Monday night was another rough one on the mound for Spencer Strider. He failed to get out of the fifth inning for the third start in a row and also gave up at least five runs for the third start in a row. Of the 17 starts that he’s made this season, he’s given up at least four runs in five of those starts. Sure, Strider has shown the occasional flash of potentially returning to the form that made him a star during his first couple of seasons as a full-time big leaguer. This is easily the worst stretch
of his career right now and it’s a bummer to see given how well things started for him in his career initially.
After last night’s rough outing against the White Sox, Strider is now sitting on a 5.24 ERA and a 4.72 FIP over the course of 89.1 innings pitched. His K/9 is down to 10.28 and while that’s a number that a lot of pitchers would be happy to see, it’s nearly 4 K/9 lower than his peak of 13.81 during his first full season and 13.55 during his follow-up campaign. His BB/9 is up to 3.63 when compared to 3.08 in 2022 and 2.80 in 2023. Most concerning of all is the HR/FB rate, which has absolutely skyrocketed for him here in 2025. In 2022, his Home Run/Fly Ball rate was a measly 6.8 percent. In 2023, it crept up to 12.2 percent. After last night’s game, it’s up to 17.5 percent. For comparison’s sake, a 17.5 percent HR/FB rate would place him between Milwaukee’s Quinn Priester (16.8 percent) and St. Louis’s Andre Pallante (18.7 percent) in the bottom three of all qualified pitchers. That’s pretty rough!
It’s not hard to figure out what the root cause of this issue is. The eye-popping velocity that Strider used to have during his first two seasons has gone down considerably. In 2022, Strider averaged 98.2 mph on his four-seamer. It went down a tick to 97.2 in 2023 and now here in 2025, it’s at 95.6 mph. While that’s still nearly one mph above average for right-handers, that’s still a precipitous drop.
While he’s still doing pretty well when it comes to missing bats (entering Monday night’s action, he was in the 85th percentile of all pitchers when it comes to whiff percentage and a strikeout percentage in the 80th percentile), the problem has come whenever he doesn’t miss a bat. Before Monday night’s start, Spencer Strider was in the 41st percentile in Expected Batting Average against, 37th percentile in ground ball percentage, the 29th percentile in Hard-Hit percentage, the 27th percentile in Expected ERA, the 15th percentile in Barrel percentage and the third percentile in Average Exit Velocity against. It’s like a messed up version of that moment from Rocky IV when Ivan Dragon was putting on a training display for the media and the Soviet Union Politburo.
“Whatever they hit, they destroy!”
Spencer Strider’s four-seamer has essentially gone from being a weapon to a liability. In 2022, Strider’s four-seamer had a run value of 21, which carried him into the top 15 of all qualified pitchers when it came to cumulative run value with a number 29 in 2022. That number went down to 27 in 2023 but it was still good enough to place him in the top 10 of qualified pitchers when it came to run value that season. While his four-seamer’s run value went down to 8, his slider doubled in run value from 8 to 16 and it sure seemed like he had somehow managed to come up with a fearsome combination of just two pitches (with a changeup thrown in there occasionally).
However, things have changed dramatically here in 2025. Heading into Monday’s action, his four-seamer had a run value of -8 according to Baseball Savant. That’s right, folks: Negative-eight. The run value on his slider had gone down precipitously as well to where it’s down to -1. However, what makes this so troubling is that his four-seamer is still his go-to pitch, as he’s using it 54 percent of the time with the slider’s usage being at 36 percent. Opposing hitters are hammering his four-seamer, as they have a batting average of .291 against the four-seamer with an xBA of .297, to boot. On top of all that, remember when I mentioned that he was still missing bats at a somewhat high rate? Well, his curveball has a whiff rate of 50 percent and his slider is right there with a whiff rate of 49.5 percent. His four-seamer has a whiff rate of 15.5 percent. He’s not fooling anybody with that pitch right now and that pretty much explains the struggles right now.
What’s interesting is that it’s clear that he’s got to start putting those pitches elsewhere because right now, he’s still just out there throwing challenge pitches right down the middle of the plate at times. That worked back in 2022 and 2023 since he was able to reach 100 on the radar gun at times. Here’s a look at his pitch percentage to certain parts of the zone and the Isolated Power against his pitches in those same areas back in the halcyon days of a couple of seasons ago.
Spencer Strider was throwing heat right down the middle and daring hitters to hit it and he was winning the vast majority of those challenges. This was a fun time! This was a lovely time! I miss those times! Now, let’s look at the same two graphs but from this season:
Oof! For reference’s sake, a .200 Isolated Power makes you a somewhat dangerous power hitter as an individual. For instance, heading into Monday’s action, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had an ISO of .200 for the season here in 2025. You could say that essentially, whenever Spencer Strider throws something (likely a heater) right down the middle, hitters essentially transform into Vladito against him. That’s not ideal! As a matter of fact, guess who hit his first homer of the season at the expense of Spencer Strider? You guessed it!
My only real guess at a solution to this is that he’s just got to get better about locating his pitches. Assuming his drop in velocity is here to stay, it’s not the end of the world for him as a pitcher. As you can see from the pitch location map, it’s not like he’s just getting crushed all over the place. It’s just when he throws the four-seamer right down the middle of the plate. That’s usually the nitro zone for a lot of hitters so it makes sense that he’s getting crushed in that location. As such, it’s just something where he’s got to get better with location.
To be quite frank with y’all, I don’t think we’ll see the fruits of his labor when it comes to improving his location here in 2025. Sure, he could end up having a turnaround similar to what Michael Harris II is currently going through but at the same time, I think he could really do with an offseason of simply focusing on getting better as a pitcher instead of focusing on recovery or trying to work a new pitch into his routine. I’d imagine that once he and the rest of the organization does a full post-mortem once the season is over, then they’ll figure out a proper plan to focus on during the offseason and hopefully he’ll come back and make this rough season a distant memory instead of an omen for the future.
As far as now is concerned, sometimes you’ve just got to sit with the struggle and that appears to be the case here for Spencer Strider. As fans, we’ve just got to hope that he’s going to get better and adjust to what appears to be the new reality for him as a pitcher. There’s still a chance that he can be very good but it’s clear that the current way forward won’t lead down a successful path unless changes are made. Hopefully the proper adjustments get made and he’ll go back to being a bright spot in this rotation once again. We’ve seen glimpses of it already and hopefully he’ll be able to turn those glimpses into a good, long look going forward. We’ll see what happens.
