MLB injuries are piling up early & why the splitter has made huge comeback! Ep. 704 - 4.13.26

on this week in baseball, which is apparently being resurrected as a TV show. We're going over the latest news, injury updates. We're talking about an old pitch that's got some new life. And it was invented by a relief pitcher that never got an MLB save. It's this week in baseball. I wonder if we're not going to able to say this week in baseball if they start running it on television. You that was like a show on in the 70s, maybe even before that. don't remember. Mel Allen, famous announcer, Yankee announcer.

You know was the host and all that stuff and he would say how about that? I don't know if I'd like that I'd like for that to be a problem because that means we're big enough for them to be like yeah knock that off Exactly they don't care right ripples not right exactly so yeah it was ⁓ you know I think what I got out of this week when I started doing the the injury ones I don't know why I want to start with that, but there were just a lot of injuries ⁓ That were going on in Major League Baseball this week, so let's let's

Talk about that first so we can talk about the news after because it's more positive to talk about, you know, baseball plays than right. Guys getting hurt, guys getting hurt. And we did see that Hunter Brown goes down. Christian Javier goes down. Astros pitchers don't want to be an Astro. Am I went down? Kate Horton goes down. So we saw a lot of big went down for the season for the right, which is just brutal. And that's a team that's now thinking, great.

We kind of have to go make a move and trade for somebody. G. Alito, your phone's ringing. Somebody's phone is going to be ringing. So yeah, and you know, the pitchers, Max Scherzer had a forearm tightness. He's going to make his start here on Sunday. So I guess he's good right now. But we just don't know. mean, you also have to wear, know, you've got Zach Efflin leaves with Tommy John surgery so the oils lose him for the season.

Wasn't he their opening day starter? He might have been and then we you know Kirk is now going to Alejandro Kirk who we thought was just going on the 10-day IL He's out for six weeks. I never believed that when we reported it last week, you know, he's gonna tell the guy He's a broken, you know thumb and he's gonna be out for 10 days Yeah, okay then Astros lose Jake Myers and so that's that's really tough George Springer goes down and he's the only got a left toe big fracture or a left big toe fracture, but

That's the kind of thing that can linger for a long time. And we talked about George Spinger, who had an unbelievable year last year, I think, with 39 homers and and great in the place. Yeah, but he's a guy that doesn't stay healthy all the time. And it's hard to knock a guy. It's not like he's trying to get hurt. No. And sometimes there's some something like Parker Meadows has been a guy that's had a string of bad luck. gets a concussion and a left forearm fracture after he runs into Riley Green, which is Riley Green's a big guy. That's just rough. Five stitches. He just got really banged up.

The A's have Brent Rooker go down. He's on the 10 day IL with a right oblique strain. I guess they don't need him against the Mets. No, well, not only you need much against the Mets right now and that's, you know, there's still even more people. Royce Lewis, Adley Rutchman, Joe Boyle, Cody Lawyerson. Zach Wheeler is maybe the only guy that's actually getting healthy because he's expected back by the end of April. But you're seeing a lot of guys go on the DL right now or the IL, you know, and that's just tough. Yeah, I wonder, you know, you're kind of like.

We said we talked about 5 % this week, so now we're maybe 10 % of the season. And it seems like already, from the team standpoint, aside from the Dodgers, who are in first place by I think two or three games, everybody's kind of packed together. Maybe you're a couple games under, maybe you're like the Red Sox, you're four games under. But this is sort of like, this is the doldrums already after two, three weeks of baseball. I don't think so. Nobody's really asserted themselves. The teams are all kind of mired up in.

really close to 500. And I think obviously you're going to start having teams put together more sustained periods of good play as they sort of or bad or bad. You you're going to start having teams that maybe got off to a bit of a hard start at a hot start kind of coming back to Earth like Miami's eight and seven. Is that going to be something that keeps up the whole year? Even Washington's six and eight. Everybody in the NL Central, with the exception of the Cubs, you know, St. Louis is eight and six.

Colorado is doing well. They're six and nine. So everybody, you know, the worst team is integrated. They color is doing right. They're doing well. They're six and nine. But the worst teams in baseball are Boston at five and nine and the White Sox at five and ten. So nobody is really that bad. There's not a two and twelve team right now. And so by now, you've been watching your team as we like to watch our team. You know, you've already had horrifying losses, surprising wins, probably, if you're lucky, you know, a couple of ones you didn't expect.

And so you're necessized a little bit to like, OK, if it's not going well, it's not for the best right now. What bad things are going to happen today? Right. Right. And I think it's tough because it's simultaneously this weird thing where anyone you can't live and die with the result of any one series right now. Sure you can. plenty of fans are. But as a fan, you can't be losing your mind. You have to remember you don't have one soda right now. You're not the team you thought you were when he's just not around in the lineup. It's like not to speak of everybody else, not.

playing particularly well, you remove one Soto from the equation that's going to affect any team. Yeah. Yeah. Where is that guy? Who was his name? He to really good in our line. Oh, yeah. So you can't go crazy with every loss here. But at the same time, if the team, you know, goes in the tank for a week or two and all of sudden they rip off a two and eight or two and, you know, 10 stretch now all of a sudden, it's not that you're making the rest of the season and possible for yourself, but you just raise the standard that you then have to play the rest of the season to get there, which

You like to think you can if you're that good a team, but you don't like putting yourself in a position where you're like, okay, well, we just have to be a 600 team the rest of the way. So I'm gonna, this is not a hot take, but I'm gonna say something right now that might surprise you. Okay, so I've been a fan of Carlos Mendoza, the Mets manager for- Yeah, you've been very bullish on him. He's in trouble. he's in big trouble. in big trouble, and he may lose his job because I don't see Steve Cohen and David Sterns putting up with what feels like just a carryover.

from the end of last season with a new cast of characters because we got to get rid of those guys because those guys stunk up the joint. Well, we got these new guys in there. Yes, so does hurt. And yes, but I don't know. This just feels it just feels like a little dead. And I don't know how much longer they're going to put up with this before they might do something. don't know who it would be. But I think Mendoza is in trouble. Oh, he's definitely in trouble because the same way that, you know, Joe Girardi for the Phillies a couple of years ago got replaced very early on in the season when he had a good team that was underperforming.

There's no way you're going to look at this bet team. Look at what happened last year and not go, OK, you know what? If I isolate out a crazy stretch of baseball in late twenty twenty four, Mendoza has not been good. been the same team for like two and a half years. Right. Right. It says there was one period where they got really, really, really hot, which that was over a long period of time. You have to give them a lot of for that. But it's been distinguishably terrible outside of that period. That's that's like the big issue is that it's not like it's just like

Not like it's okay. They're borderline unwatchable. here's the thing is I would say that he's actually managed better this year than he has any year prior to this. And he's in more trouble now because the team just looks uninspired. Right. So we were criticizing him for replacing pitchers too early, maybe less and doing doing some funky things. Getting a little too cute. I don't think he's doing any of that stuff. No, but the team doesn't seem prepared when I'm sorry. And Lindor is making mental mistakes. And when the manager says

you know what you can't be making those mistakes we were going to fix that how's he going to do that as the manager of the fix lindor's mental mistakes rubber gonna fix it like like that is a good point is also concerned that he's making them because i was in that never happened prior this current regime you can excuse lindor's case if you want as a met fan that what i this is what i try to do

well he had the hand made injury and his you know and so he doesn't feel right at the plate even though other guys had the same injury and they've seemed to come back from it like corbin carroll and and so you know lindor has let it carry over into other acts of service even though he's playing well defensively he's lapsing by not they didn't cover second base yesterday but but his stats defensively are actually positive but it just feels like he's his head is not in the game as they say he's made errors and he's

Again, you know, it's the kind of thing where you love the guy is a great player and I am sure he will end up at the end of the season with good stats, but it is really difficult to watch this team watch your shortstop start off every season hitting 150 for like six weeks. It's really annoying to watch Jeff McNeil run around the bases about 80 times during the first couple of years season for the for the athletics. So the flying squirrel is is definitely bothering the Mets this particular time. But other than that, mean, there's a lot of teams playing good baseball.

ball right now if you're not other than the AL West, know, the team that's really distinguished themselves clearly as sort of the good team is the Dodgers. But the Pittsburgh Pirates look good. Connor Griffin is slotted in and looked very good for Connor Griffin got paid. Right. So, you know, he got paid before he played. He had to. The way they did it is they sent him down. We questioned that. And when they brought him back, then they paid him when he was in the major leagues, because there's a different status if you pay if he's still a minor leaguer.

So they wait till they brought him up and they paid him something similar to what Roman Anthony got. Nine years, 140 million, which is really similar to Roman Anthony's eight one thirty. And so, you know, the pirates are doing sort of taking a blueprint out of what some of the teams like the Braves have done, which is to sign these young players early. You're not going to get it right every time. You know, think Vaughn Grissom. Right. Right. For the Braves perspective. But but you have to think the only way it's a bad move if the guy is actually unplayably bad.

because as long as he's a solid to an above average major league starter down the line, know, four or five years from now, a nine year, $140 million a year for a good MLB shortstop looks good, even if he's not an MVP candidate. That's very true. And so the reason that they're doing this, if you're not sure, is because basically for the player standpoint, he's taking a little less than he might get if he actually is as good as everybody says he is.

signing a giant contract for nine years or eight years at age 21 or 22. The thing is when he comes up for his next contract, he's going to be 29. He's going to be able to sign another one. So you get two of those. And you protect yourself. You know, obviously you're never going to believe you're not going to do well. with this get hurt or something. But this protects you because you've signed a big deal, which means you at least get one big contract.

You're not waiting till you're 26 to sign your first big deal. And sure, yeah, you would get a bigger one then. He might get a three hundred four hundred million dollar deal then. But what if he doesn't? His his teammate, O'Neill Cruz, Cruz has had, you know, a pretty good after after a pretty dismal first series against the Mets, you know, where he made a couple of lapses in the outfield himself. ⁓ And and on the basis he's batting three forty five. He's home runs. He looks good.

I did. did he figure it out? It's too short a sample to go there because we were we were burying him two weeks ago. And we just talked about last week how the Pirates started off like twenty five and twelve or something a couple of years ago and then they became the Pirates again. So and that's where you you as a fan, you have to not get too down on your team because look, even if you're the worst team in baseball right now, which is technically the Chicago White Sox, you're five and ten, you're five games under five hundred. That's like

two weeks of good play and you're suddenly back in it. Two weeks of good play would be a season in some ways for the Chicago Whites. Right. you go over a two week span, you go like, you know, nine and three, you're one game over 500. You are right. A good road trip can put you back in it. So you're not you're not too down on yourself. The problem is when that five and nine becomes 15 and 25.

Now, all of a sudden, it starts getting a little bit harder to dig yourself out of that hole because 10 games is a big hole to grow like 10 games under 500. That's not easy to get yourself out of. We all go back to the 2019 Nationals who started 19 and 31 in their first 50 games.

and won the World Series. So everybody goes, well, you can do that. Not the blueprint you want to do, necessarily, but it can happen. It is a lot easier nowadays that so many more teams get into the playoffs. And in a year like this where you don't have a bunch of teams running out there, if nobody ever establishes themselves this year, that makes it way easier to do because you've got a lot more competition. You've got a lot more spots you can compete for. So I think that this is a year where, you know, if this held up until the end of April where all these teams are kind of hovering just around 500.

Yeah, you could start 19 and 31 and make the playoffs. That's entirely possible because then you could go like 70 and 30 over your last hundred games. One team that won't do that is the other team in New York, which we don't talk about all that often, the Yankees. And I actually have to say I'm think the Yankees are in really good shape here. Oh, I the Yankees are loving because Judge hasn't hit. Right. All So let's start the fact that they're doing OK, even a little better than that. And and their best player really has a story. They haven't gotten Garrett Cole. They haven't gotten Carlos Rodin.

You know, their offense is a little spotty. Judge isn't hitting and Bellinger's had a pretty lousy season. the same way when you look at their crosstown rival in the Mets. Yeah, if you take out Juan Soto or you take out Aaron Judge, whether it be performance wise or injury wise, and then when Dorr and Bellinger are having terrible starts to the season. Yeah, that offense isn't going to look the same. The difference is the Yankees are eight and six to the Mets, seven and eight. I mean, it's not a huge difference. No, no. But I the Yankees have looked better doing it. And I think if you're the

Yankee fan, the thing you're real happy about is, man, nobody else in your we were all sitting here talking about the vaunted A.L. East. The rest of that division does not look good right now. still say that the Blue Jays will get it on track, but I'm less certain that the Orioles will get it together the way I thought they were. Unless the Red Sox are concerning me right now because, you know, the lack of hitting, I just I thought these guys would hit and they're not. And that was what I that was my it was like, well, you can't put this all on Roman Anthony to carry your team. you know what? Yeah, he's struggling with that.

And Tampa Bay is being a real pain in the neck, just like they always are. But Tampa Bay being 500 right now at this point in the season, that's pretty good. When we get to June and they're still about 500, it's not going to be as impressive. Yeah. But they're just an annoying team for everybody else, not the vision. Like, how can you guys be good every single year? So, yeah, I think the other interesting bit of news I saw yesterday was the second baseman for the San Diego Padres. Was Fernando Tatis Jr. Fernando Tatis Jr., who came up as a shortstop, if you recall.

and then became a gold glove outfielder. That's a very important thing to mention. So why would you take your gold glove right fielder and put him as second base and turn him into Mookie Betts? Because you didn't have a better option. And that's absolutely what happened. But I guess because the Dodgers did it with Mookie Betts and I think he did it with Boston before that. You know, well, look, if you're an amazing guy like Mookie Betts, you can be an all star in the outfield and an all star in the infield. And I don't know that Tatees Jr. is going to play a lot more second base because Cronenwerth will probably play play more than he does.

But still, the fact that they would make that change, I thought was very interesting. It's what they had to go yesterday. The question is, is it a long term change or was it purely, well, we need to get through today. Right.

So all right. Well, let's go to our topic today. Yeah, let's go to our topic, which is a pitch that is kind of reemerged as a dominant pitch in the major leagues, because it seems like every dominant starter and reliever throws one. And that is the splitter. Yeah, I wish we had a baseball here because I put it in your hands with your giant hands that you have because that's a pitch you didn't throw. And one of the fellow writers and sub stack, Neil Payne, who wrote for the five three eight, he's got his own sub stack. Great. Was talking about when he was in high school that

the coaches wouldn't allow him to throw the split-fingered fastball. was a big no-no. And then you said something pretty similar to me about how they discouraged it. wasn't so much that they discouraged it. It was just never presented to you as an option. And if you were like, like, you know, like, well, look at this. It was never something that if you tried, you would have had to entirely try and develop it on your own to the point where you were throwing it in front of them and have it be effective, where then they would be like, OK, I guess you can throw it because you've worked on it. But it was never going to be something they be like they wouldn't have looked at me and I like you got big hands why don't you try this and I actually did because I threw a split finger change up

But that was something I did on my own. figured that out entirely. Your own your own pitch. Yeah, I was like, I'll do this. It works for me. So the split finger ⁓ is different than a than a forkball. So forkball has been around a lot longer in that probably we're throwing it, you know, I think, you know, back in the teens and the 20s and the 19 teens and 20s and in the 1930s, a guy named Fred Martin, who was in the Reds organization, was a relief pitcher, not a very good one. And I wrote this in my

sub stack article and basically after his career was over he became a coach and he started teaching the split things. I know why would you want to learn a pitch from a guy who wasn't all that good but in this case this guy taught these guys the pitch and and and he had some real disciples obviously that learned from him and including Bruce Souter who became a Cy Young winner and you know he's a Hall of Famer on the basis of that pitch. Right and then really when you look at the difference between

the split finger and fork ball. It's mostly just where your two fingers are sitting on the ball when you're there. There's split on it, but the splitter kind of sits higher on the ball overall while the fork ball there really spread out onto the sides and it's further back in your hand because you really want to kind of almost sitting back up against your palm as you go to throw it. So, you know, obviously we had we had suitor who was a proponent. There have been some some pitchers that I did. Roger Craig, who later became a manager, was a pitching coach, was also a teacher of this particular pitch.

finger fastball and in my article I that he taught it to a guy who didn't have a job at the time and nor did he in the 1980s 1985 Mike Scott who I remember Mike Scott when he pitched for the Mets he was terrible he couldn't get anybody out you know so the Mets let him go and then he goes and meets up with Roger Craig who teaches in this pitch and he turns into freaking Cy Young you know because he wins a Cy Young in 1986 and he strikes out 318 kind of like struck out 130 guys and then all of a sudden

318 guys with this pitch. at that time, the best thing about it, the pitch was devastating. know, the Mets thought he was cheating. He's got sandpaper. They've got to get that. these guys are going crazy. Somebody do something about that. And he was so in their heads. And then he had to be doing something because there was no way this pitch was that good. So but it was that good. And all the way into the players were the Mets that season got all the way to the ⁓ the sixth game of the National League Championship Series and won a wild game to win the series.

which was only a relief because game seven was supposed to be started by Mike Scott. We're not beating that guy. So it's just so interesting. And then it kind of come into the 1990s where all of a sudden you start seeing a lot of top end pitchers are utilizing the the splitter as a big pitch. Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Adeo Noma. You had all these big name guys. It's such a strikeout pitch. Right. So it tumbles. It drops away. It's thrown at about the same velocity as a change up in general.

maybe a little harder at times. Right. Now, the problem is, as I like to think of change ups as a below 90 mile an hour pitch, except for the way guys throw now throwing a 90 mile an hour change up isn't unreasonable. So 90 mile an hour splitters are reasonable. John Smoltz also fashioned the Hall of Fame career on the basis of having that as one of his pitches. And I think he made the comment off air that the splitter is most effective when it's part of your arsenal. You can't throw the splitter like you can't marry on a revere this thing like a cutter. Right. I'm going to this pitch.

And I think we can say this as a met fan because we've seen two different guys struggle with it We've seen Senga struggle with this issue and we've seen juries familiar struggle with this issue because the litter when you're able to throw it and the guys Aren't laying off of it when they're swinging at it because it looks like a strike and then it isn't it's devastating But if they're able to be patient we see this with Senga all the time They're just like well, what if I just don't ever swing at the ghost fork?

Oh, he found me out. Right. And then all of a sudden he can't do anything. And that was the same thing with familiar. Familia would be amazing sometimes when he would come in the night and then sometimes be like, oh, he doesn't have a splitter tonight. And then you were in for an adventure. So the pitch fell out of favor because erroneously, the the pitching cognizant, he started thinking that it was causing arm injuries. Right. Because pitchers, you see, oh, right. We guys that threw splitters get hurt because guys that pitch get hurt. Right. And guys that throw.

turns out it wasn't the splitter at all and Glenn Fleissig you know did a study on this and came up with the other you know what it is its velocity right so they're throwing the ball so hard that's what's causing so all of a sudden from when it was down to I think in 2016 just 1.4 percent of pitches thrown were split-fingered fastball by 2018 it was up 120 percent in its usage in the World Series 11.4 percent last year were splitters and is it just so interesting that they fell off in the US but it didn't fall off over

overseas because Mashichiro Tanaka, Iwakuma, Koji Urahara, and a young guy named Shohei Otani all kept throwing splitters over in Japan during the 2010s when it kind of hit its nadir here. And then as they started coming over here and guys started seeing how effective it was and they weren't getting hurt throwing it, everybody was like...

yeah, that's a really good pitch. And now you've got Yoshi. You've got Yamamoto. You've got Sasaki. You've got Senga. You've got Otani. You've got there's four pitchers all Japanese throwing it. But then you've also got Kevin Gousman and Casey Meyers both throw in and as big parts of their arsenal. So in my article, what I what I started by saying was that I had a guy in my office back at the time. ⁓ Alan, know I actually do remember his last name now, but I'm not going to say it. And Alan used to say, yeah, you know, I love middle relief pitchers. wish my son

would be one because there's no better job in the world than basically sitting on your butt all game. You come in, you throw a couple of pitches in the sixth inning of a game, and then you sit down again and you get paid a lot of money and you get good food. This is your dream job. Well, he goes, so I'm going to take a baseball stick between my kid's fingers when he's sleeping at night with a rubber band and to try to split a little while so your hand's going to be a big one. And I thought, I can do that, can I? I can't really do that. I didn't do that. Maybe you should. Maybe you should because, you know, encourage me to throw a splitter. This this. Well, yeah. And you had a ⁓ really good change up to boot. So, you know, that would just be more to the arsenal. So I think, ⁓ you know, the hardest thing is controlling it. Right. And like you said about Senga and guys like familiar, you know, it's a nuke, Lelouch kind of pitch to a degree. And the reason you don't see it in high school is because the catchers could never catch it.

you'd be it'd be a parade of passball. Right. Right. And I think that's why you don't even see a lot of mediocre pitchers making it to the major leagues is because it's such an all or nothing pitch that either you're a guy that's bouncing a zillion of them and you can never throw them in the strike zone. So your coach is to tell you just stop throwing that pitch or you throw it in the strike zone too much. And it's a very hittable pitch then. And guys are just teeing off on you constantly. And then you don't move up because of that. And it's even harder than that because you think about guys that throw it right. And so if there's a runner on third right.

point in the inning, less even less than two out. You know, are you going to be less tempted to throw a pitch that mean bounce and go away from the catcher even at the major league level? Right. Because it's hard to predict what's happening with that pitch. It's you know, they thought Mike Scott was cheating because it was damn hard to catch to hit the pitch. Right. It's damn hard to catch the right. It's like a kind of catch a knuckleball, except you know where it's going. And even then, it's hard. So there's a graphic in that shows all the different grips of that. And it's really kind of hard to tell, you know, the subtlety between the two because pitchers have their own sort of idiosyncrasies when it comes to modifying an existing grip. But I think the splitter is here to stay. I think that it's really just going to be a function of how can the hitter try to identify this pitch enough to not swing. Right. That's what it is. And obviously, sometimes you have guys like Sanga, they can't disguise it enough. And that's the biggest difference you have when you go from amateur baseball at even a high school college level to when you get to the professional level is that the guys are so good about picking

up what pitch it is, that they're not just trying to tell what kind of pitch it is based off of looking at it. They're looking at all these other tells that you have in your motion that are giving away what pitch you're throwing is. Whereas when I was pitching in high school and into college, was just like guys were just looking at the pitch, trying to guess what I was throwing. And I think, you know, the splitter is particularly we saw a few of them yesterday when Senga was pitching, which almost had a lateral.

in when it was coming in. my guess is that even though it's intended to come off the fingers in a similar way, that that might be the most unpredictable pitch in terms of the kind of spin you get because it's so subtle. One little additional pressure on one side or the other could cause it. The last second changes the entire rotational access of the ball. but you know, 11 percent of the World Series last year, you're going to you're going to see a lot of split fingers and the catchers since they're going to be able to not worrying about, you know, having framing very much longer. Once ABS is

all time, they should learn how to catch the splitter. And I'll say it's like, it just says when you're throwing the ball, like it's really weird that I always remember that I could always feel the ball last on my middle finger a little bit longer than on my index finger because your middle finger is a little bit longer than your index finger. So that's going to affect it when you're throwing the when you're throwing a splitter, because if you if you let it that pressure last on your middle finger, just that little bit longer, you're now going to be creating rotation. It's kind of getting the ball to have that right to left kind of movement. And you don't want to do that because your splitter is not going to drop anymore. It's going to turn into a slider that doesn't have enough rotation to slide. So look, you're not too old. You know, I mean, does it make you excited? You want to go out there and maybe throw a few and see, you know, rookie again all over again. That'd a great story. All because of the splitter.