CJ Nitkowski

that are out there.

If you can make that change up, look like your fastball.

I mean, good luck.

I mean, it's just going to be really difficult to make any decent kind of contact.

And he had to be reminded a little bit last year.

So if you go look at last year's first two months, they were not good in 2025.

And a lot of the damage was done on a slider.

slider had just been really struggling, and he kept trying to force it a little bit.

You rarely see the slider now, and you can go back and look probably somewhere around, call it July 1st, and what he's done since then.

He's been probably even further back than that, but he's just been incredible, and some of that had to do with not nearly as many sliders and going to that changeup a lot more.

He's pretty close.

He's different, right?

So this is not the same Spencer Strider that everybody knew.

It wasn't 99 at the top of the zone with really high vert and a slider.

The fastballs come down a little bit, although that induced vertical breakthrough we talked about, the ride at the top of the zone, it's getting there.

It's not that far off of where it was.

We'll probably never see 99 with consistency again just because it's two elbow surgeries, right?

One in college and then the internal brace that he had a couple of years ago.

So he's learning himself a little bit different.

He's as smart of a pitcher as I've ever been around.