Examine Yu Darvish’s August 13 start against the Brewers on various statistic outlets and you’ll see different stories.

Inside Edge shows Darvish striking out three batters on his fastballs, four on his cutter, three on his splitter and one on his slider. Baseball Savant says Darvish struck out three batters on his fastballs and eight on his cutter.

The difference is due to how adept Darvish is at manipulating his pitches, blurring the lines between his true cutter, slider and splitter. Take, for example, Avisail Garcia’s 7th-inning strikeout against Darvish in that outing. MLB.com and Baseball Savant registered the pitch as a cutter, but the close-up replay of the strikeout shows Darvish throwing the pitch with a splitter grip. 

“Most of the time, when I hit more than 89, 90, 91 [mph], that’s a splitter that looks like a cutter, cutter action, but that’s a splitter,” Darvish said after that start against the Brewers.

Baseball Savant had only registered 10 splitters from Darvish entering Tuesday’s battle with the Cardinals. But in the 1st inning, Darvish struck out Matt Carpenter looking on a back-door splitter and for once, statistic sites agreed.

The rest of the game, however, was not as simple. Inside Edge registered the right-hander as throwing five splitters and Baseball Savant registered only two. A splitter usually has arm-side run, but Darvish at times seems to have an innate ability to move the pitch left and right, potentially giving it a little bit of cut, thus mixing it in with his highest-usage offering, his cutter.

“Everything comes out of the same slot too,” Marquee Sports Network analyst Sean Marshall said. “Each of his pitches are on top of each other when the hitter has to make a decision to swing or not.”

These discrepancies matter because it hammers home one point about how Darvish succeeds: his late and subtle movement between the vast majority of his pitches is complex to analyze and presumably prepare for as a hitter. And it allows him to cruise through lineups with ease. His last four starts have now each lasted at least 6 innings, with a combined 29 strikeouts to only six walks.

While Kyle Hendricks and Jon Lester pitch to contact and let the Cubs’ stellar defense do much of the work, Darvish’s late movement and complex repertoire is a change of pace for hitters. Hendricks is going to feature his sinker and changeup with an occasional curveball. Lester is going to throw cutters, four-seamers and changeups to either handedness of hitter. But Darvish will throw pitches that move in numerous directions and blur the line for pitch classification purposes. That’s the beauty of the Cubs pitching staff.

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