Without his best pitch, Drey Jameson struggles as Diamondbacks fall to Padres

Torey Lovullo has a habit of going to his office to meet with his staff after games to break down what went right or wrong. Typically, the meetings are quick and to the point. Not on Sunday.

The Arizona Diamondbacks manager didn’t emerge from his office until nearly half an hour after the final pitch.

The culprit, as it often is when these meetings run long, was an afternoon that didn’t go the Diamondbacks’ way. Perhaps more pertinently, it was a weekend that didn’t go their way. The Diamondbacks dropped three of four to the Padres, capped off by Sunday’s 7-5 loss.

“We're frustrated,” Lovullo said. “We're a frustrated team right now. We're in the right weight class. … We're a good baseball team and we can't let things like that happen over a four game series if we want to get to where we're going to.”

Lovullo’s primary frustration lay with a pitching staff that continues to hand out far too many walks. Among that group, the most concerning performance came from Drey Jameson on Sunday.

The rookie was pulled after a 43-pitch first inning in which he allowed three runs on three hits and three walks. In the short-term, Jameson dug a hole too deep for the Diamondbacks to pull out of, even with a solid effort from the bullpen and some late-game offensive fireworks.

From the bigger-picture view, it was a continuation of a troublesome trend. On Tuesday in St. Louis, Jameson allowed two runs on three hits and four walks in 3 2/3 innings. In neither start did he look like the pitcher who posted a 1.46 ERA through his first four appearances (one start, three out of the bullpen).

On Sunday, Jameson had two key issues. He couldn’t locate his four-seam fastball, throwing the pitch in the strike zone just 35% of the time, down from 59% entering the day. Perhaps more worrisome, his slider was ineffective for the second straight start.

In his first four appearances, Jameson had drawn 19 whiffs on 26 swings on his slider, the best percentage (73.1%) among all pitchers who had thrown the pitch at least 10 times. Over his last two starts, he has gotten just one whiff on six swings against the slider. On Sunday, he threw it only six times, drawing one swing.

Without that pitch, he doesn’t have a reliable off-speed option and becomes heavily reliant on his two fastballs, the four-seamer and a sinker. In an attempt fight through the outing, Lovullo saw Jameson “throwing the ball instead of pitching.”

“I just think it's a natural instinct of a young pitcher with a good fastball to just go after guys and think that you're gonna run it by them,” Lovullo said. “And big league hitters are smart. You throw mad balls, they know. They're ready. And they don't miss. They'll get wood on a bullet if they had to.

“So I just think it gets to pitching. It was a little discussion I had with Drey that I felt like that was unacceptable. I told him, he's better than that. And he's got to start to locate his fastball.”

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The goal, though, is for Jameson to pick his spots with the four-seamer, which is not as effective as its high-90s velocity would indicate. The Diamondbacks pitching coaches want him to use the pitch in select situations, rather than relying on it. That task becomes significantly harder without the slider, which is typically his best pitch.

After Sunday’s loss, Lovullo said that Jameson was “yanking” the slider. For the second straight outing, he struggled to land it in the bottom corner of the strike zone, as he had for most of the season. Jameson, though, said it was “doing what it’s supposed to.” His explanation hinted at an issue that could be trickier to solve.

“It's something that's in scouting reports,” Jameson said. “I think guys probably know that that's my go-to pitch, so I need to use it more in counts that I don't usually use it in to then let it be more effective later on in counts.”

Jameson also suggested he could have been tipping the pitch, but the Padres only laid off one slider that started in the strike zone and darted out. That came against Juan Soto, who has perhaps the best eye for balls and strikes in the sport.

Regardless of the reason, Jameson has now only been able to throw the slider on 16.7% of offerings over his last two starts. In his two best appearances of the year, he threw it 51.5% and 24.5% of the time.

That trend has drastically reduced his effectiveness.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Without his best pitch, Drey Jameson struggles as Diamondbacks lose