Nick Fortes noted after Friday\u2019s game<\/a> against the Pirates, it\u2019s been an ongoing issue. More consistent sweeper execution would force hitters to respect the pitch and expand the zone more often. His chase rate on the pitch typically sits around 40%, but this season it\u2019s just over 20% while the chase rates on his other pitches are roughly aligned with his career averages. Once he\u2019s able to get hitters to respect his sweeper again, they\u2019ll have more difficulty timing up his fastball shapes.<\/p>\nFinding better execution of his sweeper is easier said than done. If it was as simple as I\u2019m making it sound, Jax would have fixed it already. The shape of the pitch will vary a bit year to year, but its pretty close to the shape he showed in 2024, so that makes a grip change less likely as the root cause. The catcher set-ups also appear consistent, suggesting it\u2019s not a cueing issue.<\/p>\n
If the team wanted to reduce pressure while he finds his feel for the pitch again, Jax could open some games. He is currently coming into high pressure situations late in a game where he has to execute. Obviously, your high-leverage relievers have to do this – it\u2019s part of the job. However, allowing for a different mental approach where he can \u201cgrip it and rip it\u201d with lower stakes could be beneficial in helping him reset his execution of the pitch. Although role changes are rarely this simple in practice, Jax could later be moved back into high-leverage after he\u2019s had some time to regain his feel for the pitch.<\/p>\n
Regardless of the role, there\u2019s reason to believe that Jax and the staff will get his sweeper back to being a dominant pitch. Given that the sweeper drives a significant portion of his chase and put-away ability, even small inconsistencies can have outsized effects on his overall performance. In short, this looks less like a decline in stuff and more like a temporary loss of feel for a pitch that drives his entire profile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rays had high expectations for Griffin Jax when he was acquired at last year\u2019s trade deadline. After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,4,297,2550,68,81431,2551,2549],"class_list":{"0":"post-678702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-rays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-rays","11":"tag-tampa-bay","12":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","13":"tag-tampa-bay-rays-analysis","14":"tag-tampabay","15":"tag-tampabayrays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116428234133790656","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}