How a lower arm slot has made Sandy Alcantara's stuff even nastier

Instead of trying to pick up exactly where he left off before his elbow injury, Sandy Alcantara is doing something different early in the 2025 season. The subtle adjustment is hard to notice with the naked eye, but it's impacting the pitch characteristics of his sinker, changeup and potential new slider. 

Using Statcast's arm angle tool, we can see the gradual change in Alcantara's mechanics since 2020. His arm slot used to be very consistent around 34 degrees or 35 degrees. Through his first two starts of 2025, the angle has dropped to 30.7 degrees, which is lower than any other month on record for him.

Coinciding with the drop in arm slot, Alcantara's sinker has seen a noticeable increase in horizontal movement, currently averaging a career high of 20 inches of armside movement.

So far, this change has led to great results. The sinker has been whiffed at more and barreled less than it was in the past. Hitters are not anticipating the extra inches of run and they're giving up on pitches that looks like a ball out of the ace's hand before crossing home plate as a strike. 

Alcantara's changeup was his primary strikeout pitch during his Cy Young award-winning season. That pitch has also seen an uptick in movement with two extra inches of horizontal, leading to a high 45% whiff rate. The lowered arm slot is allowing the natural pronation Alcantara has always had to play up. 

Alcantara mostly abandoned his curveball in recent seasons. Statcast is labeling 16.1% of his pitches as curves so far in 2025, but based on the profile of the pitch and Alcantara's comments about his arsenal in spring training, I believe this is a new slider with a higher vertical drop compared to the traditional slider he has used his whole career. By throwing it with mid-80s mph velocity, there is more of a differential between it and his fastball.

As shown by the Baseball Savant movement profile graph, the slider and refined curveball have similar movement profiles:

The early returns on the new pitch shape have been very positive—it has yet to be hit and has racked up three of the 11 strikeouts for Alcantara this season. It should play a huge role for Alcantara moving forward, particularly against left-handed batters. The pitch plays well off of the normal slider, fooling hitters into swinging over the top of the pitch. 

The Marlins have not gotten much length from Sandy Alcantara through his first two starts of the 2025 season, but even in this brief glimpse, he has shown changes to his game that should generate soft contact on the ground—something he has always excelled at—while also resulting in higher strikeout rates.