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Meoli: "How the Orioles' embrace of the sweeper has led to pitching improvements in the majors and minors"

SilverRocket

By SilverRocket
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SilverRocket Major Leaguer

SilverRocket

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Interesting article by Meoli about O's developing the sweeper: https://jonmeoli.substack.com/p/how-the-orioles-embrace-of-the-sweeper

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Austin Voth saw teammates throwing the sweeping, horizontal-breaking sliders that now permeate baseball and had a single, longing thought.

“Wow, that’s a great pitch — I don’t think I’ll ever be able to throw that,” he said.

Then, he did by accident. He got on the side of a curveball and threw a sweeper by mistake in an early Orioles start against the Chicago White Sox, and pitching coach Chris Holt came to him shortly thereafter armed with video of that pitch as well as a grip and hand position to intentionally replicate it.

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Louis Head, a new Orioles reliever who learned his sweeper with the Rays last season, explained that with more downward-breaking sliders, hitters could plan to swing in a certain zone and move the barrel up or down accordingly for a fastball or breaking ball.

“Say you’ve got a fastball that’s carrying 18 [inches] and you have sweep that’s 15 [inches horizontally],” he said. “A hitter is having to cover a good 25-30 inches across the plate in order to defend himself. It just makes it a harder pitch for a hitter to just sit on locations, one side of the plate. They have to worry about fastballs in, sliders away, and it just makes it a little bit harder for them to be up there. They can’t just sit in a certain area and expect 10 inches of drop where all they have to do is adjust their barrel. It’s two planes.”

Ryan Mountcastle describes the difficulties for hitters similarly — and noted it’s caused an uptick in hit-by-pitches for hitters like himself, Austin Hays, and Trey Mancini this year as they have to stay over the plate for pitches that could dive away and are susceptible to fastballs that run into their hands. The way the pitch starts either at their hip or over the plate then tails away makes it difficult to hit.

It mentioned Spenser Watkins as the other main example and someone who put it to game action quickly, and Noah Denoyer, Justin Armbreuster, and Daniel Lloyd as successful examples in the minors. Evan Phillips was the first Oriole to develop it, though a different article mentioned the Dodgers also tweaking the pitch: https://theathletic.com/3510167/2022/08/16/dodgers-evan-phillips/ 

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Almost immediately, the Dodgers put together an outlay of how they felt Phillips could excel. They loved his slider, and felt they could refine it to add even more sweep. Assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness tweaked the grip and, this season, only three pitchers had sliders with more average horizontal movement than Phillips.

The results have been impressive, but I wonder how long this can last before other teams figure out how to do the same thing, or as players move around in the offseason. Maybe we only have a short window for how our pitchers have been overperforming.

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EddeeEddee Major Leaguer

EddeeEddee

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23 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Nobody's really used a sweeper in years.  Maybe at the youth level, but not pros.  Makes it really hard to run an offside trap.

Wait... what?

Yeah, "sweeper" is a position on the soccer field too -- probably not used anymore -- so I also thought maybe I was about to read about the wrong sport in the wrong decade.  

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