Max Fried, Spencer Strider ranked amongst the top pitchers in baseball by The Athletic
An ace.
It's the guy you want on the mound, game seven, when it's win or go home.
The Braves have had more than their fair share of aces in their history - the trio of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz combined for 648 wins in their career, and are on the Mt. Rushmore of Braves pitching greats.
Going back multiple generations, the Atlanta Braves (and their predecessors, the Milwaukee Braves and Boston Red Stockings/Beaneaters) have had legendary pitchers up and down the timeline: Warren Spahn, Phil Niekro, Lew Burdette, Kid Nichols.
The Athletic, in the 2023 edition of their "Aces Project" ($), talked to 20 various scouts, general managers, assistant GMs, and analytics analysts to rank and grade current MLB pitchers to name the best of this generation, and two Braves hurlers made the 2023 list.
Seperated into tiers and scored on a 1-100 scale, pitchers Spencer Strider and Max Fried are among the top eleven pitchers in all of baseball, according to the panel.
Coming in at #10 (in "The Pool of Applicants" to the Inner Circle tier) is Spencer Strider.
Given a score of 86 out of 100 and receiving five "Ace" votes and six "Applicant" votes, the 24 year-old Strider's recognized for his overpowering duo of the four-seams fastball and the "nasty" slider. Asked whether or not he would rise into the "Ace" tier, multiple respondents cited the need to see him dominate over a full season of starting with just the two pitches (he started last season as a reliever before transitioning to the rotation, and missed the end of the year with an oblique injury).
Right behind him, at #11, was Max Fried. The 29 year-old lefty received a score of 85 (up fro last year's 77) and four votes each for "Ace" and "Applicant", and is just on the cusp of being an ace according to the panel. He was dinged for his lower strikeout rate (Fried struck out "only" 8.3 batters per 9 innings last year, as compared to Strider's 13.8 and most ahead of him having a K/9 greater than 10.0), but received recognition for his exceptional command - Fried was fifth in all of baseball (among qualified starters) with only 1.55 walks per nine innings last season.
Amongst other praise, he was specifically singled out for preventing hard contact and not "beating himself", traits he's learned as he enters his peak.
READ: What a Max Fried extension with Atlanta Braves might look like
Kyle Wright, 27, also made the list, coming in at 30th. His score was 62.5, and he received one vote for "Applicant". Citing the exemplary sinker and curveball, Wright benefited from playing on a 101-win team to lead all of Major League Baseball with 20 wins last season.
Not to be left out, Charlie Morton also made the list, at #49. The 39 year-old received a score of 50, with praise for his veteran mentorship inside the clubhouse but dinged for his increase in walk rate and increased home run rate.
Read the full piece on The Athletic.
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