LOS ANGELES — The New York Yankees can have their torpedo bats. The Dodgers have the splitter.
In baseball’s ever-adapting laboratory of trends, the hunt always is on for the next best thing. Sometimes it is innovation like redesigned weight distribution in a hunk of lumber to yield optimum exit velocity.
In the case of the split-finger pitch, it is taking something old and making it new again.
No less than five Dodgers pitchers are using a splitter right now, and it will be six when Shohei Ohtani returns from his rehabilitation after elbow surgery in 2023. Even more could be on the way as the Dodgers have become the leader of a trend that is taking hold again.
If the nuance and subtleties of throwing the pitch agree with as many as two more relievers on the roster, it could allow them to join a group that is leaning into pitch’s dynamic downward movement, known for befuddling opposing offenses.
“I think the game changes,” said Dodgers right-hander Kirby Yakes, who has a life-changing relationship with the split-finger pitch. “It’s always a wheel. It’s like, ‘What’s the new fad?’ We were in the sweeper fad a year or two ago. It seems like now it’s the split fad.”
The Dodgers are fully on board with the splitter, the pitch that played a huge role in Team Japan winning the 2023 World Baseball Classic. Since that tournament ended with Ohtani’s dramatic final-out strikeout of Mike Trout, the Dodgers have added three pitchers off that Japan roster who use the splitter. For the record, Ohtani’s strikeout of Trout came on a sweeper, not the splitter.
Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were signed to last year’s Dodgers roster, with Ohtani possibly ready to take the mound again around the All-Star break. Roki Sasaki was added this year.
The 38-year-old Luis Garcia brought his splitter to the club this season and Tony Gonsolin returned from Tommy John surgery Wednesday to add his into the mix with an electric start that included nine strikeouts against the Miami Marlins.
There also has been at least one Dodgers left-hander and one right-hander who have asked Yates for tips on throwing a splitter.
Right-hander Michael Kopech is not admitting he is one of them, but he is not denying it either. Kopech is heading to the Dodgers’ spring training facility this weekend in Glendale, Ariz., as he puts the final touches on his rehab from forearm discomfort that he pitched through in the 2024 postseason.
“I’m working on potentially mixing in a third pitch,” Kopech said. “What that will be and what that looks like, we don’t know. I was happy with a fastball/cutter combination last year, but if there is something else I can bring to the mound, shortening at-bats can help me too.
“I had some some strikeouts at the end of the year last year, but I racked up a lot of long innings too and (potential) quick innings weren’t all that quick.”
As devastating as a splitter can be, since it resembles a fastball then operates with late downward movement, there is a questionable history with the pitch.
Split-finger pitches had a poor reputation in the early 2000s when they were linked to elbow injuries. Ohtani and Gonsolin had those elbow injuries, although neither was tied to a splitter specifically, and Kopech is working his way back from an elbow issue to a lesser degree.
“I think that it was kind of a misconception that that caused elbow injuries, clearly, if you look at the last 10 years of pitching,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But it’s got to be obviously the right candidate. I think it’s got to match with the throw, with the deception, to kind of look like a fastball.”
Yates thinks advancement in medical science is one reason a splitter is not so taboo these days.
“I do think that was probably a thing that guys were getting hurt and (teams) were worried about their elbows,” Yates said. “I think obviously the success rate of surgeries and what doctors can do has kind of changed. I don’t think everybody is as worried about blowing out anymore, right? Like before you blew out (in the past) you didn’t know if you would be able to play. The success rate (of surgery) isn’t 100 percent but it’s pretty high.”
Yates was the perfect candidate to adapt a splitter.
His career arc with the pitch is well known from his time with the Angels in 2017 when the club reportedly pushed him toward a slider instead. Without enough success, he was placed on waivers and claimed by the Padres that year.
In San Diego, while free to use the pitch, Yates delivered a 2.14 ERA in 65 appearances in 2018. By 2019, he was an All-Star with a 1.19 ERA and 41 saves in 60 appearances.
Yates freely admits that before he mastered the splitter, he was a “happy-to-be-here” major-leaguer. Since then, he has become a dominating pitcher with a “purpose” for putting on the uniform each day.
And why was Yates trying to adopt a splitter in the first place? After he was signed as a minor-league free agent by the Tampa Bay Rays in 2009, the club’s front office told him that a changeup or splitter would best complement his build and arm slot.
In that Rays front office at the time were multiple members of the Dodgers’ current brass, including president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman.
Now Yates is willing to pass on his love of the splitter to anybody who asks. But before he does, he offers a warning.
“I would say of every person that comes and asks me how I throw it, I don’t think anybody has left me being able to throw it,” Yates said.
So call Yates the splitter conqueror then, even if he hasn’t been the splitter whisperer.
UP NEXT
Dodgers (RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 3-2, 1.06 ERA) at Braves (RHP Grant Holmes, 2-1, 4.50 ERA), 4:15 p.m. PT Friday, SportsNet LA, 570 AM
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