Pirates reliever Robert Stephenson shows off dirty slider for clean inning against Reds
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When the Pittsburgh Pirates called on Robert Stephenson against the Cincinnati Reds, the right-hander was ready to remind his former team his slider was as sharp as it’s been since he played there.
After using his four-seam fastball to get Nick Senzel to line out to center and escape a bases-loaded jam in the seventh inning, Stephenson showed off the slider by throwing it on 10 of his next 13 pitches.
A dirty pitch paved the way for a clean eighth as Stephenson got Jose Barrero, Chuckie Robinson and TJ Friedl to strike out in succession by swinging at sliders in the Pirates’ 6-3 win over the Reds on Monday night at Great American Ball Park.
“The slider was good,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said on the AT&T SportsNet postgame show. “Fastball was really explosive again, (hitting) 97. The second inning, he went out and was able to execute the slider. The last two or three times he’s pitched, he’s done a really nice job with the slider.”
That’s by design, as the Pirates pitching coaches pinpointed after they claimed Stephenson on waivers from Colorado on Aug. 27. Stephenson was 2-1 with a 6.04 ERA and 1.48 WHIP in 44 2/3 innings for the Rockies, but opponents were slashing .353/.371/.735 against him in his final six games, when he had a 9.82 ERA between Aug. 7-24.
After pitching in a bandbox in Cincinnati and at altitude at Coors Field in Colorado, Stephenson welcomes the opportunity to play for a team with a neutral field like the Pirates at PNC Park.
“It’s good for me to build confidence to have a fresh start,” Stephenson said. “I feel like it was starting to spiral there a bit at the end with Colorado. Sometimes, you just need a bit of a push, with a new team, a new set of eyes and work on some new stuff. I feel I have a different perspective now. It’s a lot easier to have confidence in my stuff, whereas every time I’m going out there and getting hit, it was rough for a while. Having these guys to work with, they’ve helped me a lot already.”
The analytics showed Stephenson was leaning too heavily on his four-seam fastball, which sits at 96.8 mph but had a hard-hit rate of 46.7%. The problem, the Pirates explained, was a release that put Stephenson in pronation too early and affected his movement. He’s working on a new grip and adjusted hand position, one that allows for better vertical break.
“If I can find a way to turn that into a true carry four-seam, then it’ll play up a lot better than what it had been doing earlier this year,” Stephenson said. “That’s the main thing with the fastball, trying to maximize the vertical movement and kill the horizontal so it plays up better in the zone.”
A former first-round pick by the Reds — 27th overall in 2011 — Stephenson had a minus-17 run value with the slider in 2019 for the Reds, when it had a 51.6% whiff rate and opponents batted .125.
“That was probably the best year I’ve had with that pitch,” Stephenson said. “I threw it a lot that year and got a lot of swing-and-misses. I feel like it’s heading in that direction.”
Stephenson wishes he’d thrown a slider to Albert Pujols in the eighth inning Saturday night, when the St. Louis Cardinals first baseman hit a tying RBI single that sparked a 7-5 comeback win. Instead, he threw three consecutive fastballs, all up and out of the strike zone.
“You know what? I think that pitch was great. I wouldn’t change anything about the pitch except for that I would have thrown a slider,” Stephenson said. “Because I put it exactly where I wanted it. It was 98 and it was well up and well off the plate. I think he was just cheating to it. If I throw spin right there, I probably have a better chance of getting him out. But the guy’s a Hall of Famer for a reason. The pitch itself, I have no regrets about it.”
Stephenson was appreciative of the opportunity to pitch in a leverage situation, given the Pirates are without All-Star closer David Bednar and lost right-handed reliever Colin Holderman to a season-ending injury. That Shelton used Stephenson in the eighth inning two days later was a positive sign, one that showed trust.
“For me, the thing I care about most is improving myself. Whatever role I pitch in, I’m not as concerned with that as much as getting better to finish this year off,” Stephenson said. “It was a really cool opportunity for me, to be able to pitch in a close ballgame like that again. And I love that they show confidence in me to do that.
“But at the same time, I’ll throw in whatever role they need me to throw in because I’m just trying to get better. I feel like, moving forward, that’s the position I want to be in. I want to get back to being a back-end-of-the-bullpen guy, but to get there I’m going to have get my stuff better first.”