Midnight Stache

 

Here's what's worrying me. 2025 is our first season in a year or so featuring the full range of Spencer Strider. In 2022 and 2023 he was one of the best pitchers in baseball. He nearly won Rookie of the Year in 2022, and he honestly should have won a Cy Young in 2023, a season where he won 20 games and had 281 strikeouts, but apparently sportswriters prefer it if your ERA is lower. Strider is one talented, powerful thrower, and him missing last year felt like a serious loss. You could see it coming, with two straight years where he made virtually all his starts, but it still hurt.

And now this year, where he's finally back and throwing regularly, Strider is 5-8 with a 3.71 ERA and 92 Ks. Maybe it's this brand of Braves team, maybe it's the rehabbing, but it's a worrying sign. 

The factor that still assures me somewhat is that Strider is 26, he's still in his prime, and he can still strike everybody out. In a season where the Braves have lost Chris Sale, Ronald Acuna, Reynaldo Lopez, Spencer Schwellenbach, Grant Holmes and now Austin Riley, Strider has stayed healthy and has thrown pretty well this year, even if that ERA, is it tends to be with Strider, is a little high. He's still making great pace and doing what he should be doing, and ultimately gearing up for a fuller and more masterful 2025. As is the rest of the team.

Currently, there really isn't much more for the Braves to be doing. Any thought of the Braves being a last minute spoiler in the NL East has been thwarted by the Marlins going on a run, and any attempt at being a deadline seller was thwarted by their own GM trying to dump players who really wouldn't be worth it. Marcell Ozuna's magic has worn off, Raisel Iglesias has a -0.2 WAR, nobody in this rotation is gonna make 200 innings, hell, I'm not even sure if anybody's hitting 30 homers this year. Matt Olson might, but who knows.

And the future of this team's similarly murky because if this same thing happens next year and the team has to think about building a new core, is it gonna be around Drake Baldwin? I'd say it's a low sample size, but the Braves signed Michael Harris over less of one and I don't know if that was a great investment.  This is a real identity crisis moment for the Braves, because they were not prepared for a bust like this, and they were not prepared for their formula to be unsustainable. So now they kinda have to ride out these contacts and hope something sparks eventually.

For now, the eyes are on Spencer Strider to see if he can sustain his success, or if it's gonna be even more aggravating getting to game 162.

Coming Tonight: Of all the 'life begins at 30' type veteran pitchers, this guy may have been the most unlikely.