The phrase '95 and a slider' has long been scout-speak for a pitcher who has the building blocks to become a major-league reliever. But as fastball velocity lurched up and up and up in MLB, the phrase became less and less complimentary. Where it used to be a ticket to a steady, prominent bullpen role, as Baseball Prospectus wrote last year, the label is now 'simply generic — a qualifier to reach the majors and perhaps reach it half a dozen times in a season, not an indication of a career there.'
, whose innings in games deGrom started often felt like a weird type of deja vu.
Then there are the deGrom types challenging that notion. In 2022, 10 pitchers who threw at least 120 innings went fastball-slider for at least 80% of their pitches. That list includes AL Cy Young runner-up Dylan Cease, World Series hero Cristian Javier and Clayton Kershaw, who has just as strong a claim on pushing this envelope as deGrom.
But in the past 10 full seasons — 2012 through 2022, but excluding 2020 — there have been 32 recorded seasons of 120-plus innings in which a pitcher used his fastball-slider combo at least 85% of the time. Twelve of those seasons have come in the past two years. But the physical act of what we would’ve called “throwing like a reliever” a few years ago? There has been no sea change there. It's still extremely strenuous, but pitchers are finding ways to do it for longer periods of time. When Young, the very tall pitcher-turned-Rangers GM, was employing his fastball-slider-only repertoire, he was 36 years old with a fastball sitting 87 mph. He never averaged more than 91 mph on his heater in the majors.
Rodón was plagued by injuries while with the White Sox, missing huge chunks of every season between 2017 and 2020. So far,has also kept him relatively healthy. But even in two mostly awesome years, there's a worrisome moment. His velocity fell off a cliff in September 2021, dropping to 93 mph from 96 the previous month and likely postponing teams' willingness to offer him his impending payday.
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