How 3 Dodgers have cornered the market on baseball's nastiest pitch
David Adler
@_dadlerThe splitter is on the rise in Major League Baseball, and the Dodgers are cornering the market.
Splitters were thrown more often in 2024 than in any other season of the pitch tracking era, which goes back to 2008. And entering the 2025 season, the Dodgers might have the three nastiest splitters in the world.
That's because they now have Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki on their pitching staff. The splitter is the signature weapon of many of the great Japanese aces -- and the Los Angeles trio, reunited after pitching Team Japan to victory together in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, might have the very best splitters of them all.
Other pitchers like Shota Imanaga, Kodai Senga and Kevin Gausman have an argument, but at the very least, no other pitching staff has mastered the splitter like the Dodgers.
And the splitter is a pitch worth mastering. It's a wipeout pitch. Splitters had the lowest batting average and slugging percentage allowed last season of any pitch type, just .201 and .314, respectively.
Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki's splitters have a lot of nastiness in common. They're all hard splitters, frequently thrown upwards of 90 mph -- and a splitter is supposed to be an "offspeed" pitch. They all have sharp movement. At their best, they're all elite swing-and-miss pitches and putaway pitches, generating whiffs and strikeouts at sky-high rates.
But they're also three unique splitters, each nasty in its own way. Look at the way they move from the hitter's perspective, using Statcast's 3D tracking technology:
Let's take a closer look at the "Dodger splitter." We're going to zoom in on one especially dominant stretch by each pitcher and break down what makes the Ohtani splitter, the Yamamoto splitter and the Sasaki splitter so good.
Shohei Ohtani: A true power splitter
When Ohtani returns to the mound in 2025, he'll be bringing back a splitter that's always had a case as baseball's best.
Between 2018 and 2023, Ohtani's splitter generated both the highest whiff rate (49.5%) and strikeout rate (57.4%) of any starting pitcher who threw a splitter regularly.
But the peak of Ohtani's splitter domination was his 2021 season with the Angels. That season, Ohtani held opposing hitters to 11 hits in 131 at-bats decided on his splitter, with 81 strikeouts and zero home runs allowed.
So let's take a look at what makes the Ohtani splitter so unhittable when it's at its very best.
Ohtani's splitter, 2021 season:
- 88.1 mph / 1,360 rpm / 33" drop / 5" run
- 49% whiff rate / 57% strikeout rate
The key is that Ohtani's splitter comes in at a high velocity and drops almost straight down. That makes it a devastating combo off his four-seamer, which comes in at an even higher velocity, often touching 100 mph, and also carries true toward the hitter without much horizontal movement. You can see that in his pitch movement profile, where his splitter is almost directly below his fastball.
Ohtani's splitter stays much straighter than the average MLB splitter, but that's actually a big part of what makes it so good. It looks like his fastball but drops a foot-and-a-half more.
The high velocity and sharp vertical movement direction of Ohtani's splitter -- it is a pure power splitter -- are what make it a great putaway pitch, which Ohtani can bury below the strike zone to bury the hitter.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto: Adaptable and versatile
Yamamoto's splitter has some characteristics in common with Ohtani's, especially its velocity, but the way Yamamoto uses his splitter is different.
Where Ohtani uses it overwhelmingly as a two-strike putaway pitch, Yamamoto will throw his splitter in a wider variety of counts and situations.
For example, Yamamoto is more aggressive in throwing his splitter in early counts -- in his first MLB season, he threw it 17% of the time within the first two pitches of the plate appearance. Ohtani has thrown his splitter only 8% of the time in those same counts as a big leaguer. Yamamoto also threw his splitter 19% of the time in even counts in 2024, using it to change the direction of an at-bat. Ohtani has thrown his splitter only 8% of the time in even counts over his MLB career.
And Yamamoto has also shown the ability to adapt his splitter in the Major Leagues, specifically when the games mattered most.
From when he returned to the Dodgers' rotation down the stretch, and throughout the Dodgers' World Series championship run, Yamamoto's splitter was different, and it was better.
Yamamoto's splitter, Sept./Oct. 2024:
- 91.2 mph / 1,447 rpm / 31" drop / 10" run
- 52% whiff rate / 53% strikeout rate
Yamamoto started releasing from a more sidearm arm slot -- his arm angle on his splitter was a season-low 41 degrees in the postseason, compared to a season-high 46 degrees in June before he went on the injured list. That allowed him to add more horizontal movement to the pitch.
By the playoffs, Yamamoto's splitter was averaging 12 inches of run, easily his largest amount of horizontal movement of the season. That's also more horizontal break than Ohtani's splitter gets, for example. And it paid off for Yamamoto with some big strikeouts on his splitter in the playoffs.
Yamamoto had six splitter K's in the postseason, including three in his win against the Yankees in Game 2 of the World Series, when he got Aaron Judge, Anthony Volpe and Anthony Rizzo.
Roki Sasaki: Unhittable anywhere, anytime
And then there's Sasaki. We've never seen his splitter in a Major League game, but it might be the best of them all.
Sasaki's splitter generated a 57% swing-and-miss rate in Japan last season ¡ the third season in a row he induced whiffs on over half the swings against the split.
That by itself should make MLB hitters fearful. But we're not going to focus on Sasaki's Nippon Professional Baseball career right now. We're going to look at his performance in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, where his splitter, alongside Ohtani's and Yamamoto's, dominated nearly every hitter it crossed paths with.
Sasaki's splitter, 2023 WBC:
- 90.9 mph / 1,108 rpm / 33" drop / 1" run
- 60% whiff rate / 67% strikeout rate
Twelve at-bats against Sasaki in the tournament were decided by his splitter. Eight of those were strikeouts. Hitters whiffed against Sasaki's splitter at an insane rate.
But the coolest thing about Sasaki's splitter in the WBC was how he showed that he can dominate the zone with it.
It doesn't need to be a chase pitch. He can even use his splitter to get whiffs in the strike zone, which he did repeatedly in the World Baseball Classic.
Sasaki got 13 swinging strikes, and five strikeouts, on splitters inside the strike zone in the WBC. That is a ton for a two-start span in a short tournament.
In Sasaki's semifinal start against Mexico, he got big league hitters like Alex Verdugo, Isaac Paredes, Rowdy Tellez and Luis Ur¨ªas to whiff on in-zone splitters (plus Eric Sogard in his earlier start against the Czech Republic).
But when you're throwing 90-plus mph splitters with nasty movement, and throwing them off of 100-plus mph fastballs, you can get those whiffs. And a pitch that hitters will swing-and-miss at even when it's in the strike zone -- and then will swing-and-miss at even worse when it's out of the strike zone -- is a nasty pitch indeed.
Sasaki's splitter, even more than his 100-plus mph fastball, is the biggest reason why his upside in the Major Leagues is so high. And it's going to be awesome to see Sasaki's, Yamamoto's and Ohtani's splitters side by side. The "Dodger splitter" could take over baseball in 2025.