How Bubba Chandler’s New Sweeper Will Make Him Elite
Bubba Chandler's newly-added sweeper could shape the trajectory of his career.
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As a young prospect working through the Pittsburgh Pirates’ minor league system, Bubba Chandler always flashed electric stuff. From a high-vert, high-velocity fastball to a changeup that consistently received some of the best marks on Just Baseball’s top 100, Chandler has always been an electric arm to watch.
Yet, throughout his development, one thing was always missing: Chandler lacked an elite glove-side pitch, a key weapon a lot of pitchers like him possess.
However, this has changed during Chandler’s two most recent starts.
On April 12 against the Chicago Cubs, he broke out the sweeper for the first time, using it 16 times in his third outing of the season. He followed this up by fully mixing it into his arsenal during his start on April 17 versus the Tampa Bay Rays, where it produced some exciting results in the 21 times he threw it.
With Chandler now having a horizontal pitch he can consistently use to right-handed hitters, he could potentially unlock another level to his game. This should strike fear into hitters across the league, as Chandler already had the chance to be a multi-time All-Star in the big leagues without this newfound bender.
With this additional weapon, Chandler’s mix is now more complete, allowing him to dictate the action in a broader range of counts and situations. He’s now consistently in control of every at-bat, leaving the fates of hitters up to his mercy.
The potential for dominance is undeniable, and it’s time to take a closer look at how this pitch could shape the trajectory of his career.
Why Chandler Needed to Develop a Sweeper
Ever since he was a prospect, Chandler’s arsenal has always been built around his ability to overpower opposing hitters. With a fastball that pops at the top of the zone and a legitimate 70-grade changeup that plays well off of it, he was able to attack hitters easily with this combination of pitches.
However, Chandler’s reliance on his north-south duo of offerings began to become a little more predictable as he faced better competition. Especially to right-handed hitters, Chandler didn’t have a true glove-side breaking ball that was capable of getting him whiffs on the regular, which became noticeable during his stint in MLB last season.
Prior to this season, Chandler’s go-to horizontal whiff offering was his hard slider, which produced fascinating results. Playing more like a cutter, Chandler’s slider performed well, as opponents hit just .087 against it, with an xwOBA of just .160 as well.
While these numbers were encouraging, his slider didn’t do a great job at generating whiffs. Opponents swung and missed at a 23.1% clip, a number far below his changeup. Even Chandler’s four-seam fastball produced better whiff numbers, as it generated a 30.8% whiff rate.
Out of the 66 sliders Chandler threw to right-handed hitters last season, just six resulted in a swinging strike (approx. 9.1% whiff rate). To put things simply, his slider just wasn’t something Chandler could reliably throw for whiffs to right-handed hitters.
As a result, right-handed hitters fared pretty well against the rest of Chandler’s arsenal. Between his fastball and changeup, opponents hit .308 with an OPS of .848, showing what the lack of a second whiff offering did to his arsenal.
Not to mention, the hits righties had weren’t cheap shots, either. Their average exit velocity against these two pitches was almost 94 MPH, and he allowed a 108.1-MPH, 418-foot home run to Andy Pages with his fastball.
After seeing these results, it was clear that something had to be done: Chandler needed a horizontal offering so he could better handle these situations and not immediately put himself in a hole from moment one.
Positive Early Returns
As I briefly mentioned in the introduction, Chandler has only broken his new sweeper out in two outings so far, but the early returns have been extremely encouraging.
Through his first 37 times throwing the pitch, opponents have posted a xwOBA of just .283 against it, which shows how strong it’s been out of the gate. It doesn’t end there, either, as it’s generated a whiff rate of 27.8% and a strikeout rate of 30%, two marks that are visibly higher than his slider results from 2025.
More specifically, Chandler’s new sweeper has produced pretty encouraging results against right-handers. Opponents have posted an OPS of .675 against it, and he’s racked up four whiffs with the new offering, which resulted in three strikeouts.
Chandler’s sweeper really showed out during his start against the Tampa Bay Rays on April 17. It registered a 115 tjStuff+, a chase rate over 44%, and a whiff rate of 37.5%. Two of his three strikeouts in this outing were recorded with the sweeper, as he used it in an effective manner throughout the entirety of this start.
As pointed out by Pirates beat writer Alex Stumpf, his sweeper is tunneling quite well off his four-seam fastball early on this season. This is yet another important takeaway from the early stages of its development, as it’ll be even trickier for hitters to discern it from the rest of his mix.
It should also be noted that developing a sweeper, or any type of pitch with more horizontal movement, is quite difficult for a pitcher of Chandler’s nature. Pitchers with high vertical break fastballs often struggle to spin the ball enough to produce “sweep”, which makes developing a sweeper a challenging task to take on. However, Chandler has taken on this challenge with grace, and it’s paid off.
The fact that he’s had so much success with it this early on is pretty impressive, too. With the sweeper being such a difficult pitch for an arm of his archetype to learn, you’d typically see a bit of a learning curve, as he learns the ins and outs of how to use it during in-game action. For Chandler, it’s been the complete opposite, as he’s thrown it with conviction and confidence since adding it to his bag.
How Much Will Chandler Benefit From This Pitch?
After taking a closer look at the reason Chandler began developing his sweeper and the encouraging early returns from the pitch, we’re left with one question: How much better can he get as a result of this new offering?
The answer is significantly better. Chandler’s strikeout and whiff numbers should see a significant bump from the addition of this pitch, which could provide him with results that better reflect his time in the minor leagues.
He consistently struck out nearly 30% of the batters he faced while in the minor leagues, and he produced a 25% strikeout rate during his 31.1 inning stint in the big leagues last season. With a pitch built on garnering swings and misses, there’s no doubt in my mind that this number will climb yet again.
With a deeper arsenal, he’ll be better equipped to attack better hitters, something we saw him adjust to last season. Hitters are less willing to swing at his waste pitches than at any other level he’s played at to this point, and with another pitch he can use to give hitters another look, he’ll be in an even better spot for this challenge.
Not only this, but having another pitch he can go to will make the rest of his arsenal a lot stronger, too. Opposing hitters will see more than just his fastball and changeup (which made up 3/4 of his pitch usage in MLB last year), meaning these two offerings can regain some of the deception that initially made them so strong.
Overall, Chandler’s addition of a sweeper is going to be game-changing for him. He’s already flashed ace upside between the upper levels of the minor leagues, and with another legitimate swing-and-miss now in his mix, we could see him become a truly elite big-league arm.
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Written by
Jay Staph, a huge baseball fan and stat nerd, founded and ran his own baseball writing website, BSBWrites, at just 16-years-old. With focal points around prospects,…