Big Apple Aces Max Scherzer, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon Among MLB’s Elite Slider Artists

Spring training games are in full swing, so it’s time to take a final look back at last season with my annual “Best Pitches” series.

Let’s continue to go pitch by pitch through the arsenals of all starting pitchers who threw 135 or more innings last season and determine the game’s best – and worst – offerings. The main inputs are pitchers’ bat-missing and contact management results. Each pitch is compared to league average swing-and-miss rates and pitch-specific Adjusted Contact Scores.

Adjusted Contact Score is, on a scale where 100 equals MLB average and the lower the number the better, the relative production a pitcher “should have” allowed based on the exit speed/launch angle mix of every batted ball yielded. An average pitch gets a “B’”, and a sliding scale is applied to each pitcher’s results to approximate a bell curve.

We’ve already covered changeups, curves, cutters, splitters, four-seam fastballs and sinkers. Today, we complete our pitch-by-pitch tour with sliders before summing up tomorrow with Starting Pitcher Grade Point Averages. Only splitters (18.8%) have a higher whiff rate than sliders (15,5%), though only sinkers (97.8 Adjusted Contact Score) and four-seamers (115.4) have allowed louder contact than the pitch’s 96.9 mark. 55 pitchers qualified for this list, with eight receiving either “A+” or “A” grades. Scherzer and Cole have both gotten “A” grades or better for their sliders in three or more seasons.

RHP Max Scherzer – A+ – (47 Adj. Contact Score, 26.8% Whiff Rate) – One can make a pretty good argument that Scherzer’s slider is the single best pitch in baseball. You want one-year dominance? Both its 2022 pitch-specific Adjusted Contact Score and whiff rate were the very best among the 55 qualifiers. You want multi-year track record? The pitch also received an “A+” in 2019, an “A” in 2017, 2020 and 2021, and a “B+” in 2018. Its 2022 component marks were the very best he’s received over that six-season span.

The pitch generated an 18.6% pop up rate, almost twice the average of all qualifiers (10.6%). He throttled both fly (57 Adjusted Contact Score, 6th among qualifiers) and ground ball (48 Adjusted Ground Ball Contact Score, 1st) authority with his slider. The pitch features limited horizontal (1.9 in.) and vertical (1.1 in.) movement, but is still extremely deceptive.

RHP Gerrit Cole – A – (92 Adj. Contact Score, 23.3% Whiff Rate) – While Cole’s pitch-specific contact management performance was only in the average range, his bat-missing ranked 4th among qualifiers. His slider’s track record isn’t quite as gaudy as Scherzer’s, but with A” grades in 2019-20, a “B+” in 2021 and “B” marks in 2017-18, it’s still pretty darned good. He missed more bats with the pitch in 2022 than in any of those years, while its pitch-specific 2022 Adjusted Contact Score was the worst over that span.

Cole’s slider was a prolific grounder-inducing pitch – its 47.2% grounder rate was well above the qualifiers’ average of 34.8%. He threw the pitch very hard at 88.7 mph, and like Scherzer didn’t rely on a material amount of horizontal or vertical movement.

LHP Carlos Rodon – A – (75 Adj. Contact Score, 17.8% Whiff Rate) – Unlike the two other aces covered above, Rodon’s slider derived more from contact management (tied for 5th) than bat-missing (16th). Prior to 2022, he hadn’t pitching enough innings to qualify for pitch grades since 2016, when he put up similar component scores (72, 18.8%) and earned a “B+” grade, barely missing an “A”.

Rodon posted a high pop up rate (13.5%) with his slider and also significantly muffled fly ball authority (50 Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score). With a 31.1% usage rate, Rodon threw his slider more often than either Scherzer (23.4%) or Cole (22.6%). The pitch generated significantly more horizontal movement (4.5 in.) than either of the other two aces.

The Other Star Pupils – One can make the argument that the very best slider of 2022 belonged to Dylan Cease. It got an “A+” grade, with elite component scores (69 Adjusted Contact Score, 21.7% Whiff Rate), and the highest usage rate (42.9%) among all qualifiers. The pitch also had the highest spin rate at 2833 rpm and also earned an “A” grade (67, 21.0%) in 2021.

Corbin Burnes (77, 23.7%) also received an “A+” grade, largely on the strength of the pitch’s bat-missing ability, which ranked 2nd among qualifiers. He threw the pitch almost as hard (88.2 mph) as Cole, and muted fly ball authority (41 Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score) better than anyone. His spin rate (2801 rpm) ranked 2nd to Cease. He only threw his slider 9.2% of the time, however, barely qualifying.

Josiah Gray, Cristian Javier and Shane Bieber all received “A” grades for their sliders. Gray and Javier both posted pitch-specific 63 Adjusted Contact Scores, but got it done differently. Gray did it by smothering both fly ball (54 Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score, 4th among qualifiers) and line drive (79 Adjusted Line Drive Contact Score, tied for 3rd) authority, while Javier posted an astronomical 26.3% pop up rate with the pitch. Javier’s average 8.5 in. of horizontal movement was off the charts high. Bieber excelled more on the bat-missing side (21.8%, 6th), while using the pitch to induce grounders (45.1% grounder rate).

Just Missed: 8 more pitchers received “B+” grades – Shohei Ohtani, Patrick Sandoval, Justin Verlander, Carlos Carrasco, Dylan Bundy, Joe Musgrove, Luis Castillo and Logan Webb. Ohtani, Sandoval, Verlander and Carrasco were the best bat-missers, Ohtani, Sandoval, Musgrove and Webb the best contact managers, and Ohtani and Webb threw their sliders over 30% of the time. Ohtani came about as close as humanly possible to getting an “A” without doing so.

The Worst Sinkers: No qualifying pitchers earned a grade below “C” for their sliders. Of the six who earned a “C” (Dane Dunning, Lucas Giolito, Jeffrey Springs, Johnny Cueto, Kyle Freeland and Drew Rasmussen), Rasmussen stood out for his subpar contact management (137 Adjusted Contact Score, 54th among 55 qualifiers) and Cueto (6.9% whiff rate, dead last) was by far the worst bat-misser.

2021 “A” Grade Recipients: We’ve already discussed Scherzer and Cease. Kyle Gibson dropped to a “B” in 2022 (120 Adjusted Contact Score, 19.1% whiff rate), and Chris Bassitt dropped to a “C+” (104, 13.2%). Luis Garcia didn’t throw enough sliders to get a grade in 2022, while Walker Buehler, Zach Plesac, Sonny Gray and Freddy Peralta didn’t throw enough innings to qualify. The injury attrition rate of slider achievers will need to be monitored moving forward.

“A” grade sliders seem to come in all shapes and sizes – from high (Cole) to low velocity (Javier, 79.9 mph), high (Cease, Burnes) to low spin (Gray, 2030 rpm) and high (Javier, Burnes) to low horizontal movement (Gray, Bieber, Scherzer, all below 2 in.). There are many ways to create slider deception. Here is a table with all of 2022 qualifiers’ slider grades.