Mine didn't start to sputter until it had been ridden a while. His acted the same way.
Last year (late '17 until late summer of '18) I had a fuel pump issue. It behaved similarly, but it was different from this deal that got fixed by repairing/reconnection/replacing a connector. The fuel pump never threw an MIL code -- this did: 8 short flashes, which pointed to the TPI. "toowired's" bike showed the same code. With the fuel pump issue I had, the issue showed itself when I opened the throttle past a certain point a little past 3/4 throttle, IIRC. When I'd do that, the bike would act as if it had a choke that had been activated. I tried Techron and some other fuel additives and would get improvement. I rode all the way to WV and around there with the WV Rally group, then to Columbus and back to WV for Eric Trow's Stayin'Safe rider's training course and only had the symptom a couple of times. But then when I got into Kansas, it got worse and worse. I rode about 1800 miles to Grand Junction and then a good part of the route for the How the West Was Won Rally and home and the bike ran fine until the next week when I took a shorter ride.
By then I had decided that it was probably the fuel pump and when I took it to the dealer for repair, the tech told me that there were several other things it could be and that all of them were cheaper than the fuel pump. He suggested that if I wasn't in any great rush I could leave the bike with him and let him "fiddle" with it between other jobs. I don't know what all he tried, but I do know that he had the bike on their dyno at least twice. Finally after nearly a month, he told me he was baffled and was going to try the fuel pump test. It turned out my pump had adequate pressure, but less than half of the specified flow. So, he replaced the fuel pump and the bike ran great until after the last service (which took quite a while and cost quite a bit because of stripped valve cover bolts which took HeliCoils to fix. When I got it back from that service was when the TPI code and the sputtering started.