Frankie Montas’ splitter started out as an experiment.
For kicks once spring training started this year, Montas tossed it a couple times — he “played with it” — but noticed soon enough that the fun started to translate into big swings and misses.
The more he threw it, the more he was getting hitters off the fastball. A conversation with A’s pitching coach Scott Matthew Emerson turned Montas’ moments of exploratory chucking into a reality: Montas’ splitter would become a part of his repertoire in 2019.
Even without Emerson’s approval, Montas had a gut feeling by his second start in spring training that the splitter would stick.