Sequence of the Week: Luis Gil’s reworked slider continues to shine (7/13)

Our At-Bat of the Week series returned to its regularly scheduled programming yesterday and today it’s time for Sequence of the Week to do the same. Perhaps the most important 64-game stretch for the Yankees over the last decade is set to begin tomorrow, which gives us one last chance to reflect upon the first half.

Luis Gil took everyone by surprise at the start of the season, first grabbing the fifth starter role with both hands despite missing most of the previous two seasons to Tommy John rehab, then by becoming an early candidate to start the All-Star Game thanks to a 2.03 ERA and 30.4-percent strikeout rate across his first 14 starts. But then came a barren spell of three starts that saw Gil give up 16 runs on 14 hits in 9.2 innings (14.90 ERA) with more walks than strikeouts, and in an instant the same people who were hailing him as the next ace-caliber starter developed by the Yankees became his most vocal critics, declaring that such steep regression was bound to occur for a pitcher who was still more raw talent than refined product.

It appears that the aforementioned three-game stretch was more of a blip than a trend, Gil extricating himself from the mini-slump by making back-to-back starts of at least six innings, allowing just one run in each. Part of this return to form derives from renewed confidence in his best pitch, the fastball, Gil inexplicably shying away from the pitch during those three bad starts before bringing it back in his last two.

The part that caught my eye, however, has been the effectiveness of Gil’s slider, a pitch that was a mere afterthought during the dominant spell of his first 14 games. We caught our first glimpse of how dangerous the slider can be for Gil in his 7/7 start against the Red Sox, Gil using it 35 percent of the time and with a 30-percent whiff rate. Gil tallied five strikeouts on the slider in that start and in his most recent start against the Orioles, and it is one of those strikeouts in Baltimore that I would like to highlight today.

We join Gil facing Austin Hays with no one on and two outs in the bottom of the second last Saturday in Baltimore, the rookie pitcher having been spotted a 4-0 lead thanks to a Gleyber Torres’ RBI single and Austin Wells’ three-run bomb in the top of the first. Gil starts Hays off with one of his trademark high-velocity changeups, the 92 mph “offspeed” pitch running arm-side across the width of the plate to the inside edge.

Hays is geared up for the fastball and swings both early and over the top of the changeup, pounding it into the ground foul right by home plate. It’s clear that Gil is able to fool batters by maintaining the same arm speed for four-seamer and changeup, the 5-6 mph velocity differential creating just enough deception to limit damage.

Gil sticks to the secondaries 0-1, unleashing a perfect slider just off the outside edge in an ideal chase location.

This is just an evil pitch to follow the previous changeup. Both are thrown out of roughly the same tunnel but then break in opposite directions about halfway to the plate. Hays swings as if it’s going to be a changeup in the same location as pitch one only to watch the slider dart away from his bat.

Gil is in the driver’s seat 0-2. He has seen Hays swing at both his secondaries without coming close to barreling them. It’s clear that Hays is in swing mode, so Gil has free rein to leave the zone and try to induce a chase. The obvious pitch would be another slider a little lower and a little farther off the plate, but instead Gil opts for a 100 mph heater above the zone trying to overpower Hays.

It’s a sound process and execution, just a better take by Hays. Perhaps the pitch is a tad too far inside to induce a chase — you can see Hays flinch as he pulls his hands away from the pitch.

Even though Hays pushed the count leverage ever so slightly in his own favor with the take, Gil is arguably in a more advantageous spot at 1-2 than 0-2. That’s because he has established he can command both planes of the strike zone, changing the eye level with the previous heater while also hovering off both the inside and outside edge of the zone. All three pitches and all four quadrants of the zone are open to him, and he pours in another brilliantly executed slider right on the outside black.

Hays is in emergency hack mode and just manages to foul off the pitch to stay alive.

In another 1-2 count, Gil changes speeds yet again, pinpointing the very top of the strike zone with a 99 mph four-seamer.

Cue another emergency swing by Hays. The fact he has been able to foul the last two pitches off is impressive in its own right and Gil must be wondering what it will take to get a swing and miss.

Turns out, the answer is the filthiest slider of the encounter.

This is what the Pitching Ninja would refer to as a “sword.” Hays tries to check his swing but can’t hold up on a slider that starts middle-middle yet somehow ends up well off the outside edge of the zone. This one pitch illustrates the growth of the slider in just a short period of time. Gil is able to command the pitch close enough to the zone to induce the chase and impart enough movement to take it away from the barrel.

Here’s the full sequence:

Brendan Kuty of The Athletic recently spoke to Gil about this rediscovered confidence in the slider. To break out of his three-game swoon, Gil and the pitching coaches realized that he needed a reliable third pitch to cover the days when he didn’t have a feel for fastball or changeup. They altered the grip on his slider and the effects were immediate:

“Definitely feel a lot more comfortable with the grip of the slider now. That can make such a huge difference. I feel like now it’s not slipping away and I just feel comfortable and secure about executing that pitch.”

Not only did he gain control of the pitch — the raw metrics have improved as well, the pitch exhibiting about two more inches of additional lateral movement vs. prior to the grip change. With just one mechanical adjustment, Gil gained three improvements with the slider: better movement, better command, and most importantly the confidence to throw it.

You can see by the location and tight grouping of the three sliders he threw Hays, the process and intention are superb and the execution is even better. What’s more, because of the unusually high velocity of the changeup, the slider provides an even better option to change speeds, coming in four mph slower than the cambio and nine mph slower than the four-seamer. It’s the perfect response to the adjustments his opponents have made to the fastball and changeup.

Armed with this reworked slider, a changeup which has improved leaps and bounds as the season has progressed, and a renewed confidence to rip the fastball, I have no doubt that Gil can continue to pitch like the force we saw in his first 14 starts and not like the version from the three-game blip.