Splitter’s the difference: Why Chicago Cubs starter Kevin Gausman started using a much bigger mitt

WASHINGTON — The size of Kevin Gausman’s red mitt is impossible to miss even from the sky-high third deck at Nationals Park.

The 14-year veteran has always used a larger glove. For a while, the Chicago Cubs right-hander wore a 12¾-inch mitt from Marucci, then upgraded to a 13-inch before the postseason with the Toronto Blue Jays last year. Some major-league first basemen don’t even use a glove that size.

“So now it’s pretty big, like, absurdly,” Gausman told the Tribune. “You notice it pretty quickly.”

Gausman took that approach with his mitt for one reason: to better protect his splitter. Because that pitch requires pushing his middle and index fingers in a wide V shape often outside of the seams on the baseball, Gausman tends to really dig into the glove to get a firm grip. The hand motion needed to do that is better masked with a larger glove. It’s especially useful when runners are on second base and do whatever they can to relay pitches to the hitter.

“Listen, the pitching is so good now that hitters, offenses are trying to find any advantage and if you’re doing something with your fingers or the glove is in a different spot, they’re going to catch it,” Gausman said. “So I just feel like the bigger pocket I have, the more room I have in there to kind of move it around. From the outside you can’t really tell I’m doing much.

“Realizing that it’s such a big part of the game, if you can kind of alleviate a little bit of that, why wouldn’t you do it?”

Gausman has become known for his splitter.

Through two starts with the Cubs, the pitch has become a more frequent option for the 35-year-old. After a 38% usage with the Blue Jays this season, his splitter has accounted for 49.7% of his pitches thrown for the Cubs. During Thursday’s 7-0 loss to the Nationals in which Gausman couldn’t get out of a five-run fifth inning, he tossed 43 splitters (46%) among his 93 pitches. He got three called strikes on the splitter and nine whiffs on 21 swings (43%) against it.

“It’s such a difficult pitch, and I think that’s why few guys throw the pitch to the frequency that Shota (Imanaga) and Kevin do,” manager Craig Counsell said before Gausman’s outing Thursday. “It’s a very difficult pitch to command and to have work properly. So, generally speaking, when Kevin has the pitch going, he just becomes very difficult to hit.”

The Cubs (71-51) were held to one hit — Michael Busch’s soft opposite-field single with two outs in the seventh — in a dominating performance by Nationals starter Cade Cavalli.

Gausman’s four-seam fastball command got away from him at times in the fifth, and the Nationals capitalized. The big blow came on Abimelec Ortiz’s two-out, three-run home run. Six of the seven hits Gausman surrendered in his 4⅔ innings were hard contact off his fastball. Despite that, Gausman’s hard-hit rate and barreled balls have decreased compared with last year. He believes that trend stems from pitching to his strengths.

“I feel pretty confident in saying that my command is good enough,” Gausman said. “I’m never going to walk the bases loaded. So with that just knowing that you’re always one pitch away, one swing away, especially with this defense — a lot of Gold Glovers on the field so you feel pretty confident in that. But more so knowing myself and knowing where I need to pitch to stay away from damage.”

Gausman considers the 2020 season in San Francisco to be the first he really leaned into becoming a two-pitch starter with his fastball-splitter combination. But 2021 with the Giants was the year he honed in on where he needed to locate his splitter for it to land for a strike and, conversely, where to start it for the pitch to end up down and away. In the last six seasons since committing fully to his splitter and fastball, Gausman has posted a 3.46 ERA and 121 ERA+ in 182 starts.

The Cubs acquired him to deliver the type of dominance he has shown, particularly in the postseason.

“It took me eight years in the big leagues to really figure out these are my strengths,” Gausman said. “Obviously you’ve got to work on things you’re not good at as well, right? But for me, the second half of my career has really taken off because I’ve honed in on my strengths and almost a little naive to the fact that I know this works. I’ve just got to do this, stay healthy and I know I can be successful.”