The difference between Roki Sasaki’s splitter and everyone else’s
What Happened
Roki came out of the bullpen throwing a pitch the speaker describes as more of a forkball than a splitter because the grip is deep in the fingers, taking off spin and making it drop sharply. The speaker says this pitch is different from what Gossman, Kirby, and Yamamoto throw, and more like pitches thrown by Fernando Cruz or sometimes Aldis Chapman. It was notable because the speaker argues many pitches now labeled as splitters—split changes, split fastballs, and forkballs—are being grouped together, making splitter usage appear to rise.
Who / What Is Involved
Players: Fernando Cruz, Roki Sasaki.
Full Transcript
Click timestamps to jump to that momentNow we got Roki out of the bullpen and
he's throwing a splitter. This is more
of a fork ball in my opinion. That is at
the webbing of his fingers, not at his
fingertips. That there's pressure deep
in his fingers, which is going to take a
ton of spin off this pitch. And it acts
more of as a closer to a knuckle ball uh
than a split fast ball or a split change
because it's really just doing its own
dance. No spin and just drops like
crazy.
that I think that's more of a I think we
have so many splitters in baseball now
because we have uh a lot of guys are
throwing what I what used to be called
fork balls but they're calling them
splitters. Like that to me is not the
same pitch that um Gossman throws. He
actually throws a circle change grip
that is like a split change up. That's
not the same pitch that
uh Kirby is throwing or even Yamamoto.
That's more Fernando Cruz is throwing
this pitch or Aldis Chapman throws this
pitch every now and then, but they just
stopped calling them fork balls. So like
if you look at how many splitters are
being thrown in the league, the number
is going like crazy. But I think where
breaking balls are getting segmented
into sweeper, slerve, curve, slider,
and you're getting so you're getting
like less because you're
microcategorizing them. The splitter is
is is picking up other pitches. split
change, split fast ball, uh, fork ball.
They're all just splitters. So, I feel
like it's an identification thing. And
more people are throwing splitters. Oh,
yeah. Make some noise.
Yeah.
Okay.