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…
Read the full article here
