Yu Darvish mastering split-finger to add to his arsenal

Yu Darvish wants to add a split-finger fastball to his repertoire of pitches and so far, so good, according to catcher Jonathan Lucroy.

Lucroy caught Darvish’s second bullpen session of the spring Friday morning and could tell Darvish has been working on the pitch this off-season.

“It’s the first time I’ve really seen it be consistent where it was dropping on the plate,” Lucroy said. “It has a diving action. If he can get that thing better it will be a big strength for him.”

Darvish threw 30 pitches — all fastballs, curve balls and split-fingers. Towards the end of the 2016 season, he added a few split-finger pitches but struggled to throw it for strikes.

“It wasn’t that good last year because he was pretty inconsistent but he’s been working on it, I could see, because he threw some pretty good ones,” Lucroy said. “It gives me a lot of weapons to use to call a game. He’s already mastered a lot of [pitches] but that splitter will really help out too.”

This story was originally published February 17, 2017 at 1:27 PM with the headline "Yu Darvish mastering split-finger to add to his arsenal."