{"id":203621,"date":"2025-10-10T21:34:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T21:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/203621\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T21:34:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T21:34:06","slug":"yesavages-splitter-is-his-not-so-secret-weapon-but-why-is-it-so-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/203621\/","title":{"rendered":"Yesavage\u2019s splitter is his not-so-secret weapon. But why is it so good?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Trey Yesavage throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Kansas City Royals last month.Charlie Riedel\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Trey Yesavage\u2019s devastating splitter turned heads as he mowed down the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series and the Blue Jays\u2019 rookie pitcher will likely be Toronto\u2019s starter when it hosts Game 2 of the AL Championship Series on Monday.<\/p>\n

But why is his splitter so good? After all, many current Major League Baseball pitchers \u2014 including teammate Kevin Gausman \u2014 have a splitter in their arsenal, and the pitch has been around for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the fact that he\u2019s got the high release point in the high arm slot,\u201d said Blue Jays legend Pat Hentgen, who\u2019s now a special assistant in Toronto\u2019s pitching department. \u201cIt reminds you a little bit of Juan Guzman, a guy that I played with, had a higher arm slot than most guys created, like a gyro slider that literally went straight down, and the league thought he threw a split finger, but it was actually his breaking ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was because of his high release point and Trey\u2019s got that unique high release point.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fastball is exactly what it sounds like: a ball thrown as hard as a pitcher can muster with the intention of blowing past the hitter but staying in the strike zone. The most common fastball in today\u2019s game is a four-seamer, with the pitcher\u2019s fingers gripping across four of the ball\u2019s stitches.<\/p>\n

Splitters are thrown with the effort of a fastball but because of how they\u2019re gripped by the pitcher \u2014 typically using two fingers to form a V on either side of the ball \u2014 they will drop sharply as they near home plate. Because they have the same throwing motion as a fastball but are slower with more downward motion, a fastball and a splitter are used in tandem to keep batters guessing.<\/p>\n

What makes Yesavage\u2019s delivery unique in MLB is that his arm slot is at 12 o\u2019clock. In other words, when he\u2019s pitching either the fastball or the splitter he releases the ball from directly over his head, whereas every other pitcher in baseball has some kind of angle to his arm when he throws.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s able to tunnel two pitches off that same high release point,\u201d said Hentgen, who won a Cy Young Award with the Blue Jays as the American League\u2019s best pitcher in 1996. \u201cOne\u2019s 95 m.p.h. and the other one is 85 m.p.h. and it\u2019s just a very tough, tough recipe for a hitter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even Yesavage\u2019s teammates can\u2019t tell the difference when the ball first leaves his hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it just looks exactly like a fastball,\u201d said Blue Jays infielder Andres Gimenez on Monday. \u201cI was at shortstop right behind him and I was like, \u2019It looks exactly the same \u2014 the fastball and the split.\u2019 And then the slider (too).<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, an electric fastball, but the split is pretty good. I think it just looks the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old Yesavage started his season with the single-A Dunedin Blue Jays of the Florida Complex League and moved his way through every level of Toronto\u2019s full-season minor-league system, arriving in the big leagues as a September call-up.<\/p>\n

Yesavage earned a win in his three regular-season starts for the Blue Jays, with a 3.21 earned-run average and 16 strikeouts over 14 innings of work. He made his post-season debut on Oct. 5, striking out 11 Yankees over 5 1\/3 innings of no-hit baseball as Toronto went on to beat New York 13-7.<\/p>\n

Although Yesavage\u2019s MLB data set is relatively small, so far he has thrown his fastball 45.2 per cent of the time, a slider (a breaking ball that moves horizontally) 28.5 per cent, and his splitter 26.4 per cent. The splitter is clearly his out-pitch, however, as it resulted in 10 of his 16 regular-season strikeouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a swing-and-miss pitch. I\u2019m just trying to get the hitter to swing over it,\u201d said Yesavage. \u201cIt comes in the same way as my fastball, but it\u2019s slower and then falls right before it gets to the strike zone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt falls off the table almost, as it\u2019s perceived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hentgen, who was a member of the Blue Jays teams that won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, thinks it\u2019s more than just the dramatic vertical break of Yesavage\u2019s splitter that makes it effective. He believes it\u2019s the combination of the rookie\u2019s splitter in tandem with his increasingly accurate fastball.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis splitter is really good. It\u2019s consistent. And when I say consistent, it\u2019s not so much the speed and the movement, it is a release point,\u201d said Hentgen. \u201cThe one thing I noticed over the year with him is his fastball command just kept getting better with every challenge, with every level, and that\u2019s really what\u2019s separating him now from like a year ago, when I first saw him pitch, when we first got him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 With files from Gregory Strong in New York City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Trey Yesavage throws during the first inning of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,462,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,82,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-203621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-mlb","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}