Mahle repeated his splitter-heavy mix as the Dodgers made contact

Teoscar Hernández fouled off Tyler Mahle’s first two pitches in the fourth inning, a four-seamer and a cutter. At 1–2 he fouled off a 90.9-mph splitter, then took another splitter for a ball. Mahle’s third consecutive splitter, at 88.3 mph, brought the swinging strikeout that completed a perfect inning.

It was the strongest strikeout stretch in a start otherwise shaped by contact. Mahle worked 6 1/3 innings in Atlanta’s 4–1 loss to the Dodgers in NLDS Game 4 at Truist Park on Wednesday, October 7. He allowed three hits and two runs, one earned, with one walk and four strikeouts. Los Angeles ended the series, but Mahle had left a 1–1 game.

His 85 pitches repeated the splitter-heavy balance of his September 30 Wild Card start against Philadelphia. The Dodgers swung through it less often, making the comparison useful for separating a familiar pitch selection from a different response by the hitters.

The postseason balance continued

Mahle threw 47 splitters, 55.3% of this outing, and 34 four-seamers, 40.0%. Two cutters and two sliders completed the mix. Against Philadelphia, splitters had accounted for 55 of 95 pitches, 57.9%. The splitter-heavy approach therefore preceded this matchup.

His regular-season baseline needs two views because it includes work for San Francisco and Atlanta. Splitters made up 29.7% of 2,402 pitches across 27 starts, rising to 38.5% in his nine Atlanta starts, an 824-pitch sample from August 7 through September 24. Game 4 went further than either comparison without establishing why he or the catcher chose that balance.

Both principal pitches were faster than in those regular-season samples. The four-seamer averaged 94.8 mph, compared with 92.8 for the full season and 93.2 with Atlanta. The splitter averaged 88.3 mph, compared with 86.3 and 86.9. More speed did not automatically produce more misses: the Dodgers missed four of 24 splitter swings, while Philadelphia had missed 13 of 35.

The contact behind three hits

Four of Mahle’s seven recorded whiffs came in the fourth, when he struck out Will Smith, Shohei Ohtani and Hernández. Over the full outing he generated seven misses in 39 swings, 17.9%, and 15 called strikes. Twelve of the Dodgers’ 18 balls in play came against splitters, so the successful finishing pitch also carried much of the contact workload.

Eight balls in play reached at least 95 mph. Andy Pages’ 107.9-mph lineout and Max Muncy’s 100.5-mph flyout became outs, while Kyle Tucker’s 45.6-mph contact became a single. The hit column compressed very different batted balls into the same small total. Baseball Savant’s per-ball expected averages describe those individual chances, not results Mahle was guaranteed to receive.

The Dodgers’ second-inning run was unearned after Ohtani walked, stole second, advanced on a throwing error and scored on a fielding error. Mahle reached the seventh at 83 pitches, retired Ohtani, then allowed Hernández’s 110.6-mph single on a first-pitch splitter. That runner scored after Mahle’s departure, accounting for his earned run.

The splitter helped Mahle work deep into the game even as Los Angeles put it in play repeatedly. A later outing would need to show whether this pitch mix can recover the missed swings from the Philadelphia start; these two games establish a repeated selection pattern, not a settled explanation for its different results.