Spencer Strider’s MRI Reveals UCL Damage, Likely Ends His 2024 Season

FUCK.

Well this sucks. It’s not yet official that Spencer Strider will need a second Tommy John surgery, but it certainly appears like that will be the case and end his 2024 season after two starts. The Braves will be without the Cy Young favorite for the entire season in a World Series-or-bust year.

I guess the good-ish news is Atlanta has 2023 All-Star Bryce Elder waiting in Triple-A, but what looked like it was going to be an elite rotation all of a sudden seems like it might be holding on by a thread. You need Max Fried (coming off an injury last season), Charlie Morton (40 years old) and Chris Sale (as injury-prone as they come) to really hold it together for the next six months.

In addition to Elder, I’m really curious to see if this leads to some sort of opportunity for Hurston Waldrep this season. The 24th overall pick in last year’s draft has only pitched in eight professional games, but has some absolutely nasty stuff if the Braves want to be aggressive with him.

As far as Strider goes, though, this is about as close to a nightmare scenario as you can get. A likely second TJ for a guy who relies heavily on plus velocity is bad, bad news. And it comes in a season where it seemed like he was going to put up elite numbers. Fuck.

No excuses. Next man up.