NSFW: Let's watch some of Adam Ottavino's sliders together

 

Adam Ottavino should be illegal. I’m not saying he’s cheating, by all reports he is playing by the rules, I’m saying he, as like an entity, should be illegal.

In Denver, we’ve seen ‘Otto’ go from waiver pickup to one of the nastiest backend bullpen options in baseball. Discounting the year he was used a piggyback in the Colorado Rockies’ Project 5183, where four starters were used and limited to 75 pitchers per appearances, Ottavino has a 2.75 ERA in 193.1 innings over 182 outings in Denver. In those 182 games from the year 2013 up until the present Otto has a 9.8 strikeout per nine innings rate accompanied by a slick 165 ERA+.

It wasn’t until the last three seasons, which included a Tommy John Surgery in the middle, that we’ve seen him go from great to dominant boosting his strikeouts per nine innings to over 11. His summarizing numbers are terrific and historically good for a Rockies reliever but it’s what goes into his ERA and strikeouts that make him so damn dominant.

Before we get to our featured presentation there are two things you must understand. First, only one Rockies pitcher uses his slider more than Ottavino and that’s Greg Holland. Ottavino is near the top of the majors in slider usage. Holland also has a dandy of a breaker but that’s for another day. Second, Ottavino’s horizontal moment on his slider is only bested by Carlos Torres of the Brewers.

But why is Torres better know for his absurd hat than his slider? Well, it’s what Torres works his slider off of. Torres, who has career ERA in the high threes has a league average fastball at 92 with league average break on his heater while Ottavino is borderline elite with not one but two fastballs that both clock at 95 on average. And we haven’t even gotten to the crazy part. While both of his speeders break about 10 inches one breaks eight inches in depth, and the other eight inches sideways, better known as a sinker. Each breaks back on right-handed hitters making it almost impossible to barrel with his slider moving the opposite direction. And here’s the crazy part, both of his higher velocity pitches appear to break more to Pitch F/X than his slider does. Also, Torres played for the 2012 Rockies so it’s entirely possible that he learned his slider from Ottavino.

The best way to watch Ottavino’s arsenal is via a case study, I chose the Rockies game against the Diamondbacks from Sunday.

Setting up the situation, it’s the eighth inning, tied at zeros and aside from the extremely inhumane Ottavino, there are some brutal shadows on the field, making the ever-so hitters friendly Chase Field into a death trap for hitters.

Ottavino facing off against one of the game’s most underrated and best ballplayers in Paul Goldschmidt. Let’s pick it up at one ball, no strikes.

Not only did he keep it away, your only method of attacking ‘Goldy’ he made him look a bit stupid. At two balls, two strikes we see why Paul looked uncomfortable.

Otto cranks a backdoor sinker at 96 mph to catch the outside corner for a strikeout. You can see Goldschmidt telling himself to lay off that it’s the slider and that it’s going outside, then he realizes it’s the sinker and it’s coming back… and he has no chance.

Stacking up those two pitches together and you see why he has no chance.

Ottavino’s only other strikeout in his two innings of work came against Brandon Drury. The Diamondback is ahead two balls to one strike where he pick this up.

This my personal favorite of his three sliders, the one that starts at a right-hander’s hip and drops into the zone.

Next pitch and he’s does this…

Once again it’s the 96 mph sinker that gets the strikeout for Ottavino, this time to end the eighth. And as fun as his slider is, and lord it’s fun, it’s his sinker that’s been the difference maker. It’s gone from third or fourth pitch in usage to a bonafide out pitch. Beyond The Boxscore did a terrific write-up on his sinker, which they find in 2016 “had the lowest average launch angle of any pitch in baseball, by a wide margin.”

To start the ninth Ottavino had former teammate Daniel Descalso at the dish. And let’s watch a three-pitch sequence where he goes sideways slider-sinker-downward slider which demonstrates exactly what makes him the elite reliever he is.

Now former Rockie Chris Iannetta is up and he breaks off the ‘at-the-hip’ slider.

Iannetta probably said to himself, “this ball is going to hit me in the butt, nooooo! oh wait, it’s a strike, darn.”

The last pitch worth viewing is the first pitch to Nick Ahmed, and I’m not lying when I tell you I’ve watched, officiated and played baseball for 22 years and I have never seen a pitch as good as this.

Bottom of the strike zone, the break, the velocity. It’s perfection. It’s so good that I had to text my friends about it. Their responses:

“Oh my god,” my brother messaged me in horror.

“How the (expletive) does he do that to a baseball,” my friend asked me befuddled and amused.

“Dude, come on, you can’t put porn on BSN Denver dot com,” a BSN Denver employee wrote.

I’m really not sure how Ottavino has ever given up a hit.

Nobody is going to accuse Ottavino of tunneling, or losing speed/movement to throw from the same arm slot. But as you can see below he doesn’t have a release point that is easy to pick up on either.

The two groups can be chalked up to him working from the first and third base sides of the rubber with him having to face a lefty in those two innings. It’s clear that his goal it to come at right-handed hitters from an extreme angle as told by his release point that is actually off the chart. While it may seem like there are some inconsistencies, when you consider he has three separate sliders the picture becomes more clear.

And there you have the three groups show themselves. Due to the small sample size it’s a bit hard to see but we are summing up just one outing.

When thinking about the break, the solid release points and add elite and unpredictable velocity on what is a great pitch mix (seen above) you have yourself an Ottavino. This is one outing out of what will most likely be over 60 on the 2017 season but you can see from the chart below how all the charts and video above add up.

Adam Ottavino is treasure and remind yourself of that next time you watch him get an inning’s worth of action.