The Rays had high expectations for Griffin Jax when he was acquired at last year’s trade deadline. After some poor batted ball luck but mostly good results to finish the 2025 season, Jax has gotten off to an uneven start in 2026. While it is unfortunate that he has allowed runs to score in four of his nine appearances this season, I don’t think there’s any cause for concern yet. His stuff is still plus across the board and he has a strong track record as a reliable high-leverage reliever. Jax’s location consistency – particularly with his sweeper – appears to be the main driver behind his early struggles.
I’ve been tracking what I call “command deltas” across the league dating back to 2023. I’ll share a brief summary of what a command delta is, but you can read more here and here. A command delta measures how tightly a pitcher clusters a pitch around its intended location. It’s calculated by combining the variation in both horizontal and vertical pitch locations, then grading that number on the 20-80 scouting scale (lower = more consistent, higher = less consistent).
Like most pitch-level metrics, it takes time to stabilize – typically around 100-150 pitches depending on the pitch type. It’s not a standalone evaluation of command, but it can be useful when paired with metrics like strike rate, zone rate, and pitch-level heatmaps.
Below are Jax’s command delta grades from 2023 through the very small sample we have so far in 2026 (excluding pitches that he didn’t throw at least 100 times in a season):
While it’s too early to say definitively what Jax’s location consistency will look like at the end of this season, we can still look at the patterns:
The command deltas point to the sweeper, and the visual data supports that.
And compare it to the heatmap for his sweeper so far in 2026:
The data suggests Jax is struggling to consistently locate his best pitch. As Nick Fortes noted after Friday’s game against the Pirates, it’s been an ongoing issue. More consistent sweeper execution would force hitters to respect the pitch and expand the zone more often. His chase rate on the pitch typically sits around 40%, but this season it’s just over 20% while the chase rates on his other pitches are roughly aligned with his career averages. Once he’s able to get hitters to respect his sweeper again, they’ll have more difficulty timing up his fastball shapes.
Finding better execution of his sweeper is easier said than done. If it was as simple as I’m making it sound, Jax would have fixed it already. The shape of the pitch will vary a bit year to year, but its pretty close to the shape he showed in 2024, so that makes a grip change less likely as the root cause. The catcher set-ups also appear consistent, suggesting it’s not a cueing issue.
If the team wanted to reduce pressure while he finds his feel for the pitch again, Jax could open some games. He is currently coming into high pressure situations late in a game where he has to execute. Obviously, your high-leverage relievers have to do this – it’s part of the job. However, allowing for a different mental approach where he can “grip it and rip it” with lower stakes could be beneficial in helping him reset his execution of the pitch. Although role changes are rarely this simple in practice, Jax could later be moved back into high-leverage after he’s had some time to regain his feel for the pitch.
Regardless of the role, there’s reason to believe that Jax and the staff will get his sweeper back to being a dominant pitch. Given that the sweeper drives a significant portion of his chase and put-away ability, even small inconsistencies can have outsized effects on his overall performance. In short, this looks less like a decline in stuff and more like a temporary loss of feel for a pitch that drives his entire profile.
