on his YouTube channel, told us that he thinks there'd by a different dynamic at play for Strider.
"What is the purpose of the new pitch?"
Lance explained that adding a new pitch just to add a pitch doesn't accomplish a lot, but if there's a specific thing Strider wants to do, there's the ability to pick a specific pitch for that scenario and adjust part of the arsenal to adjust off of that.
For Strider, adding a sweeper would mean adjusting his existing gyro slider to reduce the horizontal movement and make it more of a pure vertical breaking pitch.
But either way, there's no obvious upgrades to make to Strider's arsenal right now - his existing pitches are so good that the best path to improvement is just tweaking the changeup he already has, if that's possible.
Strider didn't seem to think it was...but then again, he's been wrong before. And there's nothing wrong with thinking ahead.
Important Braves Today Offseason Stories
2023 MLB Free Agent Rankings
Current Atlanta Braves prospect rankings
Current Atlanta Braves 40-man roster
2024 International Free Agency tracker
Check out Braves Today on Socials!
Follow Braves Today on Twitter!
Like Braves Today on Facebook!
Check out the homepage for more Atlanta Braves News!
Subscribe to Braves Today on YouTube!
Get Exclusive Braves Merchandise