Welcome to the Postseason of the Splitter.
More than pumpkin spice, the split-finger fastball has become the flavor of the month. Its use in the postseason (6% of all pitches, or 17.4 per game) has skyrocketed 81% from the regular season (9.6 pitches per game) and a whopping 138% from the postseason just last year (7.3 per game).
Entering play Thursday—with about 20 postseason games still to come—we’ve already seen more splitters (434), more outs on splitters (94), more strikeouts on splitters (45) and more pitchers throwing them (29) than in any postseason in recorded history (since 2008).
The splitter was the Blue Jays’ secret sauce to knocking out the Yankees in the ALDS. Toronto has thrown the most splitters this postseason: 15.9%, up from its MLB-leading 9.3% in the regular season. The Yankees went 1-for-27 (.037) against the Jays’ splitters.
Toronto essentially took Ben Rice, the fastball-hitting slugger for New York, off the board by feeding him a ridiculous diet of splitters: 43%. He went 0-for-4 against them.
The Detroit Tigers are another team leaning on the split more in October. With their season on the line in ALDS Game 4, they relied on three pitchers with splitters to cover eight of the nine innings of a 9-3 win: Casey Mize, Kyle Finnegan and Troy Melton.
Casey Mize came to play today
— DataBase Hit (@DatabaseHit) October 8, 2025
Thru 3 IP
9 whiffs
6 K
33 CSW%
pic.twitter.com/dDDzRKU1BE
Detroit is feeding splitters as often as possible to Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez, the biggest bats in the Seattle lineup. Raleigh is seeing 27% splitters, up from 5% in the regular season. Rodríguez is seeing 22% splitters, up from 3%. They have adjusted well, going a combined 4-for-8, but with no home runs.
The Tigers are throwing 13.4% splitters, up from 4.8% in the regular season.
Check out the crazy spike in splitters this postseason compared to anything we’ve seen in the past:
And look at the unprecedented number of pitchers who are throwing the splitter.
What was a niche pitch has become a weapon in the biggest games of the year. Why? Teams pitch away from slug even more in the postseason than in the regular season. Pitchers get terrified this time of year challenging hitters with fastballs. Fastball use this postseason is down to 48.7%, an all-time low in the postseason in the pitch-tracking era. Hitters are slugging .414 against heaters—above the overall postseason slugging percentage of .391.
The splitter works best down in the zone, typically as a strike-to-ball pitch where there is less slug. Batters are slugging .303 against splitters, well below the average. Of the 434 splitters thrown this postseason, only one has been hit for a home run, that by Manny Machado of the Padres.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Explaining Why a Niche Pitch Is Overpowering Hitters This MLB Postseason.
