Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Atlanta Braves
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
I’m skipping ahead to the Braves because I’m really trying to finish my ranks before the baby shows up (my wife is due next week), and the Braves have a bunch of players that we need to rank. I’ve also been filling out my top fifty or so, so I’ve already ranked some of these guys from teams I haven’t written up yet.
Every single player that is a starter for the Braves will be drafted in standard leagues, this team is freaking loaded.
Pitchers
Max Fried
185.1 IP, 23.2% K%, 4.4% BB%, 2.48 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, 28.4% CSW%, 13% SwStr%
It was Fried being Fried. Mediocre K%, but everything else was fantastic.
He was incredibly steady, for most of the year his fantasy point output had the lowest standard deviation, and you can see below that he managed double-digit points every time but twice.
The good news is that his SwStr% kicked up to 13%, his best mark since 2018.
He put up an elite barrel rate at 4.0%, and that’s just something we should expect moving forward. Only Alex Cobb allowed a lower barrel rate among pitchers with 25+ GS, and all of the expected stats are great.
Fried is steady as they come, although he still does fall outside of the top tier for me, but he makes a ton of sense in certain league types where you’re just looking for steady, safe innings. The guy will be 29 next season and keeps adding on to his arsenal, he’s just great. I’ve said enough.
Comps/RankArounds: Kevin Gausman, Justin Verlander
Spencer Strider
Ridiculous, ridiculous stuff from Strider.
20 GS, 33.1% CSW%, 17.4% SwStr%, 38.3% K%, 8.3% BB%, 2.67 ERA, 0.99 WHIP
Among pitchers with 20 starts he was
1st in K%
1st in SwStr%
1st in K%-BB%
3rd in AVG against
1st in SLG against
Very few people saw this coming. Strider had a 4.71 ERA in AA (14 GS) in 2021, but he did have that shockingly high 35% K%.
I think the numbers prove what Strider can do, we don’t really have to look back in time any further.
The 14.5% SwStr% on the four-seamer was bested by just seven starts, and only Gerrit Cole’s slider beat his 24.4% mark.
That’s pretty much the end of his arsenal though, and that’s not the greatest thing in the world but whatever - it worked out amazingly. After his first few outings hitters had to know what pitch was coming most of the time, but they still couldn’t do anything about it.
The guy just turned 24, so that’s good. The only questions we have here involve innings pitched. I do wonder if not maybe he’ll have to tone down the velocity a bit as he aims towards making 30 starts next year. That would almost surely hurt his output a little bit, but there’s plenty of breathing room here with how ridiculous he was. Really only Jacob deGrom rivals Strider’s stuff in terms of starting pitchers, but that’s not the most favorable comp given how much trouble deGrom has had with his arm. Maybe you just can’t be a starter and pitch like an elite closer…
So I have some doubts on the health and the longevity, and that might be enough to keep me off of him for next year while he’s being drafted ahead of the much more steady aces.
Comps/RankArounds: Jacob deGrom
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