Spencer Strider

They need enough rotation depth where they can still throw him on extended rest in his age 38 season.

Spencer Strider, Spencer Schwellenbach.

Upside plays, right? It's great if they make it back and they can look good.

They're not dependable innings projections.

You bring back Dubon.

You bring back Iglesias.

And you're counting on healthier and more productive seasons from Austin Riley, from Ronald Acuna Jr., from Spencer Strider, from Spencer Schwellenbach.

And you can make the argument here, hey, the Braves already won the division with that group, right? familiar players, it's usually easier to check those boxes off before a lockout.

And then, of course, your wildcard starters.

You're just not sure what you're going to get out of the two Spencers, Spencer Schwellenbach and Spencer Strider.

But that's a lot of starters to go with and a really strong top three.

It's not the strongest top three that I'm going to put into these three plans that I'm going to give you guys, but it's still a pretty strong top three that I would be happy with.

But I can see the argument for it.

The one thing that I love most what we saw from Jacob Mizorowski this year, that this is not a Spencer Strider situation where it's a fastball slider and that's it.

And it's solely that and there's nothing else.

He has a little extra wrinkles to his arsenal.

He also has plenty of time now to figure out exactly why he lost four inches of induced vertical break.

There's plenty of times where pitchers lose that break and get it back.

And we saw Spencer Strider when he first came back from his injury.

His velocity was toast.

Those damn Canadians.

What are you going to do with those damn Canadians? Let's talk about Spencer Strider, though, the next faller.

And this one's very sad because it did look like Spencer Strider was going to be the best pitcher in baseball for a decade or so following his debut in 2022, had a great 2023, and then he just hasn't been able to stay healthy when he has been pitching, hasn't even looked very good over the last couple of years, specifically in 2026.

I mean, he only threw 39 innings.

It was a 531 ERA, 136 whip.

I don't know if I really trust him anymore, but then you look below the surface, he still gets whiffs on his secondaries, not really on his fastball anymore, but just the health is the main concern here for me with Spencer Strider.

Well, again, I'll ask a similar question to Josh Naylor.

Is there any chance in your mind that we get back to peak Strider, or are those days long behind us? Mm-hmm.

And so, in the end, I got to a rotation that I honestly, I wasn't thrilled with.

Adding, you know, oh, I traded Seth Lugo also, by the way, in a salary dump deal to get Spencer Strider back from the Braves.

So Royals are paying some money for Strider to hope that he can bounce his back.

But again, I got stuff back.

He got a chance in the rotation and he delivered.

I mean, the comparison that a lot of people have made, which is fair, is Spencer Strider.

Spencer Strider, yeah, that's low-handed.

What's even fascinating to me is it's not just that he's Atlanta and he throws 97 and he has a 7-peat extension and he has a 15 IVB and a flat 4-seamer, which is like, that was Spencer Strider.

It's also that the slider is so much slower.

It's so crazy to me.