SF Giants ace jokingly teases he will only throw MLB's hottest pitch in 2026

Watching the 2025 World Series, it was clear that one pitch reigned supreme: the splitter. In a playful social media interaction with A's outfielder Brent Rooker, SF Giants ace Logan Webb jokingly teased that he was only going to throw a splitter next season.

Game 2 and Game 6 featured two pitchers who rely on the splitter a lot as both games were a matchup between Toronto Blue Jays pitcher, and former Giant, Kevin Gausman and Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Logan Webb teasingly says he will jump on the splitter bandwagon in 2026

Splitter usage was up in the 2025 playoffs compared to the previous year as it is clear it is becoming a more and more popular pitch in today's game. Gausman has talked about how it is one of the few pitches where even if a batter knows it is coming it is still difficult to hit given the action of the pitch.

The pitch fell out of favor for a while because there was a belief that it caused elbow injuries, but that stigma seems to have gone away. After Yamamoto's impressive performance in the World Series thanks in large part to his split-finger fastball, do not be surprised if a lot more pitchers try to emulate that success.

Rooker took to social media to say as much, and Webb could not help but tease him in his replies:

After Webb said he would throw a splitter every pitch next year, Rooker replied saying that Webb's changeup is so good that he would not need to use a splitter. Webb jokingly replied: "I’m going to learn a splitter and knuckleball just for you. But will only throw to you."

Rooker is right that Webb probably does not need to do too much to shake up his pitch repertoire going forward. He has been one of the most consistent and reliable pitchers in baseball since 2021 and will probably finish in the top three in National League Cy Young voting.

While for many years he was thought of mainly as a sinker-baller who only excelled at getting batters to hit ground balls, he was able to change that narrative in 2025 as he led the NL in strikeouts.

Part of that had to do with him introducing a cutter into his pitch mix and relying more on his four-seam fastball up in the zone, so maybe tinkering around with a splitter would not be the craziest thing to do for Webb going into 2026.