Spencer Strider, Atlanta Braves will hope third time’s the charm in Philly opener

4 weeks agoLast Updated: May 27, 2025

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Spencer Strider’s first two starts, each coming off a separate Injured List stint, were far from the triumphant return he and the Braves were hoping for, and seeking. Though Strider looked great in his first inning back from a year-long layoff with elbow woes, he was ultimately just okay, until surrendering a homer in the middle innings that soured that outing altogether. He then went down for the count with a hamstring issue, and after returning a month later, was just bad against the Nationals, something that the self-critical right-hander did not take lightly.

So, Strider gets a third bite at the proverbial 2025 apple today, but he’ll have to do it against a division-leading Phillies team that:

Has the best record in baseball;
Has a top-ten offense by outputs, and a top-five offense by inputs; and
Has been even better in May.

Go get ‘em, Spencer Strider. We’re all counting on you.

Yes, the Phillies haven’t really missed many beats this season. They had a nine-game winning streak snapped on Sunday and have lost five series all season — two to the Cardinals, one to the Mets, one to the Giants, and one, in April, to the Braves. If there’s one saving grace, it’s that the Phillies aren’t all that remarkable against good teams so far — they’ve just creamed the weaker competition — but it’s not clear whether the Braves actually constitute a good team on practice, either, so who knows.

In his career so far, Strider has faced the Phillies a lot. He was good against them in his 2024 debut (8/2 K/BB ratio, a homer allowed, Braves pulled off a huge comeback win), and has dominated them in every single regular season outing. On the flip side, he’s been decidedly more not-dominant against them in the postseason, largely due to homers allowed — all three of his career postseason outings have come against the Phillies, and he’s combined for a 128/157/86 line across those 15 combined innings (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-), which kind of goes to show you how things can get wacky in small samples that are for some reason used to decide who “wins” a season. Anyway…

It’s not clear if Strider is back to his old self. If not, this could be a nasty game. We’ll see.

For their part, the Braves’ bats will have to handle Ranger Suarez, who missed the first month of the season with back issues. Suarez is currently sitting on 0.7 fWAR with a 90/64/89 line through four starts, and 89 is also his career xFIP-, so yeah, he’s still Ranger Suarez. He hasn’t really had a bad start yet, though the Diamondbacks did BABIP him to death in his season debut (seven runs charged despite a 6/2 K/BB ratio and no homers), so the Braves won’t be able to sleepwalk through this one successfully.

Where the Braves have succeeded against Suarez, it’s been with homers, as he doesn’t much struggle to rack up good K/BB ratios against them. They did it twice to him in three outings last year — basically when the team doesn’t take him deep, they lose, but they tend to win when they do.