Former Ferris star Andrew Kittredge adds a splitter to the mix as he looks to find role in Baltimore

SARASOTA, Fla. – If Andrew Kittredge could copy and paste his results from 2024 into this season, he would do so in a heartbeat. So far, he’s done his best to replicate everything about it.

Kittredge, 34, the former Ferris High School star who was a dominant setup man for the St. Louis Cardinals last year, posting a 2.80 ERA in 71 appearances and setting a franchise record with 37 holds. After spending the previous two seasons recovering from a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow and his subsequent Tommy John surgery, he had a normal offseason heading into the 2024 season that became the blueprint for how he mapped out the last four months.

“What I try to do is just get my arm in the best shape as possible to carry me through the full 162 and beyond that,” Kittredge said. “Injuries happen, and have kind of cut some years short for me in recent years, but coming off of last year, I just wanted to have a similar approach to what I had last year because I felt good from game one through the end. So, if it’s working, I don’t really want to switch it so basically my plan is to kind of piggyback what I did last year.”

The right-hander waits until the new year to start ramping up his throwing program. He works out at a baseball facility in Spokane, owned by a high school teammate, who gives him the door code and lets him come and go whenever he needs. Kittredge also throws outside, even when the temperature “dips below 30 (degrees),” if there isn’t too much snow on the ground.

There is one thing Kittredge has considered changing: his pitch mix. Orioles pitching coach Drew French approached him about testing out his splitter, a pitch he’s “messed with” in the past that’s never been picked up by Statcast. He still plans to lean on his slider, which he threw 49.4% of the time last year, and two fastballs but he might mix in the splitter at some point.

“This spring, I have tinkered with that a little bit,” Kittredge said of the splitter. “But I want to make sure that I’m dialed in with what I had last year and this is just more going to kind of see how it goes and see if it can be a weapon that we can use. … If there’s an opportunity to mix in the split, then we’ll do that.”