Downgraded Slider is Keeping Joel Payamps From Reaching Last Season's Heights

Shortly before Opening Day, I suggested two adjustments for Joel Payamps regarding his fastball usage. The first was to throw more four-seam fastballs, to generate more swings and misses. The second was to emphasize the inner third of the zone with his two-seamer to produce jam shots, rather than focusing on the lower third in search of rollover ground balls.

Fast forward a few months, and Payamps has demonstrated those two changes. He’s throwing more four-seam fastballs overall, including more to right-handed batters.

He is also targeting that inner third against righties with his two-seamer.

Encouraging results with those fastballs have followed. Opponents have posted just a .169 wOBA against Payamps’s four-seamer, with a 36.8% whiff rate. The average launch angle against his sinker has dropped from 13 degrees last year to 6 this year, and the wOBA against it from .394 to .237.

Despite the improvements to his fastball mix, though, Payamps’s overall results have regressed. His ERA has risen a full run, from 2.55 to 3.55, and his strikeout rate has decreased from 26.8% to 20.8%.

In fairness to Payamps, 7 of the 11 earned runs he has allowed have come within two dreadful appearances. He has gone unscored-upon in 23 of 29 appearances (79.3%). Still, many metrics will agree that he has not been the same pitcher on a per-pitch basis that he was last year.

Most of the regression traces to his slider. Payamps’s breaking ball was his bread and butter last year. He used it a career-high 43.8% of the time in 2023, and it held opponents to a .243 wOBA while accumulating a run value of +5. This year, it’s yielded a .334 wOBA and -2 run value. The whiff rate against the pitch has dropped from 28.6% to 22.1%.

Before Payamps came to Milwaukee, his slider was an underwhelming pitch. It became lethal when he added a couple of ticks of velocity and gave it more of a sweeping shape. Payamps subtracted nearly five inches of vertical drop, while adding nearly two inches of lateral movement. He also excelled at commanding it to the glove side of the zone.

This year, Payamps has given back some of those improvements. After his slider averaged 11.9 inches of lateral movement last season, it’s averaging 9.7 inches in 2024. That’s the least movement it’s had since 2021.

Payamps has also lost his mastery of the glove-side breaking ball to righties. He’s now catching the middle of the plate with it far too often, and it’s frequently backing up on him over the inner half.

These developments have combined to turn what was once a lethal pitch against righties into one that is much more hittable. Left-handed opponents have still managed just a .257 wOBA against the slider, but righties have posted a .381. The pitch held them to a .233 wOBA last year.

Payamps is also throwing fewer of these less impressive sliders, lowering its usage to 38.2%.

The good news is that Payamps’ slider is not too far removed from the version that produced last year’s breakout. Rather, it’s “off” just enough to downgrade him from a bona fide high-leverage weapon to a solid middle reliever. It may not take much to rediscover the movement and command of the pitch. If he does, Payamps could be as effective as ever.