Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game.It was not, you might say, Brandon Pfaadt’s first rodeo. He had been with the Reno Aces before. A lot had transpired since then — he’d made 91 starts in the majors, including a run to the 2023 World Series, and earned a long-term contract from the Arizona Diamondbacks. He never expected to be back.But there he was this June, at the Reno-Sparks Livestock Events Center for the 107th annual Reno Rodeo, “The Wildest, Richest Rodeo in the West.” Pfaadt attended with a group from the Aces that included pitching coach Doug Drabek, a stalwart for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the early 1990s.“I said, ‘This is amazing — we have two guys here who pitched Game 7 of the NLCS,’” the Reno manager, Jeff Gardner, said in a phone interview this week. “If you think of it, there’s not many people who’ve done that. But he was so unflappable that night. What he did in that Game 7 is just how he is, and he came here the same way: no panic, no excuses, he wasn’t blaming anybody. He just knew he had to get better.”Pfaadt has done that, pitching like an ace for a team reeling from the sudden departure of Ketel Marte, the star second baseman who failed to report to Fenway Park for a series this week. In 10 starts since returning from the minors on June 30, Pfaadt is 7-0 with a 1.79 ERA, tied with the Miami Marlins’ Eury Perez for lowest in the National League in that timeframe through Wednesday.He’s doing it with six pitches — a four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter, sweeper, curveball and changeup — each thrown between 11 and 25 percent of the time. Hitters never know what to expect.“I talked to Adam Wainwright in Atlanta, and he said that when he took the mound, he was going to try and take everybody on a bumpy taxi ride,” Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said. “He wanted the hitter to feel like there was no comfort, that you were always hitting the edges. And so I’ll use the words of Wainwright and say Brandon has taken everybody on a bumpy taxi ride.”Most famously, Pfaadt’s taxi ran the Phillies off the road to the World Series in 2023. He worked the first four innings of the NLCS finale in Philadelphia, allowing two runs while striking out seven before a bullpen relay closed out the win. Pfaadt had also blanked the Phillies for 5 2/3 innings in the third game, after Arizona had lost the first two.The Diamondbacks could not have won the pennant without him, and after his solid follow-up season in 2024, they signed him to a contract for five years and $45 million, plus two option years for about the same amount.Then a rough 2025, a crowded rotation in 2026 and a discouraging bullpen stint led Pfaadt back to Reno. He chose not to be bitter about it.“I mean, that’s one of the roads that people can take,” Pfaadt said this week. “But I decided to go down, use it as a build-up primarily and come back a better, complete starter. I felt like we did a good job of attacking that, building up the pitch count and kind of resetting.”He had worked before with the Reno pitching coaches, Drabek and Jeff Bajenaru, and trusted their suggestions. But one difference was all his own: before his first start, Pfaadt decided he would no longer rock his hands over his head in his delivery. And how long had he been doing that?“Ever since I picked up a baseball, apparently — that’s what my mom said,” said Pfaadt, who does not believe he was tipping his pitches the old way. “So it was definitely weird at first, but it just made things a lot more consistent, delivery-wise, to chase my goals and prioritize them and get ahead and throw quality pitches.”Pfaadt, 27, has never been afraid of the strike zone. Even last year, when his 5.25 ERA ranked 48th among 52 qualified MLB starters, Pfaadt led the NL in fewest walks per nine innings, with 1.9.Now, though, he is commanding so many pitches with such precision that he is inducing weak contact. A pitcher who fanned 218 hitters in the minors in 2022 — the most by any minor-leaguer in the last two decades — has discovered the joys of efficiency.