NORTH PORT, Fla. — Braves starting pitcher Spencer Strider is likely headed to the injured list to begin the season, manager Walt Weiss said Monday at CoolToday Park.
Strider felt oblique tightness in his recent Grapefruit League start and then again in a bullpen session. He was scratched from Monday’s start in Bradenton, Florida, against the Pirates.
“It’s mild. He got out in front of it, but we’re gonna be cautious,” Weiss said. “We feel like we’ve gotten out in front of this thing to a degree, so we’re hoping it’s not gonna be a big deal.”
Strider had pitched in only three Grapefruit League games and had not gone longer than four innings. He reached that benchmark March 11 when he struck out five and allowed just two hits and a walk against the Rays.
Strider had a 96-mph fastball that day and induced nine whiffs, five coming on a slider that averaged 82 mph.
The Braves had penciled in Strider to pitch Sunday against the Royals at Truist Park. He won’t make that start, or any other in the near future.
“We don’t know. We’ve all dealt with obliques in this game, you just don’t know,” Weiss said of a timetable for Strider’s return. “I do feel better that when you put him through the tests and that type of thing, it’s hard for him to feel it. But it is there when he throws. There’s a chance if he would have went out and made a start (Monday) it would have set him back further. That’s the silver lining in this thing.”
Strider missed the 2024 season because of surgery to repair his ulnar collateral ligament. He missed time early in the 2025 season with a hamstring injury.
The setback for Strider is the latest blow for a Braves’ pitching rotation that has already been dealt its healthy share of bad news. Spencer Schwellenbach, thought to be in line to be part of the five-man rotation, is on the 60-day injured list after elbow surgery in February, as is prospect Hurston Waldrep, who also had surgery on his elbow.
Joey Wentz, a right-hander who started 13 games for the Braves in 2025, tore his ACL on March 8 in a GFL game against the Rays.
It has to be noted that Reynaldo López, who missed the 2025 season because of shoulder surgery, logged 4⅔ innings in Fort Myers on Sunday and saw a sharp and alarming velocity decline in all four of his pitches.
López on Monday said he felt no pain or discomfort during the outing and chalked up the velocity decrease to a mechanical issue. Weiss said he asked López “about a dozen times” if the right-hander felt OK during and after Sunday’s outing.
“We were seeing the same thing you were. But he said he’s fine,” Weiss added. “He talked about being out of sync, and he really had to grind through that (Sunday), and that’s what it looked like. He just felt like his delivery was out of sync. It was just one of those days where he’s really having to grind through an outing. He says he’s gonna be good, he’s gonna be good to go.”
López is scheduled to start Saturday at Truist Park against the Royals the night after Chris Sale takes the mound opening day. Grant Holmes is now scheduled to start Sunday’s matinee, and Bryce Elder is on the docket for March 30.
March 31’s game becomes a big question mark. Didier Fuentes, now starting Monday’s GFL game, and José Suarez are the likeliest candidates to be handed the ball that day, or Martín Pérez could be called up from Triple-A Gwinnett.
“A lot of it is we have to see how we get to that start and who’s available at that point in time,” Weiss said. “Some of it is just letting things play out and see who’s set up best to make a start.”
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