TORONTO (AP) — Mr. Splitty has returned.
Showcased by World Series Game 6 starters Kevin Gausman and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, split-finger fastballs have been used for 6.8% of postseason pitches this year, more than double last year's 2.4% and up from 1.5% when pitch tracking started in 2008.
“There’s so many good pitches in today’s game — there’s so many good sweepers and sliders and cutters,” Gausman said. “I think the split is almost kind of a just a little bit different of an animal. You can recognize the spin and you can still have a pretty ugly swing on it if the metrics are right.”
Toronto used splitters a big league-high 9.3% of the time during the regular season, according to MLB Statcast. That was the highest percentage of any team since pitch tracking started in 2008, topping 7.8% by Minnesota in 2023 and Baltimore this year.
Gausman has thrown his splitter 41.4% of the time in the postseason, followed on the Blue Jays by fellow starter Trey Yesavage (27.7%), closer Jeff Hoffman (25.9%) and relievers Seranthony Domínguez (16.7%) and Yariel Rodríguez (8.6%).
Roki Sasaki, shifted from rotation to relief, tops the Dodgers at 45.9%, followed by Yamamoto at 24.7% and Shohei Ohtani at 7.4%.
“Roger Craig is smiling somewhere," New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, referring to the late pitching coach and manager, among the splitter's most prominent proponents. “With all these cameras and technology and stuff, you’re really able to outfit guys with what they should be doing based on how their body moves.”
Bruce Sutter, Jack Morris and John Smoltz utilized the splitter during careers that earned induction into the Hall of Fame.
Splitters are throw with index and middle fingers spread wide, intended to have substantial downward break.
Sutter credited his reaching the Hall to learning the splitter from Fred Martin, a big leaguer from 1946-50 who became a Chicago Cubs minor league instructor.
“He told me to spread my fingers apart and throw it just like a fastball,” Sutter said during his Hall induction speech in 2006. “There were players throwing forkballs at the time and a few guys were using it for a changeup, but nobody was throwing what he called the split finger. It was a pitch that didn’t change how the game was played but developed a new way to get hitters out.”
Craig taught the splitter to Morris as pitching coach of the Detroit Tigers and to Mike Scott when he was with the Houston Astros. Roger Clemens learned how to throw it from Scott at a charity golf event in 1986 and started calling the pitch “Mr. Splitty.”
Usage dropped after the pitch gained a reputation for causing elbow injuries. Just 1.4% of regular-season pitches were splitters when tracking started. The percentage climbed to 2.2% in 2023, 3.1% in 2024 and 3.3% this year.
“Going back a few years, I think certain people thought they couldn’t throw it, they couldn’t actually get their fingers wide enough,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “Pitch design has changed, and I think guys have figured out different ways to grip it, like, Gaus’s is different than Trey’s, Trey’s is different than Seranthony’s, Yariel’s is different than -- they all hold it a little bit differently. So I think pitchers have just gotten to the point where they understand that pitch works against certain swing types that are pretty prevalent in the league and they figured out ways to kind of manipulate to get the same action.”
Gausman's 37.6% splitter usage during the season was third behind Detroit's Rafael Montero (46.9%) and Philadelphia's Jhoan Duran (39.7%) among those who threw at least 1,000 pitches.
Among starting pitchers who threw at least 100 splitters, Yamamoto held batters to a .136 average, third behind Seattle's Logan Gilbert (.119) and Atlanta's Spencer Schwellenbach (.132).
Batters had a .181 average against Gausman's splitter, down from .230 vs. his fastball and .342 against his slider.
“One of the few pitches I thoroughly believe a hitter can know it’s coming and still get out,” Gausman said. “I’ve always felt like the changeup is the best pitch in the game because it looks like a fastball, and anything that looks like a fastball and isn’t is really good.”
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