Spencer Strider's Debut, Bryce Miller Throwing Harder, and Max Meyer's Slider

Corbin Young examines a few starting pitchers from Wednesday's outings based on their pitch mix, movement, release point, and notable arsenal changes.

I’ve been doing regular starting pitcher threads on X, with the latest one here. Since those starting pitcher threads take a significant hours, these Substack articles might be more infrequent than we would like. Look for the full starting pitcher thread on X, but we’ll highlight three players from Wednesday’s games.

#BravesCountry Spencer Strider made his 2025 debut against the Blue Jays. Lance Brozdowski had mentioned Strider possibly having a lower arm angle in Spring Training. In the minors (2025), Strider's vertical release point was down 2.5-3 inches with an identical horizontal release point, as seen in the visual below. We'll see what it says tomorrow, but we'll need more than a one-start sample to have actionable takeaways on the release points.

Strider had a simplified arsenal, somewhat similar to 2024. As expected, his velocity was down a bit, with the slider over one mph. However, Strider's slower slider added 4 inches of downward movement and three inches of sweep. That's similar to his 2023 slider, which elicited a 28.8% SwK. It was a good first outing for Strider.

There was a report that #TridentsUp Bryce Miller had arm soreness after his last outing, which could explain the brief outing of five innings and 78 pitches against the Reds. However, Miller threw his four-seam (+1.2 mph), sinker (+1 mph), and slider (+1.5 mph) harder in Wednesday's outing.

Miller has been throwing four-seamers (32.7%), sinkers (27.5%), sweepers (13.1%), and knuckle curves (11.8%) versus right-handed hitters before Wednesday. That's notable because he threw sliders as his third-most thrown pitch versus righties, but it might be a pitch classification issue, or Miller can mix two different sliders.

I wrote about Miller last week, throwing more knuckle curves in my weekly Starting Pitcher Arsenal Article.

#MarlinsBeisbol Max Meyer had a career-high 14 slider whiffs, leading to a whopping 31.1% SwK on Wednesday. His slider generated 10 whiffs in 2025, with his two other outings with 10+ slider whiffs coming in 2024. Meyer throws this bullet-like gyro slider, but teases us with the sweeper.

Meyer threw the sliders outside the zone, eliciting a high rate of chases and whiffs. Nearly all of Meyer's slider whiffs came in the box on the visual below in the lower third or below the zone on Wednesday. Meyer's slider was nasty, but keep tabs on his sinker and sweeper.