What’s up everybody!
I’m wrapping up my annual pitch review series where I take a look back at the five best pitches of each pitch type from 2024, as ranked by PLV! Today, I’m taking a look at the five best sliders from last year.
If you’d like a closer look at what this series is about, check out the first article in the series on the five best changeups of 2024, and also check out my five best curveballs of 2024, the best cutters of 2024, and the best fastballs of 2024. And if you’d like an in-depth primer on what PLV is and how it works, check it out here.
Anyway, let’s dive into the five best sliders of 2024!
5. Jakob Junis
Jakob Junis‘ slider has been one of my favorite pitches to watch in baseball for many years now, and it’s good to see him still out there slinging it because it’s a beauty.
While Junis spent a few years as a starter, he’s mainly been a bullpen arm lately (with the occasional start here and there) and last year had the best season of his whole career, posting a 2.69 ERA with a 0.85 WHIP in 67 innings.
The slider is Junis’s money pitch—he throws it 45% of the time and it works beautifully paired with his sinker. Last year, the slider posted a 36.1% CSW (driven largely by a 22.5% called strike rate) with a solid 31.6% chase rate and an excellent .235 wOBA against.
Junis is really good at keeping his slider in the strike zone and paired with his sinker, which does an equally excellent job at inducing weak contact, Junis was able to be a really effective reliever for the Reds and Brewers last year and should be fun to watch again this year.
It’s a shame that Tyler Glasnow has battled so may injuries over the years, because he is truly one of the most impressive pitchers to watch in the league, and while he was out there last year, he was once again pretty awesome, posting a 3.49 ERA with a 0.95 WHIP and an absurd 32.2% strikeout rate (97th percentile among starters).
Glasnow goes with an extremely effective fastball/slider/curve combo buoyed by the elite extension he gets on his pitches (7.5 feet on the fastball, that’s nuts).
The slider comes in around 90 mph on average with loads of spin and was a fabulous swing-and-miss pitch, posting a 34.5% CSW (85th percentile among sliders), 20.7% swinging-strike rate (88th percentile), and 35.2% chase rate (62nd percentile) alongside a 34.1% ICR (67th percentile).
Glasnow tends to throw the pitch early in the count to get a quick strike and loves to bring in his curveball with its ridiculous 20.3% swinging-strike rate in for two-strike counts.
It’s a great approach, Glasnow has elite stuff, it’s just all about health for him.
3. Mitch Spence
Mitch Spence had a tough rookie campaign for the A’s last year, posting a 4.58 ERA and 1.38 WHIP in 151.1 innings, but he flashed some interesting potential with the stuff he was throwing.
Chief among them is this slider—he throws the pitch about a third of the time and it’s a great swing-and-miss pitch with a 42.8% chase rate last year. It’s especially effective against righties, who had a pretty solid 34.5% ICR against the pitch last year (56th percentile among sliders) but not nearly as effective against lefties.
Spence’s primary pitch is his cutter which has the opposite problem as the slider—it’s very effective against lefties and not as effective against righties—but it still does a good job limiting hard contact, and mixed in with it and the slider is a curveball that hitters only had a .237 wOBA against last year alongside a 42.3% chase rate.
If Spence can boost his velocity some—the cutter only comes in around 91 mph and his sinker floats around 92—he could have a very interesting repertoire with this great slider and a really solid curveball. He’s definitely someone to keep an eye on.
We have a tie at the top of the list! We’ll dig into Logan Gilbert first.
Logan Gilbert had a pretty incredible year last year, posting a 3.23 ERA and a ridiculous 0.89 WHIP and 27.4% strikeout rate over 208.2 innings. Truly elite level stuff, and it came in large part thanks to one of the best sliders in the game.
Gilbert’s slider comes in around 88 mph on average and posted some truly elite numbers last year, including a 41.9% chase rate (88th percentile among sliders), a 20.9% swinging-strike rate (90th percentile), a 36.2% CSW (92nd percentile), and a 33.7% ICR (69th percentile).
Paired with a fastball that gets great velocity and elite extension and a splitter that works pretty well as a swing-and-miss pitch (22.2% swinging-strike rate last year, which is great) and you’ve got a pretty incredible repertoire from a pretty incredible pitcher.
And tied for first place with Logan Gilbert is a pitcher who had a drastically different year from Gilbert, it’s Patrick Sandoval!
Sandoval hasn’t been especially good in recent years and is a prime example of “one elite pitch doesn’t make you a great pitcher.” Sandoval only pitched 79.2 innings last year with a 5.08 ERA before requiring internal brace surgery in June, knocking him out of the 2025 season until likely the second half of the year.
But while he was out there, he threw a pretty sweet slider. The pitch comes in around 88 mph with a good bit of spin and movement to it and worked well as a pitch Sandoval used early in counts to get a strike (its 20% called strike rate was good for 88th percentile among sliders).
Sandoval located the pitch in the zone quite a bit though, and occasionally it’d catch a little too much of the zone, leading to a 42.4% ICR, which isn’t great, but still, Sandoval generally did a good job locating it with a great 52.4% Str-ICR (70th percentile among sliders).
Unfortunately, Sandoval is gonna be out for a while, so there isn’t going to be much use for him from a fantasy perspective—though there still wouldn’t be much use even if he was healthy. Great slider though!