Here’s another lens to view our first base candidates. (Dopes, please move if more appropriate elsewhere.)
MLB pitchers are throwing a ton of sliders. It’s kind of wild. 16.3% of pitches last year were sliders — higher than any time since pitch data was publicly available (2002).
Here’s each AL East team’s slider usage for the last five years.
Yankees
2013 - 16.6%
2014 - 20.8%
2015 - 24.6%
2016 - 28.3%
2017 - 25.0%
Rays
2013 - 7.2%
2014 - 10.6%
2015 - 14.5%
2016 - 13.1%
2017 - 17.0%
Blue Jays
2013 - 12.2%
2014 - 10.0%
2015 - 8.8%
2016 - 10.3%
2017 - 14.9%
Orioles
2013 - 12.1%
2014 - 15.9%
2015 - 16.1%
2016 - 14.5%
2017 - 17.1%
Many of the AL’s best sliders belong to pitchers in the East. It’s the best pitch of Severino, Gray, Tanaka, Bundy, Archer, Odorizzi, Stroman, Sabathia, Faria, and Montgomery, who all have above average sliders (per Fangraphs pitch values). Key relievers like Betances, Osuna, O’Day, Castro and Green do too.
For whatever reason, slider usage is up. With the Yankees, it’s way up. They’ve thrown more sliders than anyone in baseball the last three years, and were second in baseball the year before that.
Here are the first base options vs. sliders last year.
Abreu - .319 avg, .548 slg (468 pitches, 70 whiffs)
Adams - .180 avg, .400 slg (216 pitches, 44 whiffs)
Alonso - .123 avg, .169 slg (301 pitches, 56 whiffs)
Belt - .182 avg, .418 slg (268 pitches, 37 whiffs)
Duda - .167 avg, .400 slg (303 pitches, 57 whiffs)
Frazier - .194 avg; .411 slg (585 pitches, 78 whiffs)
Holliday - .203 avg; .377 slg (338 pitches, 62 whiffs)
Hosmer - .186 avg; .289 slg (426 pitches, 57 whiffs)
J.D. Martinez - .239 avg; .566 slg (429 pitches, 95 whiffs)
Miller - .172 avg, .344 slg (219 pitches, 42 whiffs)
Moreland - .267 avg, .493 slg (276 pitches, 59 whiffs)
Morrison - .256 avg, .467 slg (362 pitches, 61 whiffs)
Napoli - .163 avg; .477 slg (404 pitches, 84 whiffs)
Ramirez - .246 avg; .410 slg (439 pitches, 82 whiffs)
Reynolds - .121 avg; .242 slg (569 pitches, 122 whiffs)
Santana - .313 avg, .516 slg (349 pitches, 31 whiffs)
Nobody’s great at hitting sliders. That’s why pitchers throw them. But a couple of those guys — coincidentally or not, guys we’ve been linked to — hit them well last year. This doesn’t account for handedness, but it still seems significant. Despite his otherwise good year, Hosmer hit them particularly badly.
*For those checking Statcast, the default numbers seem to be 2016 – even though it reads 2017. You have to manually select 2017.