2025 Atlanta Braves Player Review: Spencer Strider

Earlier this year, April 16 to be specific, Spencer Strider made a long-awaited return to the mound after missing nearly the entirety of the 2024 season due to surgery on his elbow. Considering how poor of a start the Braves got off to in 2025, his return was truly a sight for sore eyes and the obvious hope was that his return was the catalyst to help revive both the pitching staff’s and the team’s fortunes as well. As we all know now, recovering from one major elbow surgery is tough — recovering from two major surgeries on the same elbow is like doing this whole “baseball” thing on the hardest difficulty possible.

Nonetheless, Spencer Strider tried to return to his pre-injury, elite level of performance. How did that end up going for him? It’s time to look back and see.

How Acquired

The Braves drafted Strider with their fourth-round pick back in the shortened 2020 MLB Draft. After he flew through pretty much the entire minor league ladder in 2021 and burst onto the scene with a dominant 2022, the Braves signed Strider to a six-year, $75 million contract extension immediately after they were eliminated from the Postseason in 2022.

What were the expectations?

Considering that Spencer Strider was coming back from internal brace surgery to repair a damaged ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his throwing elbow (just a few years after he tore that same UCL in college and had to make his way back from Tommy John Surgery), it was reasonable to expect that Strider was going to take a bit of time to really hit the ground running. I’d imagine that everybody was also hoping beyond hope that Strider’s fastball would retain the electric velocity that made it such a valuable weapon in his arsenal. Beyond the realistic expectations that it would take a while for him to get back into strong form, and the optimistic hopes that he’d simply return to being the version of Spencer Strider that he was before the injury, I’d also imagine that the Braves just wanted Strider to get healthy again and get plenty of innings under his belt in his first season back from injury.

Projecting elite talents coming off injury to the body part(s) that made them elite is always a little tough. Pre-2025, for example, ZiPS had Strider at around 125 innings valued at 2.6 WAR as a central estimate, which was basically his elite 2023 performance regressed to the mean a bit, and of course, over considerably fewer innings. ZiPS had the range between his 20th percentile and 80th percentile outcomes spanning 1.6 and 3.9 WAR, so if there were concerns, they were probably more in the “how much is he going to be able to take the mound” vein than the “oh no is he unable to do anything resembling his past self now after injury?” And, well… that’s the opposite of how things played out.

2025 results

Spencer Strider made his much-anticipated return to the mound on April 16 against the Blue Jays — and then he promptly went back on the shelf for another month after suffering a Grade 1 hamstring strain right before his second start and return to the mound at Truist Park. He strained his hamstring while playing catch. 2025 was a nightmare, y’all.

Once he did return and finally got the ball actually rolling on his comeback season, the results were certainly mixed. He’d have starts like the one on June 14 against the Rockies where he’d look like his old self on his way to striking out 13 batters over six shutout innings with just three hits and one walk allowed. Then he’d have moments like a very rough stretch in August where he got absolutely lit up by the likes of the Brewers, Mets and White Sox.

It really just felt like this season was Spencer Strider trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t when it came to this new world he found himself in where he could no longer simply reach back, throw a heater at or close to 100-mph and just dare the hitter to put the bat to the ball. Instead of dominating hitters, he had to figure out a way to get outs without overpowering the batter.

As I said earlier, the results were overall mixed so far during his first season back from injury. Strider finished 2025 with an ERA of 4.45 (105 ERA-) and a FIP of 4.53 (111 FIP-). Those are slightly below average numbers and his Baseball Savant page for 2025 bears that out. He fell down into the 69th percentile in average fastball velocity at 95.5 mph, but was still in the 86th percentile when it came to whiff percentage, while holding on with a strikeout percentage of 24.3 percent, putting him in the 62nd percentile. To the extent that you find some saving grace in the fact that his 102 xFIP- was the best of his ERA and various estimators, that’s fine, but a 102 xFIP- is midrotation at best, and not the Strider we’ve become accustomed to.

Outside of that, everything else was down. Back in the halcyon days of 2022, Strider’s fastball had an xwOBA-against of .280. It went up to .317 in 2023, but that’s still really effective for a fastball. In 2025, it ballooned up to .391, which is just bad. His slider in 2022 had an xwOBA-against of .164, rising to .217 in 2023. In 2025, it went all the way up to .280. His development of the curveball seems promising (even though he didn’t throw it nearly as much as the heater or the slider) as that pitch had an xwOBA-against of .264 with a whiff rate over 50 percent and a Put Away percentage of 27.3 percent (second only to the 28 percent Put Away percentage his slider had) but outside of that, his bread and butter not only got hit with alarming regularity but it got hit hard as well. The combination of considerably worse command of his slider and the diminished zip on the fastball was hard for him to live with, without adjustments.

And yet, honestly, he kind of did live, at least for a while. Strider’s first five starts of the year were tough (128/138/123, ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-), but he then reeled off a ten-start stretch where he looked, if not like vintage Strider, something really good nonetheless: 82/84/77. (For comparison, he was at 88/66/67 in 2023.) In that span, he got more chase and more whiffs while more consistently hitting the zone; his velocity and pitch motion were not notably different in that span. The key difference was that he was able to get the fastball up and keep the slider down in that span better than before or after, and that was all it took to make him really effective for about half of his season.

But then things fell apart. Over his next four starts, he had a combined 8/8 K/BB ratio and allowed six homers. His last four starts down the stretch weren’t much better; overall, in part due to the unwelcome contributions of some HR/FB stuff, he allowed 15 of his 20 homers on the season in his final 14 starts. His season stumbled, in those final eight starts after his great ten-start stretch, to a 124/133/125 line — basically the same as the first five starts. The difference in pitch location was both stark and obvious: the fastball was consistently middle-middle rather than elevated, and the slider was badly missing the zone when it wasn’t spotted well. Hitters could basically just wait for a grooved fastball and kill it, which is what they did.

Ultimately, it really felt like Spencer Strider spent 125 innings in 2025 trying to figure out an effective way to move forward. His strikeout rate overall went down to 24.3 percent, which is a precipitous drop from the lofty rates of 2022 and 2023 where he was pushing a strikeout rate of nearly 40 percent. He’ll have a full offseason to figure out what he wants to do and how he can return to being an effective pitcher but for now, the return in 2025 ended up being a bit underwhelming. There’s an obvious “what to do and how to do it” that involves better command and avoiding the middle of the plate, but that’s much easier said than executed.

In the end, he earned 0.9 fWAR in 125 1/3 innings. The innings total was basically exactly what ZiPS had as its central estimate. The value… well below ZiPS’ 20th percentile computation. Sigh.

What went right?

Well, the good news is that outside of the freak accident that ended up costing him a month nearly right after he returned from injury, Spencer Strider stayed healthy in 2025. Every now and then he’d get an extra day of rest, or, in the case of the 2025 Speedway Classic, he’d have a planned start get rained out. Outside of that, Strider stayed healthy and the obvious hope is that he’ll simply be able to focus on continuing to improve as a pitcher during this offseason instead of putting energy into recovery.

As far as his performance goes, we did get some lovely performances out of Strider, and many of them came in that aforementioned ten-start stretch where he was really good. Here’s a look at his start against the Rockies, which kicked off that resurgent run, featuring Strider racking up a whopping 13 strikeouts. Yeah, it came against one of the worst major league teams to ever set foot onto a diamond but it was still a major league team so you can’t take anything away from Strider for this particular performance. Plus, the league had a 3.03 FIP and 3.17 xFIP when facing Rockies hitters away from Coors, while Strider had a -0.70 FIP (yes, negative) and 0.07 xFIP in this game, so you get the idea.

There were also times when fortune smiled on him, however rarely, even when he didn’t have his best stuff. During the eight-start struggle session to end his season, he managed to have great results on August 25 against the Marlins, with seven innings (one of only three times this season where he went that deep into a contest) and only one run charged to him on three hits and two walks. He also did this with only three strikeouts as well. Atlanta ended up losing this game (2025, y’all) but it certainly wasn’t Strider’s box score-wise. He also crossed the 600 career strikeouts mark during this game, so there’s that.

Also, he was on the hill when this play happened, so it’s not like fortune completely failed to smile on him over the course of the season.

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What went wrong?

Plain-and-simple, Spencer Strider got hit harder and more frequently during 2025 than he did at any point during his big league career. Usually when opposing batters made contact with his stuff, it was bad news. The average exit velocity against his pitches was 91.3 mph, which was good for a place in the fifth percentile of all pitchers. Fifth! His barrel rate wasn’t much better, as hitters barreled up 10.6 percent of his batted balls and that placed him in the 14th percentile in that department.

42.7 percent of the contact he gave up could be qualified as “Hard-Hit,” which placed him in the 30th percentile. He also found it difficult to keep the ball on the ground as well, as his 37.5 percent ground ball rate gave him a low placement in the 25th percentile of that category as well. If you compare his Baseball Savant metrics to what he was doing before the injury, you might cry at the sight of the blue horror.

Anyways, the obvious nadir on the mound for Strider in 2025 was the two starts he made in succession on August 12 and August 18 against the Mets and White Sox, respectively. In the first game against the Mets, he went four innings and got walloped for eight runs on eight hits and two walks, including three home runs given up. What made all of this even worse was that the Braves dropped a bunch of runs on Clay Holmes, and actually chased him before Strider was forced out of the game. The Braves sent Strider back out for the fourth after the Braves tied the game at five apiece and… he gave up a three-run homer to Brandon Nimmo.

Things didn’t get much better against Chicago in his next outing. In fact, you could argue that it was even worse! The Pale Hose pummeled Strider for seven runs on ten hits and one walk (including two dingers) over just three innings of work. It was a major bummer watching Strider get hammered like this.

2026 outlook

It’s pretty clear that if Strider is going to reach anywhere near the level that he was at before his most recent elbow surgery, he’s either going to have to magically return to his pre-injury self physically, or he’s going to have to do so with a new, re-invented approach. The good news is that based on this article from David O’Brien from The Athletic on Spencer Strider following the end of the season, Strider feels like he’s on the right track and will be using this offseason in a constructive manner so that he can continue to improve in his current form as a pitcher.

Asked about his offseason goals, the analytically minded Strider said, “Got to get fitter. I need to neurologically reset my upper right side. That is something that I am focused on doing. I’ve thrown for 13 months straight, so I need to kind of let my body reset, find some symmetry and just some more ease and looseness. Analyzing how I’m moving. Looking at some range of motion stuff, and try to just take in where I’m at physically.

“And then put together a program that, based on that information, enables me to be in the best place possible.”

That article also mentioned that Strider made some changes in the latter part of the season that helped him get more comfortable with his full arsenal of pitches so that he’ll be able to actually properly utilize his effective curveball and the burgeoning changeup that he has in his toolbox as well.

Spencer Strider still has a lot of work left to be done when it comes to getting back to where he was and honestly, it’s hard to see him getting back to exactly where he was before the injury. I’d be shocked if he gets his velocity back to where it was before, so the adjustments and re-invention appear to be mandatory for Strider going forward rather than simply being another option for him going forward. The good news is that he appears to be up for the task of improving and returning to being one of the top arms in Atlanta’s rotation. We’ll see if it’s also enough to return him to being one of the most electric hurlers in all of baseball. That’s honestly a doubtful outlook but if anybody’s going to go for it, it’s someone like Strider.

Meanwhile, and unsurprisingly, projection systems are essentially splitting the difference between pre-injury and post-injury Strider, with more weight placed on the latter due to its recency. Steamer has him at 2.7 WAR over 161 innings of work as a point estimate; Dan Szymborski’s recently-unveiled ZiPS point estimate is 2.2 WAR over 137 innings, which is almost the same thing on a rate basis. His 20th-to-80th percentile range via ZiPS is down to 1.1 to 3.6 WAR (from 1.6 to 3.9 a year ago), which is an unpleasant pill to swallow — but the Braves will likely be fine if he can get somewhere near that 80th percentile.