This is a pretty fun pitching matchup between two teams jockeying for draft lottery position, with Spencer Strider on the mound for Atlanta and top prospect Bubba Chandler taking the mound for Pittsburgh.
Strider has incorporated his curveball much more lately, with a little more of his changeup as well. He’s found a decent bit of success with this approach in his last three starts and here’s hoping for a fourth today. There’s nothing particularly special about his curveball, but it provides an important
change of pace for when his fastball is more of a plus pitch than the 80-grade laser beam it was in previous seasons. I will be fascinated to see what he comes back from a presumably healthy offseason with in terms of pitch mix. Getting through today healthy is the top priority and a good performance would be icing.
On the other side is top prospect Bubba Chandler, who debuted for Pittsburgh this season and has put up a 3.21 xFIP but a 4.56 ERA over 25.2 innings so far in the bigs. It’s not hard to see why he was such a highly touted prospect, as he boasts an upper 90s fastball with good rise to it and a good looking low 90s changeup to pitch off of that fastball, with a slider and curveball to mix in. He’s located his pitches well so far and has done well to avoid walks, but the results still aren’t where you might expect, even going off of the xFIP, as he’s struck out a little less than 9 batters per 9 innings and has gotten hit fairly hard. That said, his chase% and whiff% are quite strong and it’s still a fairly small sample, so I would expect those strikeouts to come and the batted ball profile to become a little friendlier for the young righty, given a larger sample. He looks to be a formidable challenge for this Atlanta offense, which isn’t a bad thing to see for Braves fans who will get to watch a cool young pitcher and as the Braves are in a tight battle for lottery position in this final series.
Game Notes
Time: Saturday, September 27 at 7:15 p.m. EDT
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, Ga
TV: FanDuel Sports Network South/Southeast
Streaming: MLB.TV audio
Radio: 680 AM/93.7 FM The Fan
