Didn’t pinball101 have a section on this? Maybe it got scrapped but I remember nudging had very little effect.
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From memory, that was for pop bumpers 
Nudging when the ball is in the slings can make a huge difference, at least for a machine I know well. Having drained over a thousand times in the left outlane, I eventually learn when it’s about to happen again. A good nudge can help the ball go above the slingshot or keep it below the top post of the slingshot and keep it in play.
For machines I don’t know well, it doesn’t help me much. And for modern really fast machines, I find that I typically don’t have enough time to do much with nudges in the slingshots.
Yes, that’s one downside of modern games, they’re too fast to use some skills like sling-nudging. Star Wars, for instance - - many a rebound off a target or a missed shot goes zip-sling-outlane so fast you don’t even see it. On older, slower games, you have a better chance to track the ball’s path and can sometimes see the danger coming.
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One thing I try to remember to do(and often forget) is when stepping up to a machine for the 1st time, when I’m looking at things like outlane positions and where rubber has been pulled, etc. is to look at the gap on the leaf switches for the slingshots. If they have huge gaps, that’s often more dangerous than highly sensitive slings because it creates a “semi-dead sling”. I hate slings that ONLY fire on a strong or direct hit. Some games(Avengers comes to mind) no matter how tight you make the sling switch gaps, as soon as the game gets played a few times the leaf switches get bent back and they’re semi-dead slings again. If you can recognize this before you even plunge a ball it can sometimes be helpful.
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I’ve tried using the same technique on the slingshot – have the ball hit something with a trigger and have another object, which will be invisible, expand and strike the ball. But, this isn’t really working. It’s like the ball is only being nudged away a bit from the slingshot. If I expand the object too much to get a better result, it winds up sticking the ball in place.