Here’s the thing about when Shohei Ohtani pitches: He always has another trick up his sleeve.
That’s the rare ability of an ace who has seven different pitch types in his arsenal, and all of them are nasty. And this postseason, the magician Ohtani has already pulled off his latest trick.
He’s brought his splitter back from the dead on the biggest stage.
The vintage Ohtani splitter finally reappeared in his first career playoff start against the Phillies, and against their very best hitters. Ohtani struck out both Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper with the pitch that used to be his signature, but had faded nearly into extinction by the time the 2025 playoffs rolled around.
So the Brewers will need to be ready for anything when Ohtani takes the mound in the National League Championship Series on Friday night — as impossible as it is to be ready for everything Ohtani can throw at you.
Watching those splitters drop off the table against Harper and Schwarber might not seem like anything new from Ohtani. After all, we saw countless splitters just like them in his first few seasons pitching for the Angels. But we’ve barely seen any at all since he got to the Dodgers. And it’s good to see them again, just in time for the games that count the most.
Remember, when Ohtani first came to the Major Leagues, the splitter was his greatest weapon. It was arguably baseball’s most unhittable pitch. But as the seasons went on, Ohtani lost command of his splitter — way too many of them were wasted pitches nowhere near the strike zone. And so he just stopped throwing it.
Ohtani’s sweeper took over as his No. 1 pitch in 2022 and 2023 in Anaheim, and this season, after he returned to the mound with the Dodgers, his four-seamer, sweeper, new hard slider and curveball functioned together as his putaway pitches — a balanced approach appropriate for pitchers’ ever-expanding arsenals in the “Year of the Pitch Mix.”
Entering the 2025 postseason, Ohtani was only throwing his splitter once every 20 pitches. He used to throw it once out of every five.
Ohtani’s splitter usage by season:
And then, all of a sudden against the Phillies, there it was again.
Ohtani threw his splitter over 10% of the time against the Phils. But much more important than the simple fact of Ohtani threw his splitter again was the fact that Ohtani’s splitter looked GOOD again. It looked the best it has in years.
Ohtani got Harper and Schwarber to whiff at the splitter four times between them. The last time Ohtani got that many swings-and-misses on his splitter in a game was on June 27, 2023.
The key was, with Ohtani bearing down in a playoff game, his elusive splitter command returned. Ohtani’s splitters against the Phillies were clustered around the bottom of the strike zone, close enough for them to conjure up swings, which the pitch’s drop-off-the-table movement turns into whiffs.
That’s where Ohtani wants to throw his splitter — as a chase pitch but not a waste pitch. Concentrated below the zone, not splattered everywhere around it, which is what was happening at the end of his Angels tenure.
This was a clear plan of attack for the Phillies’ star lefties, to give them a different look the second time through the order. The splitter is one of three pitches Ohtani can use as a weapon against opposite-side hitters, along with his curveball and hard slider — both of which are pitches Ohtani has developed and ramped up the usage of over the course of the 2025 season, and which shone alongside the splitter in his NLDS start.
Look at the curveball, for example. Ohtani came back as a pitcher in June this season. He didn’t throw a single curveball until August. But by the time he got to the playoffs, he was confident enough in the curve to throw it 18% of the time with the Phillies — and that curve was good enough to induce a ridiculous six whiffs on seven swings, and four strikeouts in five plate appearances.
So basically, Ohtani did two things once he finally got to pitch in the postseason: He used new tricks (the curve and slider), and brought back an old one (the splitter).
Ohtani’s confidence — and success — in deploying a shape-shifting arsenal against some of the best power hitters in baseball in a playoff game says a lot about his ability to adapt his pitching strategy to stay unpredictable in the postseason, and to execute those new strategies on the fly.
The same way the Phillies had a plan for their pitchers to attack Ohtani — bombard him with sidearming lefties — Ohtani the pitcher had a plan of attack for the Phillies’ best hitters.
He’ll have one for the Brewers, too. Whether that involves the splitter remains to be seen. But just know there’s something in the cards.
