Does Tyson Miller Have the Sweepiest Sweeper in Baseball?

Tyson Miller throws his sweeper a lot, and that’s a good thing. He’s thrown it 43% of the time this season, but over his last five appearances, he’s led with the pitch, throwing it right around 60% of the time. It’s not hard to see why. The pitch has a .181 batting average, and according to Statcast’s run values, it’s been worth six runs. On a per-pitch basis, that makes it the fifth-most valuable slider and 22nd-most valuable pitch in all of baseball (minimum 150 pitches). It's an elite offering.

But the pitch isn't just effective, it's also very, very fun.

Image courtesy of © Jeff Le-USA TODAY Sports

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As you may know, the benefit of throwing a sweeper rather than a traditional, harder slider is that it induces more soft contact. There are also two downsides. First, sweepers tend to fare worse against opposite-handed hitters. Miller, is very aware of that; he’s thrown it more than twice as often to righties as he has to lefties. The second downside to the sweeper is that it can miss fewer bats, since its goal is to maximize horizontal break, and vertical break is the thing that really makes the whiffs happen. Those generalities have held true for Miller’s sweeper. If we look at pitchers who have thrown at least 150 sliders, here’s where Miller’s sweeper ranks: even though it induces tons of chases, it’s got a whiff rate of 29%, which ranks a bit below average. On the other hand, it’s got a 22% hard-hit rate, which puts it in the eighth percentile.

The pitch also exceeds its expected stats. Its .158 wOBA is 45 points below its already extremely low xwOBA of .203. The reason for this is simple: expected stats don’t take spray angle into account, and Miller excels at keeping the ball in the big part of the ballpark. Batters have pulled Miller’s slider just 28% of the time this season. Out of the 271 pitchers who have allowed at least 10 sliders to be put in play this year, that’s the third-lowest pull rate. That’s huge, because the pull side is where batters do real damage. This season, batters have a .438 wOBA when they pull the ball, and a .311 wOBA when they hit it to center or go the other way. In other words, when batters pull the ball, they’re better than Shohei Ohtani, and when they hit it somewhere else, they’re Jeremy Peña. Here’s a spray chart that shows Miller’s balls in play on the sweeper. Look at all those grounders to the middle infielders and harmless fly balls to center.