Field Access: Kevin Gausman, Shane Bieber, Jeff Hoffman
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Hey everyone, Sho Ali here with you. Welcome back to another edition of Jays Talk Field Access on the Sportsnet Radio Network. These are our conversations with players and coaches from your Toronto Blue Jays, whether it's myself or Ben Shulman who are conducting these chats. We'll be bringing these to you a few times a month until the end of the season. Sunday is not one of our regular days for publishing the field access pods, if only because, you know, we always have games to do on Sundays and we'll get the, you know, Jay saw classic additions out on Saturdays and Sundays for you most times, but a rain out in Chicago today means the Jays wrap up a four and one road trip through Boston and Chi town.
They'll get back in action tomorrow, Monday, for the homestand that will see the Astros, Rangers, and Mets all come to town. So I thought this was a good time to give you some of our chats. First, I caught up with Kevin Gosman the day after one of his starts. This was in Toronto. He was very generous with his time. He did speak about how he came to use the splitter, amongst other things, which I thought was really interesting. Shane Bieber was also in town. This was before he went back to Buffalo for his last rehab stint. It was before the road trip. Shane talking to Ben on the field before the team went to Boston. And then a few days ago, Ben also caught up with reliever Jeff Hoffman in the Jays dugout as well.
He was also very generous with his time. So here we go. In order, Kevin Gosman, Shane Bieber, and Jeff Hoffman on the latest edition of Jays Talk Field Access. Coverage of Blue Jays baseball continues on the Sportsnet Radio Network. Show Ali here with you, and I'm joined by Blue Jays starter Kevin Gossman. Kevin, how are you? Thanks for doing this. I'm good, of course. Thanks for having me. So, Kevin, I wanted to chat a little bit about, not necessarily only this year, but your career to a certain extent. And I wanted to start with talking about the Splitter. And you and I are roughly the same age, actually, so we probably watched... Some of the same guys growing up. I mean, Roger Clemens threw the splitter.
Obviously, he was a Blue Jay for a couple years. John Smoltz, Kurt Schilling, I think, threw the splitter as well. So all guys were pretty prolific guys in the 90s. The pitch was pretty popular in the 1980s. And then it kind of just disappeared. No one really threw the splitter for a while. I don't know if you knew this, but... By 2016, less than 2% of all pitches thrown in baseball was the split. I think it was like 1.4%. And now here we are 10 years later and it's back, right? I mean, your teammate Trace Savage throws a pretty nasty one. I mean, pitchers in Japan are doing it. Yamamoto, Sasaki, we know that as well. And now here we are. I am curious for you how you decided to get into throwing a pitch as such a huge part of your arsenal when it was essentially historically unpopular.
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's kind of a crazy story. I was on the JV baseball team after my freshman year. So it's summer before sophomore year. And I'm trying to throw a circle change up. And I just couldn't figure it out. And my pitching coach had played in AAA for a couple years in the minor leagues and shows me my split grip. at the time is like hey i couldn't throw a change up either like it might be your hands like i i have pretty big hands he's like you know he's like for whatever reason you can't throw a circle change so essentially try this grip uh and i tried it And it was pretty hit or miss for a long time, but it was the only changeup I could kind of figure out a little bit. So I just kept throwing it.
And a lot of times in Denver, Colorado, I mean, I'm throwing my split harder than most fastballs. Right, right. And so I'm getting beat throwing my split. I'm blowing fastballs by guys. So then when I go, essentially I get drafted out of high school, but I end up going to LSU. I go and play in a summer league in Vegas, and it's a collegiate league. There's only two high school guys in the league, and it's me and Chris Bryan, and we're on the same team.
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