The 3 ways Yamamoto looks like a Cy Young contender

One of the most dominant pitchers in the Major Leagues takes the mound in the Pirates-Dodgers series opener Friday night. Oh, and Paul Skenes does, too.

Just kidding, obviously -- Skenes is dominant. But his opponent Friday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, is pitching like a Cy Young frontrunner. The Skenes-Yamamoto showdown lined up at Dodger Stadium will be a duel of two of the best pitchers in baseball right now.

Yamamoto leads the National League with a 0.93 ERA. He has 38 strikeouts in 29 innings. He's pitching like -- well, like a $325 million ace who won Japan's version of the Cy Young, the Sawamura Award, three straight times before he came to Los Angeles.

Here's how Yamamoto got there, the three keys to Yamamoto's breakout in his second season in the Major Leagues.

1) His splitter has become a true ace pitch

Skenes might have the "splinker," but Yamamoto's splitter has been even better this season.

It was good last season, too. But this year it's in a different league. Yamamoto's splitter is the most valuable splitter in the Majors so far. It's proven all but impossible to do damage against.

First of all, opposing hitters have whiffed on over half their swings against Yamamoto's splitter, one of the highest whiff rates by any starting pitcher on a single pitch type.

SP with 50%+ whiff rate on single pitch type in 2025
Min. 50 swings vs. that pitch type

• Landen Roupp, curveball: 57%
• Max Meyer, slider: 54%
• Cristopher Sánchez, changeup: 53%
• Jack Flaherty, knuckle-curve: 52%
• Yoshinobu Yamamoto, splitter: 51%
• Hunter Greene, slider: 51%
• Logan Gilbert, splitter: 50%
• Reese Olson, changeup: 50%

And even when they do get their bat on a splitter, they hit it straight into the ground. Eighteen of the 19 balls in play against Yamamoto's splitter have been grounders, a ridiculous 95% ground-ball rate. The average launch angle against his splitter is negative 19 degrees.

SP with lowest launch angle allowed on single pitch type in 2025
Min. 15 batted balls vs. that pitch type

• Yoshinobu Yamamoto's splitter: -19 degrees
• J.T. Ginn's sinker: -12 degrees
• Bryan Woo's sinker: -11 degrees
• Spencer Schwellenbach's sinker: -9 degrees
• Taijuan Walker's splitter: -8 degrees

With his splitter dominating hitters this season, Yamamoto has been throwing it more, too, with his usage up from just under 25% in 2024 to just over 30% in 2025. But it's not only his splitter that's gotten nastier.

2) All of his stuff is just a little bit better

In fact, Yamamoto's stuff has improved basically across the board.

Yamamoto has four pitches that he throws against both righties and lefties: his four-seam fastball, his splitter, his curveball and his cutter. All four of those key pitches are coming in faster, with more movement, or both.

The four-seamer: Yamamoto's heater has more rise. Yamamoto's fastball is up from 16 inches of induced rise in 2024 to 17 inches of induced rise in 2025 -- "rise" reflecting how much less Yamamoto's fastball drops on its way to a plate due to how he spins the baseball. More rise is good for a four-seamer.

The splitter: Yamamoto started making some changes to his splitter going into the 2024 postseason. He started throwing it harder, and from a lower arm slot, which gave it more horizontal movement. Those changes have carried into the 2025 regular season.

Yamamoto's splitter is now averaging 91.4 mph, over a full mph harder than in the regular season last year, but with the same amount of drop. And with an arm angle of 41 degrees, several degrees lower than last year, the splitter has picked up an extra three inches of arm side run, and is averaging 12 inches of horizontal movement.

The curveball: Yamamoto's curveball is one of the most fun to watch in baseball, with a ton of vertical movement that gives it its rainbow shape. This season, Yamamoto is generating even more drop, about an inch more than last year (with an extra half-inch of glove-side break, too).

Yamamoto's curve drops a total of 64 inches from his hand to the batter. That's over eight inches more drop than the other MLB pitchers who throw their curveballs at similar velocities and release points. It's the best drop of any righty curveball, ahead of teammate Tyler Glasnow.

The cutter: While Yamamoto's cutter is a clear fourth pitch behind the fastball, splitter and curve, it is the last pitch he uses to attack hitters on both sides (his sinker and slider are only really thrown to right-handed hitters). And that cutter, which comes in at 91 mph -- perfectly in between his 96 mph fastball and his 86 mph slider -- has picked up an extra three inches of cut this season. Yamamoto's cutter averaged only two inches of horizontal movement last season, and this year it's up to five -- three inches more than comparable cutters.

3) He's putting all his pitches where he wants them

The last piece of Yamamoto's Cy Young-caliber breakout is his command. He's locating all of his pitches with a purpose.

Yamamoto's four-seamer, for example, dots the edges of the strike zone. His fastball hits the left or right edge of the plate 37% of the time, the most often of 119 pitchers with at least 100 fastballs thrown. That lets him use it to freeze hitters, especially when they expect the splitter -- six of Yamamoto's nine strikeouts on his four-seamer have been looking.

Or take his splitter. Yamamoto can drop it off the table, or spot it on the corner (the low-outside corner to a lefty and low-inside corner to a righty). He usually throws it as a chase pitch, but he can put it in the zone just often enough, and make it look enough like his fastball, that hitters have a tough time laying off. That's why Yamamoto's splitter is one of just six pitch types to produce at least 20 strikeouts so far this season.

Most K's on one pitch type in 2025

• Max Meyer's slider: 33
• Carlos Rodón's slider: 26
• Chris Sale's slider: 21
• Logan Gilbert's splitter: 21
• Yoshinobu Yamamoto's splitter: 20
• Landen Roupp's curveball: 20

The fastball-splitter combo is the No. 1 way Yamamoto dominates, but the way he uses his curveball, slider, sinker and cutter alongside them is what makes him a complete pitcher.

Against right-handed hitters, Yamamoto will fill the strike zone with his full six-pitch arsenal -- four-seamers away, sinkers down and in, cutters and sliders down and away, curveballs and splitters down.

Against left-handed hitters, Yamamoto will pound them with fastballs and splitters on the outside edge -- the four-seamers higher in the zone, and the splitters dropping down directly underneath them for a lethal two-pitch combo. Then he'll either drop in his curveball in the same spot or sneak a cutter in on their hands.

In 2025, Yamamoto has better stuff, better command and one of the nastiest pitches in baseball headlining his arsenal. This is the pitcher who was the best in Japan, and who could add a Cy Young Award in MLB to the three Sawamura Awards he already has in his trophy case.