Spencer Strider is Not Dead Yet
And assorted thoughts on the U.S. Open and the Stanley Cup Finals
Current in-brain background music:
“Turn the Page,” Bob Seger
Can check:
Buc-cee’s house blend coffee, black
Free legal advice:
Don’t threaten baseball players just because you’re bad at betting on sports.
“You don’t feel much like riding
You just wish the trip was through.”
When you’ve been watching the Atlanta Braves since the late 1980s, you can imagine a lot of terrible shit happening, because you’ve seen it with your own eyes. There’s been plenty to go around this season already. But Spencer Strider sucking was not a possibility I considered.
Two seasons ago, Strider was baseball’s best strikeout pitcher by a wide margin. Through five ignominious starts, though, Strider began the 2025 season with an 0-5 record, a negative WAR, and less than one strikeout per inning.
Major elbow surgery is a hell of a drug. Even though pitchers typically need “only” about 12 months’ recovery before being cleared to play, they commonly need two years before they’re back to their old selves. (Look at Robbie Ray, for instance: AL Cy Young Award winner in 2021; Tommy John surgery in May 2023; so-so results in limited action in 2024; currently 8-1 with a 2.55 ERA in 2025.)
So I’m not shocked that Strider has looked merely mortal. But before Opening Day, I was thinking more along the lines of “Spencer Striderish” and not so much “the kid from ‘Rookie of the Year’ after he falls at the end of the movie and his elbow goes back to normal.”
Apparently it’s not just the elbow thing, though. FanGraphs says Strider’s arm angle has changed for the worse. I didn’t pay enough attention in high school geometry to agree or disagree. All I know is what I see.
Which brings us to Truist Park, where I stopped for Saturday afternoon’s clash of titans between the Braves and the Colorado Rockies. The Braves won 4-1, but the real story was Strider’s first resurgent performance since his surgery: six shutout innings, in which he allowed just three hits and tallied 13 strikeouts.
Great, right? Eh, kinda. Even during his first few innings, when he was mowing down Rockies hitters, Strider’s fastball still never got above 97 mph — and more often, it was 96. By the time he got through 75 pitches or so, it was down to 94. His sixth inning looked good on paper, but by then, the fastball had lost a lot of life. By the time he walked off the mound, he looked gassed after just 87 pitches.
It’s important not to make too much out of any of this: Strider isn’t “back,” but he’s also not finished. The stone-cold killer is still somewhere in there. But until 2026, short bursts of dominance like Saturday’s are probably his ceiling.
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Speaking of things that shouldn’t be overestimated: the U.S. Open is still a going concern. Sirius XM’s radio broadcast split time filling my four-hour drive to Cobb County from western North Carolina, sharing space with “The Silmarillion” on audiobook. J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories about Middle-earth have a lot in common with pro golf: one is full of orcs and evil wizards who desire gold and power for no apparent reason, and the other was written by J.R.R. Tolkien.
To cut to the chase, I’m taking Sam Burns to finish it off on Sunday. By now, he’s seen Oakmont at both ends of its spectrum — fast on Friday, and water-logged on Saturday — and emerged from both rounds with the tournament lead. Sunday’s setup will be somewhere in between, which ought to let him coast through the last few holes, if he can hang onto the lead until then.
. . .
And as long as we’re talking about things that Saturday nearly saw to their conclusions: the Florida Panthers now lead the Stanley Cup Finals three games to two after ripping the Edmonton Oilers’ souls from their bodies a la Shang Tsung in Game 5.
Florida spent most of the regular season looking very good, but ever since the playoffs started, they’ve been bloodthirsty murderers. They’re great at 5-on-5, they’re great at killing penalties, and Sergei Bobrovsky’s goaltending has been fine, at worst. If there’s been a better trade deadline pickup than Brad Marchand (two goals in Game 5, bringing him up to five for the series) during the past five years, then I missed it. Before Saturday night, a Game 7 felt inevitable. Now, Game 6 feels like a formality.
. . .
That’s all. Happy Father’s Day to all my tired dads out there.
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