How Pirates veteran lefty Rich Hill added split-finger fastball as new pitch

When Austin Hedges noticed an Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher throw a split-finger fastball earlier this month, the Pittsburgh Pirates catcher asked 43-year-old left-hander Rich Hill if he’d ever thrown the pitch.

The splitter is one of an array of pitches Hill has thrown over the course of his 19-year major league career, so he started tinkering with the idea of adding it as another weapon to his seven-pitch repertoire.

When Hill returned from the All-Star break, he mentioned the idea to Pirates pitching coach Oscar Marin during a bullpen session last Thursday. Marin suggested a slight adjustment to Hill’s hybrid grip, sliding his fingers off the seams to get more depth.

“It was just a different grip that he showed me and it really clicked for me,” Hill said. “It’s a game of adjustments or continuously trying to get better. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how long you’ve been around, I think realizing that there’s room to grow, continue to work on things that I can get better at. That was certainly something that I felt could be added into the pitch mix.”

Hill unveiled his splitter a day later and estimated that he threw it on 15% to 18% of his 91 pitches — even though it likely registered on Statcast as a sinker — in a 6-4 loss to the San Francisco Giants.

“This man has incredible feel,” Marin said. “Ironically enough, it worked right away. He went from one bullpen to throwing it in the game. That’s incredible trust in himself, to be able to make that adjustment. Sometimes that’s all it takes. When you’re looking at what he’s done and a team that prepares really well, you can prepare all you want. But you can’t prepare for what you haven’t seen.”

Hedges wasn’t prepared to catch the pitch, having seen it only while throwing on flat ground. They hadn’t even discussed it in their game-planning session, which was centered around Hill’s fastball-curveball-cutter, other than as an option they could scatter in on occasion.

“It was wild, man,” Hedges said. “He was getting frustrated with me for not calling it more. You’ve got all these other weapons and now you’ve got this new trick, and he wanted to keep throwing it. He kept it executing it so well. That was the impressive part: He started throwing this new pitch and executing it at a high rate. That’s a testament to how good of a pitcher he is, to go out with a brand-new weapon. Now that we’ll be able to game-plan for it, it should make it that much better.”

Where Pirates great ElRoy Face threw a forkball — gripping the ball wide between his index and middle fingers — the splitter was popularized by Bruce Sutter. The Hall of Fame reliever won the 1979 NL Cy Young with the Chicago Cubs and closed out two games for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1982 World Series.

The splitter later became a staple for Detroit’s Jack Morris, Houston’s Mike Scott and Oakland’s Dave Stewart. As a student of the game, Hill understood that it had a high success rate. It was just a matter of finding a grip where the pitch clicked for him.

“He’s constantly wanting to get better and learning,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said of Hill, who is 7-9 with a 4.76 ERA in 104 innings over 19 starts this season. “It’s trust in him to have conversations with Oscar to try something new, then taking it into a game and seeing it be effective. The fact that it came out of his hand and he wanted to throw it and go to it, I thought was very cool. This guy’s 43 and has been playing 19 years in the big leagues and he’s always trying to get better. I think that’s the ultimate example for our young players.”

Hill throws the pitch in the low-to-mid 80s as a complement to his four-seam fastball, which averages around 88 mph. Hedges believes the splitter complements all of Hill’s pitches because it dives in the opposite direction of his other offerings to right-handed hitters.

“To be able to throw that pitch 82-84 (mph) with that type of action at the bottom of the zone is such a different look from his normal repertoire,” Hedges said. “Everything else, his fastball-curveball-cutter are all heading into righties. The splitter is down or even away from a righty and just comes out a different window than other pitches, so you’re not just always looking in the same area. It’s a good thing to change eye levels and speeds on hitters.”

Hedges called it “super rare” to see a major leaguer add a new pitch at midseason, especially a split-finger fastball.

“That one’s special,” Hedges said. “I don’t know anybody that can go out there and execute a split-finger like he did.”

While pitching in the San Diego Padres system, Pirates All-Star closer David Bednar learned how to throw a splitter from Hideo Nomo, who used the pitch to become an All-Star and win NL rookie of the year honors in 1995 and be named a two-time Cy Young finalist. For Bednar, it was a process that required a year or two to get a feel for how to command it in the strike zone and learn to trust it.

That Hill got a grip for it so quickly wasn’t a surprise.

“Him? Not at all. Not even a little bit,” Bednar said. “Just because you’re not around for 19 years for nothing. He has such an incredible feel for all of his pitches, for how his arm works and dropping it down. That’s what makes him so good.”