Notable Pitchers
The splitter is thrown today by many pitchers, including Freddy García, Ryan Dempster, Carl Pavano, Carlos Zambrano, Dan Haren, Rich Harden, José Valverde, Jonathan Papelbon, Hiroki Kuroda, Roy Halladay, and Mike Pelfrey.
David Cone was famous for his splitter, used most often in the middle and later part of his career. A major strikeout pitch for him, Cone would throw it hard like a fastball to get swinging strikes. He also was very effective in throwing it slower, using it as a changeup to throw off hitters' timing. Mike Scott learned the pitch from Roger Craig after the 1984 season and it turned his career around. He won the 1986 NL Cy Young award and posted a league leading 306 strikeouts. Randy Johnson developed a splitter later in his career, after losing some of his extremely high fastball velocity.
Roger Clemens developed a splitter later in his career as well, using it frequently as a strikeout pitch. His splitter was made very effective by his very high arm angle, which made it difficult to differentiate from his fastball until it broke.
Read more about this topic: Split-finger Fastball
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“Little pitchers have big ears.”
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