Braves Teammates Michael Harris II and Spencer Strider Stage Spirited Race For NL Rookie Of The Year

SportsMoney Braves Teammates Michael Harris II and Spencer Strider Stage Spirited Race For NL Rookie Of The Year Dan Schlossberg Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I have written 38 books and more than 20,000 articles about baseball Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories. Got it! Sep 5, 2022, 01:59pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin After moving from relief duty to the rotation, Atlanta fireballer Spencer Strider has become a Cy .

. . [+] Young Award contender.

(AP Photo/John Bazemore) Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved It’s a good thing the World Champion Atlanta Braves decided not to rest on their laurels. Thanks to a trio of rookies – two barely old enough to vote – the team passed the Labor Day milestone with a 84-51 record, just one game behind the New York Mets in the National League East title chase.

Michael Harris II and Vaughn Grissom, both 21, made their major-league debuts this summer after earning promotions from Double-A Mississippi far ahead of their projected arrival. Spencer Strider, 23, blazed his way onto the pitching staff with a triple-digit fastball and earned a promotion of his own: moving from the bullpen into the starting rotation as June began. Harris, an Atlanta native who grew up less than an hour from Atlanta’s Truist Park, did so well after his May 28 promotion that he was given an eight-year, $72 million contract extension after his first 71 games in the big leagues.

Along the way, he earned National League Rookie of the Month honors for both June and August. Strider won the honor for July, then enjoyed his finest moment on Sept. 1, when he fanned 16 Rockies in eight innings without yielding a walk.

He has the highest ratio of strikeouts to innings pitched (13. 66) of anyone who has thrown at least 100 innings this seasons. Strider is striding to shatter Kerry Wood’s strikeout-rate record and the club record for any starting pitcher, rookie or veteran.

“When he came in, he reminded me of Craig Kimbrel, just looking at him, the arm and everything,” manager Brian Snitker told The Athletic , “but now he’s looking more like Tom Seaver. ” MORE FOR YOU WWE Extreme Rules 2021 Results: Winners, News And Notes As Roman Reigns Beats The Demon The World’s Highest-Paid Soccer Players 2021: Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo Reclaims Top Spot From PSG’s Lionel Messi The Good, Bad And Ugly From The Green Bay Packers’ Win Over The San Francisco 49ers The flame-throwing right-hander could even join Fernando Valenzuela of the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers as the only pitchers to win a Cy Young trophy and Rookie of the Year award in the same season. The lethal lefty power of rookie center-fielder Michael Harris II was a welcome addition to the .

. . [+] lineup of the Atlanta Braves.

(AP Photo/Hakim Wright Sr. ) Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved About that rookie award: Strider’s most serious competitor is Harris, who roared into the Labor Day mile marker with a .

309 batting average, . 352 on-base percentage, and . 890 OPS.

Although he didn’t reach the varsity until May 28, he slugged 15 home runs and stole 16 bases before he was finally caught for the first time. Forty of his 97 hits went for extra bases. Most teams would salivate for a single rookie star in a season, but two? The Harris-Spenser competition is the best between rookie teammates since 1974, the year Fred Lynn and Jim Rice joined the Boston Red Sox outfield.

Lynn became the first player in baseball history to be MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season but Rice wound up with a niche in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Braves had their own blue-chip rookies in 2011, when Craig Kimbrel won the honor over Freddie Freeman. Eleven years later, both remain active and on a trajectory that could take them to Cooperstown as well.

Although it’s hard to project such a path for Harris or Strider, they both have a month to make their claim on the rookie trophy, last given to an Atlanta player in 2018 (Ronald Acuna, Jr. ). Asked whom he would consider, David O’Brien of The Athletic favored Harris.

“Right now, Harris,” he said in a Labor Day tweet. “So much production on both sides of the ball from an everyday player at a premium position. ” Harris, a left-handed hitter whose unexpected early promotion allowed the Braves to shift veteran Adam Duvall back to left field, was Atlanta’s third-round pick in the 2019 amateur draft.

Batting mainly at the bottom of the order, he hit 14 home runs in his first 85 games. He also showed a knack of doing his best work in late and close situations. He was named August Rookie of the Month after hitting .

337, slugging . 590, and posting a . 400 slugging percentage with 16 extra-base hits in 95 at-bats.

He paced all freshmen with 32 hits, capping the month with a four-hit game against the St. Louis Cardinals on August 28. A flame-thrower with great control, Spencer Strider has given the Atlanta rotation a major boost .

. . [+] this season.

(Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images) Getty Images The same week Harris initially reached the varsity, manager Brian Snitker moved Strider from the bullpen into the rotation. His 16-strikeout game – an Atlanta club record – came in his 17th start. “He goes out there and does his job, making it easier for us in the field,” Harris said of Strider, whose dark mustache, vegan diet, and gold piece medal have made him a local folk hero.

Harris, Strider, and Vaughn Grissom – another instant success story who came up from Double-A at age 21 without missing a beat – have adjacent lockers in a clubhouse corner they call “Rookie Row. ” Grissom not only replaced injured All-Star Ozzie Albies (fractured foot) at second base but will try left field when Albies returns from his current rehab assignment. As a pitcher, Strider doesn’t play as often as the others but makes headlines when he does.

Plucked off the Clemson campus in the fourth round of the 2020 amateur draft, he’s gone 9-4 with a 2. 67 earned run average, 174 strikeouts, and 34 walks in 114 2/3 innings. Over a 14-start stretch that culminated in the 16-strikeout night, Strider reached double-digit strikeouts five times.

His previous high was 13 – in 6 2/3 innings against the Philadelphia Phillies. Basically a two-pitch pitcher, Strider became the fourth rookie in the game’s long history with at least 16 whiffs and no walks in a game, ESPN research shows. Doc Gooden did it twice in 1984, followed by Wood in 1998 and Jon Gray in 2016.

Before promoting Harris and making Strider a starter, the Braves hardly looked like a team likely to win a fifth straight NL East title. But the moves clicked, the team won 14 games in a row, and a deficit of 10½ games gradually evaporated. Now every game counts – especially for the red-hot rookies who not only covet their first World Series rings but also a trophy they can only win once.

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