“His splitter is a top 10 pitch in all of baseball”: Pitching Ninja loves Blue Jays pitcher Kevin Gausman

Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Kevin Gausman has been a pleasure to watch all season. His pitch locations, speeds, and sequencing have confounded most hitters he’s faced, and he leads the majors with 54 strikeouts through the first month of the season.

Besides one outing in Houston, all of Gausman’s starts have been tidy, with a few outstanding performances that included double-digit strikeout totals.

On a recent episode of The Walk Off podcast, ‘’Pitching Ninja” Rob Friedman joined the show to discuss the righthander’s pitching wizardry.

The Pitching Ninja loves Kevin Gausman!

It doesn’t take long for the host Scott Belford to ask Friedman about his thoughts on Gausman, who has been the subject of many of his pitching breakdowns videos.

Friedman directly proclaims Gausman’s splitter to be among the top 10 pitches in all of Major League Baseball. Not only that but one of the best splitters of all time, with an angle that is practically unhittable when it’s on.

Friedman went on to explain that the pitch starts with the grip of the baseball. To watch him describe this, you can tell he’s in his element.:

“He gets blood blisters before games, so he doesn’t throw it in practice, and he knows it’s going to be good if he does have a blood blister”.

Rob is very complimentary of the Jays' pitching staff and offered some hopeful thoughts on Alek Manoah's ability to rebound after some shaky starts early this season.

Scott curiously asked about the pitching overlay graphics that have become so popular in recent years. Friedman was an early user of this technology and explained how it helps understand how batters can sometimes miss badly on certain pitches.

The conversation moved on to the pitch taking the majors by storm, the sweeper. It’s not a new pitch, more of a new name for something that has existed and seeks to force batters to chase horizontally and vertically.

The Pitching Ninja shared some insights on his recent lengthy interview with former Blue Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman and gave informative and fascinating answers to some fan questions. 

Before signing off, Friedman gave a shout-out to Yusei Kikuchi, an unlikely stabilizing entity for the staff this season.