Brewers Ahead of the Curve on Sliders

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Photo: Joel Payamps - Instagram

Joel Payamps pitching for Kansas City

Joel Payamps pitching for Kansas City

Hitting major league pitching is, at least in part, a guessing game. As such, pitchers are always going to need to work to stay one step ahead of their rivals and trends are going to change rapidly. In at least one case the Brewers might already be out ahead of the next trend.

In recent years pitchers have gotten a lot of mileage out of sliders and a new variant with more horizontal movement called a “sweeper.” In an era where improved technology has made it easier to design and teach new pitches, it seemed like the sweeper would spread like wildfire across the sport.

For some reason or a variety of reasons, however, batters may have caught up. Will Sammon and Eno Sarris of The Athletic recently published a piece noting that opposing hitters are performing better against sliders than they have at any point since pitch tracking data began in 2008, and their on-base plus slugging (OPS) against the slider is up 28 points from last year.

Sammon and Sarris’ piece outlines several possible explanations for this change: Data and anecdotal evidence suggests that the baseball itself may have changed again, with reduced drag inhibiting movement on breaking balls. Pitching machines have gotten more sophisticated and are better able to prepare hitters to identify and square up (or lay off) pitches with movement. The rapid increase in slider usage may also have made it easier for hitters to predict when one is coming.

The change behind this trend might be one of those things, all of them or none of them. Regardless of why hitters are improving against sliders, however, the results suggest it might be a good time to stop throwing so many of them. For the most part, the Brewers are a step ahead of the field here.

Brewers at the Far End

Through Sunday’s games MLB pitchers have thrown 88,583 sliders and sweepers this season, which is about 33 per team in every game. That distribution varies widely between teams, however: The Giants throw a slider once every three pitches, the most of any team. The Brewers, meanwhile, are on the far end of that spectrum. They’ve thrown a slider just 1918 times this season, using it for about 14% of all offerings. It’s the lowest rate of any MLB team, and it’s more than 140 pitches less than the second lowest.

Three of the Brewers’ seven most frequently used starters either don’t use a slider regularly or don’t throw one at all. It’s the fourth-most frequent offering in Wade Miley and Eric Lauer’s arsenal, and Julio Teheran hasn’t thrown one all year. Among the others, Corbin Burnes used to throw a slider often in 2018 and 2019 but deprioritized it as part of the arsenal change that made him a Cy Young candidate in 2021 and 2022. It’s still Adrian Houser’s primary breaking pitch, but he throws it just 12% of the time. Similarly, Colin Rea throws his sweeper less than 10% of the time as part of his six-pitch mix. Freddy Peralta stands out as the lone exception: He’s throwing his slider more often than he did last season, and by run values Baseball Savant’s data shows it’s been one of his weakest pitches.

Behind Peralta, however, the Brewers’ biggest slider-users are in their bullpen. Peralta has thrown 352 sliders this season but the Brewer who has thrown the second most is Joel Payamps with 279 in just 42 1/3 innings pitched. He’s thrown about 1.7 sliders to every batter he’s faced this season, and Baseball Savant suggests it’s been a strong point for him. Elvis Peguero is right behind him with 266 sliders, slightly more than 50% of the pitches he’s thrown as a Brewer. Both pitchers have been successful, perhaps at least in part because hitters don’t see many sliders from the Brewers’ other hurlers.

It remains to be seen how long this new trend will last: Hitters may figure out pitchers’ new offerings and send them back to the slider, or the characteristics of the ball might change and give an advantage back to high-spin pitches. For now, however, the Brewers seem to be ahead of the curve on breaking pitches.