Padres Pitcher Wants to Learn Dodgers Ace's Best Pitch

The San Diego Padres have seen some pitching brilliance from their staff this season, but part of what has made them so great is the willingness to keep perfecting their craft.

Specifically, Michael King and Nick Pivetta have taken notes on the things that rival Los Angeles Dodgers' ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been throwing this season. His splitter is quickly working it's way through some of the best bats in baseball and is easily his most effective pitch.

“Oh yeah — It’s, ‘Can I add this to my arsenal? Can I try to do what he’s doing?’” King said Sunday with Pivetta nearby. “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.

“It’s all right.”

The splitter is being tossed at an average velocity of 90.6 mph and the Dodgers right-hander has an opposing batting average of just .121 on that pitch.

Yamamoto has also generated 42 of his 86 strikeouts this season from the nasty offering. It is his second-most used pitch at 27.7 percent of his pitch mix, with his four-seam heater being thrown 36.6 percent of the time (to an opposing batting average of .193).

King and Pivetta aren't only envious of the Dodgers' ace as San Diego Union-Tribune's Jeff Sanders asked them both what pitch they could inherit from a teammate.

Pivetta chose King's changeup to get a drop and run that isn't currently in his arsenal.

“Because I need a vertical dropping changeup. It just would give me a ball going to the inside or away from lefties, with negative vertical drop, with horizontal run and it’s something that I don’t do.”

King, on the other hand, chose Dylan Cease's slider, noting that, “It’s one of the most elite pitches in baseball.”

That Cease slider is hit with a .207 average from opposing batters and is swung on and missed 43 percent of the time.

With King's 2.59 ERA over 10 starts and Pivetta's 3.16 mark over 12 outings of his own, it's safe to say that the Friars' rotation is in good hands.

For more Padres news, head over to Padres on SI.