Following a 13-strikeout performance in his previous start against the Colorado Rockies, former Clemson pitcher Spencer Strider was dominant again in his second win of the 2025 season on Thursday night.

The Atlanta Braves righthander allowed just one run on five hits and one walk while striking out eight batters over six innings in an eventual 7-1 victory over the New York Mets.

Strider averaged 96 mph and maxed out at 98.4 mph with his four-seam fastball. His slider was also effective, inducing 14 swing and misses, and he notched 18 whiffs overall.

Strider wanted to be aggressive in the strike zone and did just that against the Mets, throwing 66 of his 97 pitches for strikes, as the Braves completed a three-game sweep over their NL East rival.

“Fastball command was fine first time through the order. Just a couple sequencing things that I probably could’ve done better, and then maybe a couple executions with the fastball that I suppose could’ve been a little better,” Strider said after the game. “But I’ll take my chances with attacking in the zone. It’s definitely a change I’ve been wanting to make, especially early in the game, is just trying to set the tone in the zone… and kind of build from there.”

After undergoing season-ending surgery last year to repair the damaged ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, Strider made his 2025 season debut on April 16 against the Toronto Blue Jays – an outing in which he allowed one walk, five hits and two runs with five strikeouts over five-plus innings.

Unfortunately, shortly after that start, he suffered a right hamstring strain that caused him to hit the injured list back on April 21. When he returned to the mound on May 20, he allowed four runs over 4.1 innings against the Washington Nationals, and then a couple of starts later, he gave up five runs over five innings against the Arizona Diamondbacks on June 3.

While Strider’s season got off to a rocky start, it’s clear that he’s starting to round back into the form that made him an All-Star and Cy Young contender back in 2023. With Thursday’s outing against the Mets, he has now recorded three straight quality starts – a span in which he has yielded just four earned runs over 18 innings and punched out 26 batters with only five walks and 11 hits allowed.

Strider cited a lack of execution and consistency, not a lack of stuff, as reasons for his prior struggles.

“I think even in some of my previous outings, the stuff wasn’t necessarily what was holding me back. Execution and consistency,” he said. “The shape of the slider has been good, I think. It’s just attacking and making hitters swing. You ask any pitcher. Step one is making guys swing and the rest is played off that.”

All in all, across seven starts this season and 37 total innings pitched, Strider has posted a 2-5 record, 3.89 ERA, 1.14 WHIP and 45:13 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Prior to his season-ending injury last season, Strider was an All-Star in 2023, when he led the majors in both wins and strikeouts. That season, he racked up 281 strikeouts while posting a 20-5 record, 3.86 ERA, 1.09 WHIP and allowing only 146 hits in 186.2 innings over 32 starts. He finished fourth in the 2023 NL Cy Young voting.

Strider, who was drafted by the Braves in the fourth round (No. 126 overall pick) of the 2020 MLB Draft, has compiled a 34-15 record, 3.51 ERA, 1.08  WHIP and 540 strikeouts in  366.2 innings across 74 career regular season games (61 starts).

Thursday’s win over the Mets brought the Braves’ record to 34-39 this season and marked the seventh win in nine games for a Braves team that’s suddenly riding a lot of momentum. Entering Friday’s game against the Miami Marlins, they sat just 5.5 games out of a Wild Card playoff spot.  

“It’s just reassuring to go out and have some justification for the work you’ve been doing, and that belief that we’ve had this whole time that we can play better baseball,” Strider said. “So, now the challenge is to continue to do it, obviously, so it doesn’t get easier from here. I think that the idea would be that the struggles we’ve had up to this point, and whatever we might encounter for the rest of the season, is all in preparation for what we’re ultimately trying to accomplish. It’s going to make us better, and we’ve just got to continue to believe that and keep working.”

–Photo courtesy of Brett Davis-Imagn Images