Browsing: splitter

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  Ramona ShelburneOct 24, 2025, 11:35 PM ET

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  • Senior writer for ESPN.com
  • Spent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily News

PORTLAND, Ore. — It will be a long time before the Portland Trail Blazers can process the predawn arrest Thursday of coach Chauncey Billups in a federal investigation related to rigged poker games allegedly backed by the Mafia.

But the process of moving forward began Friday as they played their first game under interim coach Tiago Splitter, and the Blazers beat the Golden State Warriors 139-119 at the Moda Center.

“Honestly, it is a tough moment,” said Splitter, a former player for the San Antonio Spurs whose only head coaching experience before Friday was in the Euro League with Paris Basketball last season. “I mean, we all had great experience with Chauncey, and we are thinking of him and his family. But we have a job to do, and we have to move forward.”

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Splitter and Blazers general manager Joe Cronin addressed the team Thursday afternoon, hours after Billups’ stunning arrest. Neither had slept more than a few hours when news of the arrest started spreading. Splitter told ESPN that he went to bed around 2 a.m. after watching tape of the Blazers’ season-opening loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves and was woken up shortly after 6 a.m. when the news started to circulate.

A few hours later, Splitter was in Cronin’s office, being asked to take over as interim coach. Lead assistant coach Nate Bjorkgren had previous head coaching experience, but team sources said Bjorkgren had told Cronin that Splitter was the best choice to take over, and Bjorkgren felt he could best help the team in his current role, running the defense.

Billups had recruited Splitter away from a head coaching role with Paris Basketball over the summer to help revamp the Blazers’ offense, and he had been implementing changes over the past few months.

This kind of promotion, under these circumstances, was less than ideal.

“I have to be ready,” Splitter said. “I was ready, I am ready.”

Blazers interim coach Tiago Splitter said his team was focused on moving forward after Chauncey Billups’ arrest Thursday. Photo by Tom Hauck/Getty images

Warriors coach Steve Kerr didn’t know Splitter well, but their paths and circles have many intersections.

“I met with him in Paris last year during the Olympics,” Kerr said. “David Kahn, the owner [of Paris Basketball], texted me and asked if I would meet with Tiago. We spent some time together. Had a great visit. Then, he was wildly successful, winning the French league, getting rave reviews. David told me what an amazing coach he thought he was. He said he thought he’d be an NBA head coach someday. Nobody wants it to be under these circumstances. But there’s a reason Tiago is here. He’s a talented guy.”

After Friday night’s game, Kerr praised the Blazers for their victory.

“I would be embarrassed to sit here and blame fatigue when a team just came out and took it to us. It was about them and their great play,” Kerr said. “This city is going to really enjoy watching the Blazers. They play hard. They have a real identity. They’re doing a really good job of rebuilding the franchise after the long run with Terry [Stotts] and Dame [Lillard] and CJ [McCollum]. It’s been a rough couple of years, but they’ve used that time wisely and built a really good roster.”

Beating the Warriors — even a tired version of the Warriors on the second night of a back-to-back set — was as good a start and palate cleanser as Splitter and the Blazers could have hoped for after Billups’ arrest and arraignment Thursday.

Deni Avdija led Portland with 26 points, shooting 11 of 18 from the floor. Jerami Grant added 22 points off the bench, and all five Blazers starters scored in double figures. Portland shot 54% from the field and hit 16 of 34 3-pointers (47%).

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You’re going to see a kaleidoscope of the nastiest pitches in baseball when the Blue Jays and Dodgers face off in the World Series. But you’re going to see one pitch in particular more than you ever have.

This is going to be the World Series of the splitter.

For a long time in Major League Baseball, the splitter was a rare bird. But not in the 2025 postseason. And especially not for the two World Series teams.

Over the last few seasons, splitters are on the rise in MLB. That goes for both the regular season and the postseason. But this year’s playoffs, thanks largely to the Blue Jays and Dodgers, have become a splitter showcase like never before.

We’re already seeing twice as many splitters this postseason as we ever have in the pitch tracking era, which goes back to 2008.

And everything is going to come to a head on the biggest stage of all.

The most important pitchers on both sides of the 2025 World Series have some of the nastiest splitters in baseball, period, including:

That’s just a ton of dominant splitter throwers coming together in one series with a championship at stake.

The two teams now meeting in the Fall Classic threw more splitters along the way than any other postseason team in their respective leagues:

The Jays have accounted for nearly half of all the splitters thrown in the AL in the postseason. The Dodgers have accounted for over half of all the splitters in the NL.

And in total, the 2025 Blue Jays have already thrown more splitters on their postseason run than any other playoff team in the pitch tracking era … with one more round to go. The Dodgers are also in the top five already, and if their pitchers keep firing their splitters in the Fall Classic — why wouldn’t they? — Toronto and L.A. will very likely end up 1-2.

Most splitters thrown by a team in a single postseason
Pitch tracking era (since 2008)

Now that they’re colliding in the Fall Classic, the Blue Jays and Dodgers are going to set a new record for most splitters thrown in a single World Series. And they’re going to do it by a lot.

As you can see, the World Series hasn’t exactly been a splitter battleground. Until now.

The most total splitters thrown in a single World Series in the pitch tracking era is just 56 — that was two years ago in 2023, and all 56 splitters were thrown by a single pitcher, the Rangers’ Nathan Eovaldi. The next-most was 45 back in 2013, when the Red Sox staff had Clay Buchholz, Koji Uehara, Junichi Tazawa and Ryan Dempster.

Many of the previous 17 World Series in the pitch tracking era have had total splitter counts in the single digits. Multiple Fall Classics have come and gone with zero splitters thrown in the entire series.

Even the Dodgers, who were in the World Series last year, weren’t throwing as many splitters in 2024 as they are in 2025. Ohtani wasn’t pitching. Sasaki was still in Japan. They only had Yamamoto, who threw 11 splitters in his Game 2 victory over the Yankees (and struck out Anthony Rizzo, Anthony Volpe and Aaron Judge). Actually, the Yankees threw more splitters than the Dodgers in the series, thanks to splitter-heavy reliever Mark Leiter Jr.

It’s been rare for both pennant-winning teams to even have splitter users. Usually, when there are any splitters in the World Series, they’re thrown predominantly by one team.

But this year will be different.

This year, the two World Series teams have nine different pitchers who have thrown at least one splitter this postseason. (Heck, even Clayton Kershaw threw a split-change against the Phillies in the NLDS.) None of the previous Fall Classics in the pitch tracking era have featured more than four unique splitter throwers. Most have no more than one or two.

This year, in the biggest at-bats of the World Series, Yesavage, Gausman, Hoffman, Yamamoto, Ohtani and Sasaki will all turn to their splitters.

First up in Game 1 for the Blue Jays will be the 22-year-old Yesavage and his splitter that “comes from the sky”, with one of the highest arm angles and release points of any pitcher in the Majors. Yesavage’s splitter was the pitch that overwhelmed the Yankees in his 5 1/3-inning, no-hit, 11-strikeout postseason debut.

In Game 2 for the Dodgers, you’ll see Yamamoto, whose 91 mph splitter is one of the hardest thrown by any starting pitcher, and has held hitters to a batting average of just .140 this year across the regular season and postseason. That splitter is what closed out his complete-game masterpiece against the Brewers in the NLCS.

You’ll also see Gausman, who’s racked up an incredible 458 strikeouts on splitters since he got to Toronto in 2022 — far and away the most of any pitcher — including an MLB-high 112 splitter K’s in 2025 entering the World Series. Gausman has thrown more splitters than anyone this postseason, 113, and he’s using his splitter 43% of the time, sky-high usage for a starter.

At some point, Sasaki will come in in a high-pressure, late-game situation for the Dodgers, and you’ll see the splitter that has baffled hitters this postseason thanks to its unique combination of high velocity and extremely low spin that creates unpredictable movement.

And, of course, waiting in the wings is Ohtani, who brought back his splitter just for the postseason. Once one of baseball’s most unhittable pitches, Ohtani’s splitter has reappeared in the playoffs, as he used it to strike out Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper in the NLDS and record the final five K’s of his NLCS gem against the Brewers that sent the Dodgers to the World Series.

The emergence of the splitter in the postseason is just one part of the larger trend of pitchers throwing their nasty secondary pitches more and more, especially when strikeouts are at a premium in the playoffs.

Think about this: In the 2025 postseason, the average fastball velocity is 95.8 mph — the highest it’s ever been. But fastball usage is just 48% — the lowest it’s ever been. There are just too many nasty breaking and offspeed pitches on postseason pitching staffs, and they’ve taken the fastballs’ place.

The splitter is one of those. In the regular season this year, Major League hitters batted just .208 and slugged .333 against splitters, with a 35% swing-and-miss rate and 31% strikeout rate. In the postseason, where the best splitters are now taking center stage, hitters are batting just .167 and slugging .273 against them with a 40% whiff rate and 35% strikeout rate.

With the Blue Jays and Dodgers the only teams left playing, there are only more splitters ahead. The splitter is going to play a huge role in deciding the World Series.

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