Sidearmer Sandlin eager to bring unique look to Blue Jays' bullpen

TORONTO — The story of how Nick Sandlin came to pitch the way he does — hunched at the waist, hands behind his hip, dropping-and-driving with long extension towards the plate as he sticks his arm straight out horizontally and releases the ball two-and-a-half feet from his centre of mass — is a simple one. 

It was his junior year at Greenbrier High School in Evans, Ga., and Sandlin was asked to take the mound because his team was short on pitchers. He hadn’t thrown an inning in his life. He was a shortstop, sometimes a second baseman. All he knew was he liked to throw side-armed on the move while turning double plays. So, his coach told him to try that on the mound. 

“We kept messing with it over the summer, had some good results, so I stuck with it,” Sandlin says. “Looking back, I’m pretty glad he had that idea.” 

No kidding. Sandlin used his unique delivery to develop a suite of pitches that flummoxed high school hitters, earn a scholarship to the University of Southern Mississippi, throw one of the best seasons of any NCAA Div. 1 pitcher as a junior, get selected in the second round of the 2018 MLB draft, and arrive here, with four big-league seasons already under his belt, only 10 years after he first threw a pitch from an arm angle that runs nearly parallel to the ground. 

Now, Sandlin is preparing to begin a new season with a new club, the Toronto Blue Jays, who acquired him last month along with Andres Gimenez from the Cleveland Guardians. A Georgian who spends off-seasons in Southern Mississippi with his wife, Jacie, Sandlin doesn’t know a lot about Toronto. He’s never had spring training in Florida. A lot of friends and family are currently getting passports sorted out. It was an interesting holiday season, to say the least. 

“We’ve always enjoyed our road trips up in Toronto. It’s definitely a very nice city,” Sandlin says. “I’m learning about it right now, doing a little bit of research. It’s a lot bigger than I realized.” 

Sandlin is from a city of 200,000, went to high school in a town of 38,000, and attended college in a municipality of 50,000, so, yes, a metropolis of three-plus million will be an adjustment. Never mind getting traded, period, which was a shock for the 27-year-old, who had no inkling he could be dealt. 

During MLB’s Winter Meetings, Sandlin got a text from a friend that Gimenez had been traded. And before he could even pull up the news to see where the second baseman was headed, his phone rang. Chris Antonetti, Cleveland’s president of baseball operations, was on the other end with the answer. 

“Getting traded, it’s something that I'm sure almost every player goes through at some point in their career. But it is weird at first. There’s a lot of people and things that you'll miss after being in one place for a long time,” Sandlin says. “But Toronto’s always had awesome teams. And it’s a really competitive division. I’m looking forward to that part of it. I’m just excited to meet everyone and start working with a new staff and get their perspective on things.” 

Sandlin is bringing that staff a unique delivery and a whirlwind background as a pitcher. He spent his first two years of college closing games before becoming Southern Mississippi’s Friday night starter as a junior and leading all NCAA Div. 1 pitchers with a 1.06 ERA and 0.713 WHIP while running a 37 per cent strikeout rate over 102.1 innings. 

A day after Southern Mississippi’s season ended in early June, Sandlin was selected with the No. 67 overall pick of the 2018 MLB draft by Cleveland. Two weeks later, he accepted a below-slot bonus to turn pro. And just days after that, he made his rookieball debut in Arizona. 

By the end of June, he was in A-ball. A month later, he reached high-A. And by mid-August he hit double-A where he finished a campaign that saw him work to a 3.00 ERA over 25 appearances across four levels in an 11-week span — all in the same season he was an NCAA First-Team All-American and named Perfect Game/Rawlings National Pitcher of the Year.  

“It was fun. But it was definitely moving fast there for a little while,” Sandlin says. “At that point, I didn't really even know what was going on considering it was my first couple months of pro ball. I was just living out of a suitcase, moving place to place, and trying to focus on baseball when the game started.” 

Sandlin allowed only one earned run over his first 13 double-A outings in 2019 and arrived at triple-A exactly a year and a day after he was drafted. And he likely would’ve made his MLB debut later that summer if not for a stress fracture in the ulna of his throwing arm that ultimately required surgery.  

Sandlin developed the injury in 2018 when Cleveland was rocketing him up its system. Pitching through the pain only made it progressively worse. He still has six screws in his forearm to remind him of it. 

A six-month rehab and the minor matter of a global pandemic postponed Sandlin’s MLB debut until 2021, when he worked to a 2.94 ERA and struck out a third of the batters he faced over 34 appearances. A strained lat halted that season in August, but Sandlin has been a constant presence in Cleveland’s bullpen since and has been optioned to the minors just once, for the minimum 15 days in 2022. 

In all, he’s produced a 3.27 ERA over 209 appearances across the last four years. He pitched to contact in 2022, running a top-20 groundball rate among relievers, but he’s missed more bats since, posting identical 27.6 per cent strikeout rates each of the last two seasons with whiff rates ranking within the top 15 per cent of MLB pitchers. 

Most of that swing-and-miss comes with Sandlin’s slider and splitter, which he used to finish nearly three-quarters of his strikeouts in 2024. Sandlin has used his slider as his primary pitch in each of his four MLB seasons, adding or subtracting from its velocity and shape — Sandlin threw the pitch anywhere from 75-83 m.p.h. last season with spin rates ranging from 2,200 to 2,800 — when he wants it sweepier to encourage hitters to chase or tighter to land for a strike.  

Averaging a foot of glove-side cut, Sandlin’s slider featured one of the 20 largest breaks of any across MLB in 2024. This is where the feel for pitching he developed as a starter at Southern Mississippi comes into play. He can manipulate his wrist angle to make the pitch behave differently depending on what he wants it to do in various situations. 

“My slider's always been my best pitch. That’s something that I feel like I can throw to anyone in any count,” Sandlin says. “I can do different things with different hitters.” 

And then there’s the splitter. Sandlin developed a plethora of pitches in college, many of which he’s long since abandoned. But he hung onto his splitter to have something to ambush left-handed hitters with when locked in a battle. 

Part of the surprise is how uncommon the pitch is from Sandlin’s sidearm slot. Sandlin’s splitter averaged the lowest vertical release point — 4.5 feet from the ground — of the 79 pitchers to throw at least 50 splitters in the majors last season. And his horizontal release point was the second-farthest away from the torso. 

Meanwhile, the vertical release angle on Sandlin’s splitter was baseball’s flattest, making it look as if it was defying gravity before tumbling away. In simpler terms — Sandlin’s splitter is an outlier pitch. And it’s tough for hitters to square up a pitch they so seldom see across the league. 

At the onset of 2024, Cleveland asked Sandlin to throw it to lefties more often and even try it out against a right-hander here and there. During the season’s opening month, he threw more splitters than he did in all of 2023. 

Then, in early July, Cleveland asked him to up his splitter usage again. So, he did. A lot. It suddenly became his most-used pitch in July and August to both sides of the platoon. 

Over his final 31 outings of the season, Sandlin threw his splitter a third of the time and finished over 40 per cent of his strikeouts with it. Hitters whiffed over 40 per cent of the time they swung at it. He allowed only six hits — four of them singles — off splitters in that span. 

“A couple other pitches weren't performing quite as well as I would like them to —  and the splitter was doing better than anticipated. So, we just tested the limits on it and saw how much we could throw it,” Sandlin says. “Ideally, I would like to be able to execute all of my pitches and have them in a good spot to where I can use a four-pitch mix. Then you can keep guys off balance. That's when stuff is going to play best.” 

If only. The history of this sport tells us days when pitchers have all of their offerings working are few and far between. But the nice thing about being a reliever with a starter’s arsenal is you can take several paths to getting hitters out. 

Take Sandlin’s four-seam fastball. At 93 m.p.h. with a relatively ordinary movement profile, it doesn’t seem exceptional on the surface. Yet the 24.6 per cent whiff rate on the pitch is above league average, thanks to Sandlin’s vertical approach angle — the steepness at which the pitch crosses home plate. 

Sandlin’s five-foot-11 stature, sidearm slot, and drop-and-drive delivery allow him to release pitches from an average of 4.5 feet above the ground — the seventh-lowest release point among qualified pitchers last season. That makes the approach angle of his fastball extremely flat as it crosses the plate — think of drawing a straight line from mound to plate rather than one that slopes down — particularly when he locates it up in the zone.  

It gives Sandlin’s fastball the illusion of rising, crossing the wires of batters accustomed to facing fastballs coming towards them on a steeper downward plane. Some hitters describe a fastball like Sandlin’s as “jumping” — as if it’s riding over their bats. In actuality, it’s not dropping as much as their eyes and muscle memory expect. 

Last season, Sandlin located 67.2 per cent of his four-seamers from the waist up on hitters — a 92nd percentile mark among the 485 pitchers to throw at least 100 four-seamers in 2024. And the average vertical approach angle of the pitch was 3.7 degrees, making it one of MLB’s eight-flattest four-seamers. (Interestingly, one of the few pitchers with a flatter VAA on their four-seamer is Sandlin’s new teammate Yimi Garcia.) 

It’s quite a useful weapon when located and set up effectively with sinkers, sliders, and splitters moving down towards the plate. Where Sandlin can get in trouble is with the four-seamers he doesn’t elevate high enough, which became flat, 93 m.p.h. pitches along the middle plane of the strike zone. That’s not what you want — particularly in a fastball count.  

Of the 15 hits Sandlin allowed off four-seamers in 2024, 11 were on that plane — 10 of them when even or behind in the count. Take out three of those and his batting average against the pitch plummets from .294 to .235. There’s an opening here for considerable improvement if the Blue Jays can help Sandlin locate the pitch a bit more consistently and sequence it cunningly enough to keep hitters off of it. 

Another challenge for Sandlin throughout his MLB career has been limiting free passes. He's run double-digit walk rates in all four of his MLB seasons. He’s also allowed the fifth-highest HR/9 among qualified relievers over the last two years. A top-five HR/FB rate likely has something to do with that. It’s fair to expect that rate to regress and Sandlin to have better luck on fly balls going forward. But he still must find a way to throw more strikes and avoid more barrels. Walks and home runs are a tough combination. 

Of course, the Guardians develop pitchers as well as anybody and their suggested adjustments only took Sandlin so far. He moved to the middle of the rubber from the third base side midway through 2024 to let his sinker and slider play better off one another. He also tightened up his slider as last season went on, throwing it harder with less break. Pitching through a back injury for the first half of the year didn’t exactly help. 

Still, for as much major-league experience as he has — Alex Vesia is the only pitcher from Sandlin’s draft year to appear in more games — Sandlin still presents a lot of developmental opportunity. He can draw Xs with his sinker and slider, which spin on the same axis but in opposite directions; he can elevate riding four-seamers; he can lean on his splitter, an outlier pitch. His profile could take many shapes going forward. 

Remember, he only started pitching 10 years ago. He had just three seasons of NCAA ball and 55.2 minor-league innings between high school and the majors. He started throwing sidearm on a whim; he only threw sinkers and sliders in college; he developed his four-seamer in the minors; he’s messed around with a changeup; he just figured out his splitter last year. In what will be a season of many new things for Nick Sandlin, there’s still ample room to grow. 

“I'm excited to get started on continuing to learn new things with a new staff and getting my pitches in a good spot,” Sandlin says. “It’ll be cool to be in a new place. I want to settle in as quickly as possible and be as consistent as possible to help Toronto win a lot of games. That’s the goal — to be a really good contributor on this team.”