The Atlanta Braves have reason to believe that the luck is going to turn for one of their best players.
Because after the start of his career, it can’t get that much worse…can it?
Braves starter Spencer Strider dominated MLB in 2023, leading the league in strikeouts (281), strikeout rate (13.5 K/9) wins (20) and winning percentage (.800), but was “only” a 4th-place finisher in the NL Cy Young voting owing to his ERA of 3.86, which would have been the highest mark of any Cy Young winner since the award was created.
A lot of it can be attributed to luck – specifically, bad luck.
Strider actually led the National League in Fielding Independent Pitching, at 2.85, indicating that he was dealing with bad luck when balls were put into play.
Fielding Independent Pitching, shortened to “FIP”, is a variation of ERA that isolates only what a pitcher can directly control by removing batted balls that are left to the defense to handle – FIP’s only looking at strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches, and home runs.
When a pitcher’s FIP is higher than their ERA, that’s usually a sign that that pitcher’s batted balls are falling at a higher average than usual across the league.
And for Spencer Strider, not only has that been happening, it’s been happening a lot.
Per Codify Baseball, the difference in Strider’s FIP (2.48) versus his ERA (3.37) across his first 50 starts is the highest since baseball switched to overhand pitching in 1884.
Leave a Reply