ATLANTA — Braves players and team officials sounded more confident in the past week talking about Spencer Strider returning to full capacity next year than you might expect regarding a pitcher who just had his second major elbow surgery in five years.
But there was a reason for their optimism, beyond Strider’s famous work ethic and teammates’ desire to will a quick return into being. As it turns out, Strider didn’t have a fully or even partially torn UCL, he had damage to the ligament that was caused by a bone fragment that he said became lodged in it.
That made him a good candidate for the internal brace surgery he had a week ago in Texas. Dr. Keith Meister removed the piece of bone and attached a fiber-tape suture to reinforce the UCL, a less invasive procedure than Tommy John surgery, in which the ligament is replaced by a tendon graft from another part of the patient’s body.
“It’s not really an either/or necessarily,” Strider said of the brace instead of Tommy John. “I’ve said to people, my ‘check engine’ came on and it’s not like they said, ‘We can change your oil or change your whole engine.’ It was kind of like, they had to get in there and see. This fragment kind of concealed the full picture on imaging.”
Strider spoke with reporters Friday for the first time since leaving an April 5 start against the Arizona Diamondbacks with elbow pain that began as discomfort in spring training. He thought it was regular soreness he could pitch through, but it kept recurring and went from sore to throbbing during his four-inning stint against the Diamondbacks.
“Originally the night I pitched, we came in and took an X-ray and it was like, whoa, this could be a lot of things, you know?” Strider said of the exam done at Truist Park that night. “And so, get all the imaging, talk to (Meister), he talks to other people and so on and makes a plan. They cut me open and say, all right, what’s it look like? And then kind of go from there.
“And it was good. It was really good. Better than I thought it could have been.”
Rehab from an internal brace procedure is typically four to six months shorter than for Tommy John surgery, which means Strider could be expected back in about 12 months, barring setbacks. If he’d required Tommy John surgery, which would have been his second in five years — he had it in 2019 while at Clemson — Strider likely would have been out until after the 2025 All-Star break.
Lucas Giolito is one of an increasing number of players to undergo an internal brace procedure. (Maddie Malhotra / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)
He also addressed the growing controversy surrounding what some have termed an epidemic of MLB pitching injuries and disagreed with those who point to “max effort” pitching as the primary cause.
“I mean, if you’ve got three hours, I’ll sit down and have this conversation,” said Strider, 25. “I don’t want to create some sound bite for somebody to turn something into. There’s so many things that go into it. It’s such a complex situation. And I think what’s been frustrating from my end is reading things and seeing people talk and implying that it’s one thing or that they somehow are in a position to know why injuries are happening. If we knew, then they’d stop happening.
“People were getting hurt in baseball way before we were putting velocity on the screen. And I think that the environment of the game is such that certain things are valued and we’re able to understand why velocity is valued. We can make guys throw harder. But velocity, in and of itself — we shouldn’t want guys to stop throwing hard. We should want the environment to be conducive to player health. And I think that’s a different conversation.”
He said it was frustrating to see himself, while preparing for and then recovering from surgery, become an example many pointed to in discussions about injuries they attribute to pitchers chasing ever-increasing velocity and spin rates.
“Yeah, there’s just so many people in any topic, in any field, that are being a little disingenuous and probably speaking out of their depth,” Strider said. “The death of expertise, I think, is a sad reality for society these days. I’m not saying I’m an expert, I’m saying that I just think there’s a lot of people who are quick to assume that they have the answers. And the public discourse on this topic matters. And so that’s what’s frustrating.
“You know, we want to solve this problem. I also think there’s an element of randomness to injuries. If instead of the game’s top pitchers, it was a bunch of guys that nobody’s heard of, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation.”
He added, “I think you need to wait to see the whole season play out. If guys are still getting hurt at the same rate, then yeah, I mean, there’s probably a larger conversation (that) needs to happen. I think there is a conversation (that) needs to happen because I don’t think the league and other entities are doing or acting in a way that’s conducive to player health and creating a healthy environment.”
Asked to elaborate, Strider shared some of the thoughts he’s had from his experience and research he’s done on the topic.
“Like I said, it’s a long (discussion),” he said of what is contributing to increased pitching injuries. “Of course, the pitch clock. The condition of the balls. The banning of substances to gain grip. The effective shrinking of the strike zone, for a number of reasons. I mean, all those things are playing a factor in injuries. You know, I think that you can’t — like in football, people say, ‘If you take the helmets away, then the guys will stop getting hurt.’ That’s pretty silly. Guys are bigger, faster and stronger than they’ve ever been. I mean, you can’t take that away.
“You don’t want guys to compete below their potential, below their ability, just to prevent injuries. The environment of the game should be such that guys are able to compete at their highest ability and stay healthy, or have a chance to. So, it’s a long conversation.”
Strider also shared an analogy from a recent discussion he had on the topic.
“Somebody told me, pitchers’ arms are kind of like cars,” he said. “You go buy a Subaru Outback, I mean, that thing’s going to run. You can drive it off-road. You can beat the crap out of it. I had a Subaru Impreza for a long time — threw a kayak on top, dented it, put stickers all over it, took it to get maintenance once a year. I mean, it goes. It’s not flashy, it’s not going to win any races, but it’s dependable.
“And then if you buy a Ferrari, you better take good care of it. You’ve got to do a lot of work, and even still, it might be temperamental, it’s going to break down. But if you want to run a race, you want a Ferrari. You know, I think that’s where the state of the game’s at. Teams are looking for Ferraris, and they’re hard to maintain.”
Strider’s injury — a bone fragment he said probably began as a calcium deposit at some point after his 2019 Tommy John surgery — appeared to be unrelated to how hard he throws or the addition of a curveball to his repertoire since last season, as plenty of outside observers had suggested.
Spencer Strider, Another Beautiful Curveball. 😍 pic.twitter.com/fetTL8IMk8
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) March 29, 2024
“It’s not like I was throwing a splitter or something that’s potentially hazardous,” Strider said, referring to high-torque pitches known to potentially put more stress on the elbow. “This was, to a large degree, out of my control, unfortunately.”
He said that the calcium deposit that formed near his UCL might actually have helped strengthen it, for a while. But when a piece of that bony growth broke off, it eventually caused problems.
Strider thinks that some minor soreness a year ago might’ve contributed to some of his inconsistent performances in 2023 by causing him to slightly alter his mechanics, though he’s not sure about that. All he knows is this year at spring training, despite his terrific results in Grapefruit League games, he wasn’t able to recover as quickly as usual, and what he thought might be fatigue was a result of the bone fragment moving into his UCL.
“Yeah, they’re theorizing that I tore some connective tissue between this fragment and my humerus. And that’s what destabilized the ligament. And maybe I blew through (the connective tissue in) the last at-bat in that game. Things deteriorated pretty quickly throughout the outing.”
Strider said X-rays taken after he came out of that April 5 start showed the bone piece, to the surprise of those in the room.
“It looked like I broke my humerus, like I broke the tip of my humerus,” Strider said, referring to the upper arm bone, which is connected to the forearm bone by the UCL. “And there’s this big bone floating in my arm. We had to do all of the imaging to understand what it was, and then get in there to see kind of what was really going on.”
Strider had an MRI the next day, then went to see Meister, the Texas Rangers’ team physician who’s widely known as a leading orthopedist who specializes in elbow surgeries. He’s known particularly for a modernized version of Tommy John surgery involving the use of the internal brace, which he also uses without TJ in some cases when the UCL is damaged but not completely torn. Cases like Strider’s.
“Once they got in there, the ligament tissue was surprisingly good,” Strider said. “So, they cleaned some stuff up and put the brace in and, from a recovery standpoint, that’s great. I got to keep a ligament that’s actually pretty solid tissue.”
The success rate for pitchers returning to full effectiveness after a second Tommy John surgery isn’t as high as it is coming back from the first TJ surgery, and the rehab can be even longer. But Strider and the Braves don’t have to worry about that now with the pitcher who’s become one of the faces of their franchise while setting several franchise and MLB strikeout records in his first two seasons.
“It’s gonna be a while before I start throwing or anything, but I’ll trust the rehab process,” Strider said. “I mean, they’re doing this a lot. Dr. Meister’s got a great protocol in place for rehab, and fortunately the calendar works out and such that there’s not a rush of any kind. So I’m gonna put that in the trust of the medical staff. Of course, if it was up to me I’d try to pitch tomorrow.”
He has a heavy metal-and-plastic brace to immobilize the elbow. Strider will do his rehab in Atlanta, where he and his wife have a home and he can be around the team.
It was Strider who was most outspoken in the immediate aftermath of the Braves’ second consecutive NL Division Series loss to the Philadelphia Phillies about how they needed to prepare differently for the postseason. And it was Strider who, before spring training began this year, pronounced the World Series-or-bust approach the Braves must have because they were, he said, the best team in baseball.
Several teammates followed by agreeing with him until it became an early spring mantra, and Braves officials liked hearing Strider speak with such confidence and leadership. Now, he won’t be on the mound to help the team pursue its lofty goal.
“Yeah, now I’m not,” he said, then forced a smile. “I mean, these guys don’t need me to win a World Series. So they’re going to pursue that journey and I’ll be here to cheer them on.”
(Top photo: Bill Streicher / USA Today)
