Cade Smith Found the Sweet Spot on a Lethal, Low-Spin Splitter

Cade Smith is one of the game’s most dominant closers. Since debuting with the Cleveland Guardians in 2024, the 27-year-old right-hander from Abbotsford, British Columbia boasts a 2.26 ERA, a 1.84 FIP, and a 35.5% strikeout rate over 219 appearances comprising 233 innings. Moreover, he enters October on the heels of his best season to date. Not only did Smith forge a 1.95 ERA over 74 frames, his 41 saves tied him with Tampa Bay’s Bryan Baker for the most in the majors.

His development is a testament to his raw talent and work ethic, but also to the Guardians’ highly regarded pitching program. When Smith signed with Cleveland as an amateur free agent in 2020 following the pandemic-truncated five-round draft, he barely resembled the pitcher he is today. The University of Hawaii product now features a 97.5-mph heater that ranked in the 91st percentile for velocity this year, a devastating bat-missing splitter, and a sweeper that elicited a .133 xBA.

A lot has changed over the years.

“When Cade entered the organization he was a low-90s pitcher with no secondary stuff,” explained Guardians bullpen coach Caleb Longshore, who previously tutored Smith as both a minor league pitching coach and coordinator. “We identified some things in his delivery that he has leaned into over the years, and we’ve seen a steady year-over-year increase in velocity. He started working on the splitter in 2023, in [Double-A] Akron, when [now big league assistant pitching coach] Brad Goldberg was there.”

Smith’s relationship with Longshore and Goldberg was a point of interest when I spoke with him in the final week of the regular season.

“They’ve been a huge part of my development,” Smith told me. “First it was Caleb in 2022, in Lake County. I had Goldy in Akron for the first half of the 2023 season, and then as our bullpen coach here in 2024. I’ve learned a ton from both of them.”

“They’re resources I use frequently,” the All-Star closer went on to say. “It could be a simple checkup on something that might be out of whack, or it could be something I think I’m noticing. We’ll cross-reference. They’ll also bring things to me that they’ve noticed. They have great minds for it, and not just from the biomechanics side or pitch design side. I mean, the flat-out pitching side. The approach. The scouting. Everything. They’re full-fledged pitching minds.”

The primary focus of my conversations with Smith and Longshore was the story behind what is arguably baseball’s best splitter. Thrown at an average velocity of 87.1 mph, and at 578 rpm — the lowest spin rate in the majors not counting knuckleballs — it has been borderline unhittable. This season, opponents logged a .092 batting average and an identical .092 slugging percentage against the pitch. It also generated a 45.3% whiff rate.

It didn’t become lethal as soon Smith learned it.

“It took some time for him to fully develop the split,” Longshore explained. “In 2024, the profile was a little more vertical — he didn’t have as much drop to it — but over time he’s been able to get the depth, and also throw it harder while maintaining the depth. Being able to kill more spin has created more drop. Those things go hand-in-hand. Killing spin lets gravity take over more and pull the pitch down.”

Per Statcast, Smith’s low-spin splitter gets the most depth among pitchers who worked at least 50 innings over the course of the 2026 campaign. And again, Goldberg deserves a lot of credit for getting the ball rolling.

“Goldy was very helpful for that pitch specifically,” Smith said. “One of the biggest things was understanding how to make adjustments. If I’m missing low with it, missing high with it, how do I correct that in a way that makes sense with my release point and my arm angle, as opposed to just a generic kind of approach? He helped me fine tune that aspect of it, so now I have a clear and well-formed intention whenever I’m throwing that pitch.”

“It’s actually as simple as figuring out where that starting point is,” he added. “It’s about making sure that my release point and the starting point are in a good spot for it to be over the plate where I need it to be. It’s not tinkering with the seams or the grip. It’s a finicky enough pitch as it is without changing those things.”

Finicky as a splitter may be, when did it become a great pitch for him? In other words, at which point did the tinkering stop and it became, OK, this is it?

“To some degree I’m still tinkering with it,” Smith said. “I’m constantly trying to fine tune. I mean, it has gone through a lot of changes. The first person who introduced the grip to me was Tony Arnold, at the end of 2021 in Lynchburg, and then there was a process I went through in August 2022. It transformed even after I got into the big leagues. There had been conversations with pitching coaches, trying to figure out, Where is the trade-off between the velocity and movement? What is going to be the sweet spot for me?”

Based on the results, it is probably safe to say that Smith has found a sweet spot.