NEWSLETTER
A little while back, I opined that we might see a lot of pitchers who’d added a sweeper during the recent craze give that pitch up this year and go back to a more traditional gyro slider. My thinking is that you’ve got multiple things coming together at once: (1) a lot of guys probably tried the pitch and realized they only get mediocre results compared to their old slider; (2) the pitch is so much more widespread now that batters have a lot of exposure; and (3) the gyro slider was always better for missing bats, which is all the more valuable in a world without extreme shifts.
We’ll see if I’m right on that.
But the other prediction I made that sure seems to be picking up steam is that the next vogue pitch – one that everyone has already known about, obviously, but that a ton of pitchers are going to try out – will be the splitter.
Cubs fans know how potent the pitch can be from watching Mark Leiter Jr. go from journeyman Quad-A guy to nails reliever, almost entirely on the strength of the splitter (and, relatedly, we saw how hittable he became late in the year when he lost the pitch). Nominally, it’s called a split-fingered fastball – because the fingers are literally split, and it’s thrown like a fastball – but that isn’t really useful, since it functions as something more like a hard changeup. A devastating changeup if you can really command the pitch.
Historically, though, it’s a really difficult pitch to master, and guys in the States don’t really come up throwing it, especially when there are other changeup grips available. But with an influx of pitchers from Japan, where the pitch is highly prevalent, you’re starting to see more pitchers, who hadn’t before – at least not that I’d heard of – tinkered with a splitter, now trying it out.
Now, we’re going to hear about it. For example, today at the Sun-Times:
“Both (Daniel) Palencia and (Luke) Little have that experience to build off this winter. They’re both hard-throwers, and pitching coach Tommy Hottovy told the Sun-Times that both are playing around with adding splitters to their repertoires this offseason. (For Little, the process began last season.) And they’ll have Leiter and rotation addition Shōta Imanaga with whom to share trade secrets.”
Palencia and Little are both primarily fastball-slider guys, especially as relievers – each was fully converted last year – so *IF* they could add a high-quality changeup to the mix to bolster the attack against opposite-handed hitters, that’d be incredible.
Now, before you start dreaming, keep in mind that there are miles and miles between “playing around” with a pitch – especially one as challenging as the splitter – and actually deploying it in games. Some guys take to it, some guys don’t. We’ll see if either even busts it out in Spring Training appearances. That’s when you’ll know if there’s even a CHANCE it’s be considered for real usage.
Still, it’s kind of fun to have another shiny toy to track, especially knowing that, even more than a sweeper, if a guy gets this particular pitch going, it could fundamentally change his trajectory. It’s conceivable some fringy Cubs relief prospect could absolutely blow up if he mastered a splitter, a la Leiter. And the more expertise the Cubs bring into the organization on the pitch the better.
The other Cubs pitcher I’ve seen messing around with a splitter this offseason is Drew Smyly, by the way. He could definitely use it, because he is primarily a two-pitch guy – fastball, curveball – and when he doesn’t have the cutter available, it’d be great to have another pitch for righties.
A little background video if you want to learn more about the pitch:
