Spencer Strider was one of the more fun names to keep tabs on during the 2021 season. Strider was drafted in the 4th round of the 2020 amateur draft. He was a bit of an unknown coming out of Clemson because of the shortened Covid season.
He made himself well known to Braves fans after being promoted so quickly. Strider started the season in low A Augusta. He performed at such a high level at each stop that he ultimately would find his way in Atlanta by season’s end.
Strider struck out an impressive 14.6 K/9 combined clip during his minor league journey. That is 153 strikeouts in 94 minor league innings. He posted a combined 3.64 ERA as he seemed to be better than most of his minor league competition.
The last weekend of the season the Atlanta Braves decided to give Strider the call up to the big leagues. He was given an opportunity to potentially carve out a postseason bullpen role. He gave up 1 run in a short 2 ⅓ innings that weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough t in the eyes of Braves management.
Strider is one to keep an eye on for the future of the Braves pitching. They will most likely want to keep Strider a starter as long as they can. However, he could find himself immediately making major contributions in the Atlanta bullpen as soon as this season. The fastball/slider combination Strider possesses seems to be enough to perform at a high level in a major level bullpen at minimum. I look forward to seeing how he progresses and hope we see plenty of him in Atlanta in 2022.
Poll question of the day: will college baseball increase in popularity if we go through yet another protracted period where games are lost due to labor dispute?
I could see Strider being our best RH reliever in 2022. It’s exciting to watch his YouTube. In any other environment, I think we’re talking about him a lot more.
@2
I think that is the best spot for him. He’s got 2 REAL plus pitches that has good separation.
@1
Possibly briefly? At least among those who already root for college football/basketball teams and could easily root for the corresponding school’s baseball team. But college baseball season doesn’t line up well enough with the MLB season to give fans looking for baseball more than a month and a half of games to follow, or two if you add the NCAA tournament. (You could start following in February when college baseball season starts, but people aren’t really looking for baseball in February or March for the most part). I think it would just be a “this year” sort of thing for most.
https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1485717509852569606?s=20
Me: Oh, hey, respected and knowledgeable baseball writer Jeff Passan is reporting on the labor negotiations! Oh, hmm, he seems to have nothing to say and made it seem as worse as he possibly could have.
::Logs off Twitter::
@4 I agree with that.
I’m suffering from sports withdrawal, so I may get into college baseball a tick, especially if MLB games are lost. I actually watched the NFL yesterday. I’m getting desperate.
@6 Well, at least you picked an entertaining day to watch it
@7 Yeah, I was sad to see ole Tommy and the locals sad about the Bucs loss, but it was an incredible slate of games. Hard to beat that. A friend of mine is a Dawgs/Braves/Bucs fan, so I was really pulling for him to keep the hope of a trifecta alive.
@8 The Bucs defense was so bad yesterday. Bowles didn’t do himself any favors to get that next head coaching job
@6
You need to add basketball to your fan portfolio (or hockey, I guess, but I see basketball as more likely for you). That way, there is literally no time when one of your teams isn’t playing. (Warning: May not apply during pandemics or other super-crazy world happenings.)
@5
I really didn’t read it that way at all. I think he’s just reporting what happened and what to expect, which is what people expect out of him. Not sure what you want, to be honest. He’s paid to do more than say: “They met today and they’re meeting tomorrow and I have nothing whatsoever to say other than that.” And it shouldn’t be news that they’re actually meeting, but like…it is, because they’ve met once in two months prior to today.
@9
On the Rams, that was about to be the worst choke I’ve ever seen…and I’m a Falcons fan. The Bucs helped them avoid it by executing one of the dumbest all-out blitzes I have ever seen. You gain virtually nothing by getting a sack there, all you’re trying to do is keep an offense that had been happily dropping bowling balls on their own foot for the previous 45 minutes out of field goal range so you can get to overtime. Don’t get me wrong, I like blitzing more than dropping into full zones in a general sense, but some of these blitz-happy defensive coordinators, my God…
@4 Agree completely. I am a big college sports fan but college baseball just doesn’t do it for me. The most famous article ever written about college baseball, written during a strike season, has a lot of resonance for me, though. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/07/20/the-web-of-the-game I was at that game.
@10 I kinda want to get into hockey, to be honest. The Lightning are a huge favorite here locally, and it’s such a quick, fast-paced game. I can appreciate that portion of hockey. Of course, basketball is also a quick, fast-paced game. Unfortunately, University of Florida basketball (the basketball I do watch) has a clunker at the head coach spot after we were spoiled for 15 years with Billy D.
RE: Passan
I feel like his guarded optimism was unnecessary. I don’t think it’s unfair for him to say, “The owners and players met for the first time in a while today. While no substantive exchange of terms occurred, the fact that they’re talking and will do so again tomorrow is a positive sign.” And then he could opine that he thinks eventually there will be an actual exchange of terms. I think that carries a different tone than his tepid endorsement of “passes as progress”. No, it’s just good ole progress.
But I’m picking nits. I just wish the writers would go out of their way to promote positivity in the progress since this is starting to wear us all down a tick. We’ve had this BS 2 out of the last 3 years. I think there might be real damage being done to the game at some point.
@11 Agreed…that was insanely stupid and Bowles got what he deserved. Like you said, just stay out of the way and the Rams would have messed it up.
Hockey (NJ Devils) & hoops (Hawks/UGA) usually get me thru the winter, no matter where those teams’ fortunes fall. I still like those sports, esp. those post-seasons. And if you’ve never attended a Stanley Cup playoff game, do yourself a favor… there’s nothing quite like it.
But this year, the glow of 2 titles (clinched just 9 weeks apart) will do the trick. I’m not fretting about the start of baseball. It’ll start when it starts & the Braves will still be champs.
US men’s national team soccer has been a good follow over the last year, between the Nations Cup & Gold Cup tournaments and World Cup qualifying, which is basically a 14-match season split into sets of two or three games over a week’s time. I think qualifying ends in March or April, so with luck the lockout will be over by then even if the start of the season is delayed.
I just wish the writers would go out of their way to promote positivity in the progress
I get that the relentless negativity sucks, as Pitino might say, but that’s just not something he can do. He can’t make things more positive than they are. His job is to call them as he sees them. He wouldn’t be doing you a service if he blew smoke up your butt. Might make you feel momentarily better, but you’d be less informed.
I agree that there’s potential for damage to be done to the game. But that’s not being done by the writers. That’s being done by the principals.
Speaking of which…
https://twitter.com/bnicholsonsmith/status/1485748112799014919
David Ortiz getting into the HOF when everyone knows he used steroids is laughable. If he got in then why didn’t countless others?
Also, remember when Edgar Martinez got penalized for years for being a DH? The only reason Ortiz and Jim Rice got in was because of the Red Sox logo on their jerseys.
I’m not apoplectic that Ortiz is a Hall of Famer. He’s not an obviously subpar candidate like Baines or, frankly, Rice; he’s a borderline candidate whose postseason heroics can be argued to push him just over the edge.
The fact that he got in on what amounts to a protest vote, though, is preposterously hypocritical, and the fact that Scott Rolen did not go in is absolutely infuriating. Rolen never faced a single accusation of anything. He’s his generation’s Ron Santo — their WAR totals were virtually identical. He was excellent on both sides of the ball, and he well upholds the Hall of Fame standards of other third basemen, for all the reasons that Santo deserved to get in. I cannot understand why Rolen doesn’t have an online campaign trumpeting his candidacy. He should have been the “clean” candidate for everyone to rally around this cycle.
I’m fine voting for drug users, as long as their numbers were enough ahead of everybody else’s. But there’s just no reason to go against Rolen. None.
20 — I’ve come to believe there is too much gray area to not vote someone in because of PEDs. No doubt there are guys in the HOF now who used PEDs at some point but got away with it without being publicly accused. Might as well put Bonds, Clemens, ARod, McGwire, Sosa, etc. in. They can have asterisks in people’s minds if they choose to do so. But I think holding them out is ignoring a large portion of the greatest players in the modern era and it doesn’t reflect well on the HOF.
@19, now do Gil Hodges.
For me, Gil Hodges is Tony Perez. Good guy with incredible teammates. Honestly, by WAR, he’s basically in between Perez and High Pockets Kelly.
Is he undeserving on the merits? Sure. But I’m much less committed to diminishing the joy of the members of the Hall of the Very Good who get an undeserved promotion, than I am highly committed to inducting the HOF-caliber players whose brilliance has been unjustly overlooked.
PUT LOU WHITAKER IN THE HALL ALREADY!
New thread.
https://bravesjournal.mystagingwebsite.com/2022/01/26/braves-2021-player-review-sean-newcomb/