Padres Pitcher Looking to Steal Dodgers Star's Best Pitch

Los Angeles Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been electrifying this season.

With a 2.20 ERA that is among the top names in baseball, the right-hander has been dominant with 86 strikeouts to 25 walks on the year. His ERA+ of 176 ranks him 76 percent higher than league average.

Naturally, other pitchers around the league are going to want a piece of that.

A pair of pitchers on the San Diego Padres have taken note of what Yamamoto has been doing this season and showed their envy for his splitter.

“Oh yeah — It’s, ‘Can I add this to my arsenal? Can I try to do what he’s doing?’” Padres right-hander Michael King said Sunday with fellow starting pitcher Nick Pivetta in ear shot. “We just saw (Yoshinobu) Yamamoto throw his splitter and (Pivetta) was like, ‘I wish I could throw the Yamamoto splitter,’ and I’m like, ‘You can. You just have to figure it out.’ He’s just not that athletic enough to do it.

The special combination of athleticism, stuff, and consistency has kept Yamamoto's splitter as his most effective offering.

With an average velocity of 90.6 mph, Yamamoto's splitter allows opponents batting average of just .121.

Batters are swinging and missing at this pitch 45.3 percent of the time. It has also generated 42 of Yamamoto's 86 strikeouts on the year.

The right-hander has proven that the splitter is his most difficult pitch to deal with, but it's only used 27.7 percent of the time in his arsenal. Yamamoto's most frequent offering is his four-seam heater thrown 36.6 percent of the time.

The average velocity on his fastball is 95.3 mph. Batters are hitting just .193 against the pitch as it has generated 22 strikeouts for the ace.

Perhaps most impressive with his fastball is that in the 444 times he has thrown it this season, there has yet to be a home run launched from that pitch. The only other pitches that Yamamoto has yet to allow a home run off of is a slider that was thrown just 28 times, and one single sweeper tossed in 2025.

In the meantime, rival teams will continue to try and perfect the Yamamoto splitter, but not many can execute it like the Dodgers ace.