Gavin Williams Changed His Slider. Did Ryan Pepiot Raise His Arm Slot?

Gavin Williams, Ryan Pepiot, David Festa

• Guardians Gavin Williams turned his slider into a cutter. The pitch averaged 85 mph with 1” vertical break and 3-4” sweep last season. In his debut yesterday and his prior 3 Triple-A starts, it averaged 91.6 mph with 7” vertical break and 0” sweep. This feels like a classic “throw your breaking ball harder” situation, where the pitcher is behind the ball more and the pitch drops and moves to his glove side less. Unsure if there was a grip change here, but I will guess there is. Williams’ fastball is also more two-plane, losing 1” vertical break and adding 2” arm-side movement from the same release point. This is something to monitor coming off the elbow injury. 🤔

  • FanGraphs Stuff+ says the fastball was above average and the slider was below average last year. My bet is that the fastball has been downgraded to an average pitch and the new cutter is an average or better pitch. The cutter’s effectiveness to righties will be something to watch. His mix used to be platoon-neutral with hard, vertical shapes. Now he’s trending towards a fastball that may have lefty issues and a cutter that may be worse versus righties. Need more sample here, but I’d say overall this is a stock-down situation with the change in shapes.

• Rays Ryan Pepiot’s release height has steadily risen throughout this season. He averaged a 5.8’ release on his four-seam in his first four starts. That’s up to 6’ in his last 3 outings, a 2.5” difference without a change in extension. In short, he has raised his arm angle. The odd thing is that the only thing that appears to be affected is his slider. He’s behind the ball so much that it’s eclipsing 12” vertical break in some outings, causing it to be tracked as a cutter despite my confidence it’s the same pitch. The average cutter has just 8” vertical break, for reference. 🤷‍♂️

  • It’s also not a coincidence that in these last 3 outings with his highest release of the season, his walk rate has jumped to 16% after hovering around 7% for his first 11 starts. This feels pretty clearly like something is off mechanically. I find it odd that his fastball shape hasn’t been affected. And it’s also odd that his contact quality hasn’t dropped much. The only issue is that his swinging-strike rate versus righties has fallen from 18% to 10%, which makes sense given his slider usage to that handedness. I’m monitoring his release height and any articles/postgame sound that suggest something is off. I’d be cautious with him at the moment.

• Twins David Festa has struggled in his first two MLB starts: 10 IP, 12 ER, 8 K, BB, 4 HR allowed. He’s throwing his fastball, slider, and changeup all ~1/3 to lefties and going ~85% four-seam/slider to righties. The shapes here look fine. It’s a cut-ride fastball that sits above 95 with 17” vertical break from a 6.3’ release with plus extension. The slider is a hard gyro ball that should be platoon-neutral. And the changeup is an added weapon for lefties that is also hard (88+) and separates off the four-seam a lot laterally (10” difference). FanGraphs Stuff+ has the fastball and slider as above-average pitches. 👍

  • His issue so far has been HRs, which can be fluky. All the ones he’s given up to lefties have been missed locations, so perhaps there’s some hope. The command appears more average than plus, which could be a limiter to how low that HR risk comes down, but the velo is great and there’s room to add a curveball and sinker as extra weapons versus lefties and righties respectively. The results have been bad, I get it. But Festa is a top-40 pitching prospect. This isn’t the last you’re going to hear of him.