Ironically, what it took for Spencer Strider to start looking more like himself on the mound was looking less like himself above the neck.
He pitched well: after allowing a walk and two singles to the game’s first three batters, he recorded seven straight outs, allowing just a single run. His second run allowed came in the third, when he yielded a double, a walk, and two straight singles. He then recorded seven more straight outs, four by strikeout.
Those two clusters were as bad as it got for him, but the game really ended when the Braves brought in their newest pitcher, Alexis Diaz, who was terrific from 2022-23, decent but shaky in 2024, and who has essentially been consumed by wildness all year and is already on his third organization of the season.
After recording a groundout, he hit a batter, walked a batter, got a strikeout, then walked the next two men. (And if you look at Gameday, he wasn’t getting squeezed. They weren’t close.) In came Connor Seabold, who I had to look up — apparently we got him a month ago from the Rays — who gave up a two-run single, and when Nacho booted the relay, a third run scored. Ballgame.
I have complained enough about the Braves’ poor track record with health and how, to my mind, it is compounded by their philosophy around the necessity for the starters to play every day.
So I will simply observe that I am not certain that Spencer Strider’s injury rehab took as long as perhaps it could have. The team made so much of the decision to go with an elbow brace rather than full Tommy John surgery, citing the great benefit of the shorter recovery time, but to me, it looks a little like rushed recovery as he has spent much of the year trying to rediscover his feel for pitching.
There’s a critical tension between the team’s emphasis on posting – playing every day, no matter what, which led Sean Murphy to hide a hip injury for three years – and the clubhouse belief in “next man up,” that your teammates can pick you up when you’re down. I wish the players would trust the latter more, and emphasize the former less.
These last two seasons have been utterly ruined by injuries, and not just the kind of injuries that are posted on the transactions page. For most of the past two years, most of our team has played worse than their baseball card. I’m glad that Spencer had a good night, and I really hope that the clubhouse can shift its philosophy from “prioritize being on the field” to “prioritize getting right.”
Trying to be a hero frequently leads being anything but.
I’m not mad that Strider sucks. I’m mad that we’re going to pay him $20M next year to probably suck.
I don’t think that he sucks.
Obviously, Ronald’s 2023 came after his 2022! I think it’s reasonable to fear that he may have lost some of his stuff; I think he still could be a frontline starter, but maybe he’s a #2/#3 instead of a #1. Or maybe he figures something out, keeps developing his secondaries beyond the slider, and finds a way of being similarly effective in a different way.
But that is going to take work, which the team’s emphasis on just getting him back to the majors ASAP failed to account for.
I’m not sure why “Play hurt unless you’re hurting the team” is that difficult a message to get across. I understand why marginal players wouldn’t heed it, but they’re not the problem — when they start hurting the team they discover they can recover in Gwinnett. But for Murphys and Striders and the like I don’t understand it. This isn’t about being “soft.” It isn’t about needing time against real pitching to get your swing back (that’s a case where you need to play even if you are hurting the team — where short-term suckitude is in the service of long-term competence.) It’s just about “There’s no ‘I’ in team” — they have no problem with that concept in interviews.
I think it’s difficult to get across when it’s a mixed message. I do not think the team is unambiguously telling the players on the team to take time to recover when their injury is hampering their effectiveness, and I lay the responsibility much more on the coaching staff than on the players.
I agree it is not a simple message in the abstract, and I agree that management may not have delivered it all that well. And there are certainly times when the team’s need require someone to play hurt. Think Kirk Gibson and Bill Buckner. One worked out well, the other, not so well. But both were necessary to the team.
But in a lost season, all of this “hurting the team” stuff really makes no sense at all. By late July, there was literally no reason I can conceive of to keep a hurt Sean Murphy in the lineup. And then going back to the playoff era (remember that?) the play of Travis d’Arnaud should have sufficed to get Sean to get the time he needed to heal. Plus, when the extensive time Murpnhy sat out with his oblique injury didn’t seem to help his hip, that should have served as another clue that something was seriously wrong.
I don’t think you can trust players to make this decision. For one thing, nobody wants to look like sandbagger. For another, nobody wants to give up their spot and get Wally Pipped. Maybe most importantly, most people are not very good at self-appraisal, which is why they need teachers and coaches to help them succeed. This version of Brian Snitker is spending more time dwelling on what he gave up for professional baseball and whether he should retire and spend time with grandkids. He’s also a gritty old school guy who felt you should always play through it. It’s time for him to enjoy retirement and bring in someone who is better at noticing things on the field.
First, we aren’t talking aches and pains here. No one who needs an operation is going to be accused of malingering.
Second, as I said, marginal players are in danger of being Wally Pipped. Guys making $20 million are in no such danger…. there’s always someone else who will pay them. (Not to mention that the $20 million itself is supposed to be compensation for being honest, among other things.)
Finally, I grant that players may have a sense of their own indispensability that means that management needs to inquire closely; the player is the only one who knows about his own pain, but it’s not as if teams are denying guys MRIs. If players want to look “tough,” maybe they can write secret MRIs into their contracts.
This is sort of an elevated version of “the pitcher doesn’t want to come out but the manager is the boss.” Everyone understands that situation. Even Snitker.
I know everyone has been down on Jarred Kelenic, but over the last 30 games at Gwinnett he is slashing .167/.231/.300
Kelenic’s greatest contribution to the game may be giving a scatalogical nickname to the AL home run champ.
Not even sure what that means but I will guess that Cal Raleigh goes by doo-doo?
Not quite: “The Big Dumper”
My 2 favorite MLB nicknames now are “The Big Dumper” (Raleigh) & “The Big Amish” (Nick Kurtz).
I won’t comment on any of the other situations, but at least in Murphy’s case I would imagine that catchers in general have a different understanding of pain than any other position. Snitker was a catcher also, for what that’s worth.
Would it not be possible for the team to conduct a weekly (or monthly or whatever time frame makes sense) physical that tested for basic injuries? I have no concept of how or even if this could be done in a simple, efficient manner but if you could do this- where it was either a go/no-go result, with the latter compelling immediate in-depth follow-up- it would take all the pressure off the player.
Given that I have no medical background perhaps this is impossible, or perhaps the players’ union would not allow it. But it seems to me that the front office/medical staff, not the players, would want to make these decisions, and the players might actually appreciate being TOLD they could not play instead of forcing themselves to play through pain.
Kelenic will be non-tendered, he’ll latch on with a club for 2026 on a Minors deal, and he’ll probably be out of baseball by 2027.
Recapped