The good rising fastball is the best pitch in baseball.
Cleaning up that lack of the definition between the two, and then leaning on the four-seam, having it become my primary fastball over my two-seam, it's just benefited me as a whole.
I think the changeup has become more popular recently by pitchers like Pedro Martinez and the success he had with it.
I'm a breaking-ball pitcher.
John Wetteland had a very good curveball. He threw it for a strike, too, in any count, any situation. But, he really didn't use it much. He didn't want to throw it. He wanted to throw fastball-slider.
I just try to make the pitcher work.
I'm a fly-ball pitcher, guys.
You aren't going to stick around long with just two pitches.
I've got some good movement on my sinking fastball, and I rely on that.
I feel like a pioneer with the split-fingered fastball. I was the first one to really throw it pretty much 100 percent of the time. It was a pitch that I had to have. If I didn't have it, I wouldn't have been in the big leagues.
It's hard to be a two-pitch guy. People tell you that, but you don't really believe it.
Hideki Irabu had a very good curveball. Just a straight up and down, swing-and-miss curveball.
I never knew how to throw a fastball, never learned how to throw a curveball, a slider, split-finger, whatever they're throwing nowadays. I was a one-pitch pitcher.
Ken Holtzman could pitch a game in ninety minutes. Wouldn't throw a breaking ball. And he had a great breaking ball.
I've got four pitches now. I don't have to use them all the time, but I've got them in my pocket now for when it's necessary.
Later, I could take something off my slider and I could make my fastball sink, so I really had four pitches.
Maybe I'm biased because I'm a pitcher, but I think that's pretty cool that a guy can throw a ball 100 miles an hour.
I've always been fastball-curveball and really relied on that pitch, and when it goes away, it just totally changes how you attack hitters.
Walk rate is probably the area in which a pitcher has the most room to improve, but a rate that high is tough to overcome.
In '05, '06, '07 and '08, I wasn't throwing any changeups at all. Maybe two or three per game. In '09, I started playing with the grip, started throwing it in the bullpen and playing catch. It came out really good.
I think we mixed a lot more curveballs than normal because they were either going after my drop or laying off of it and that's normally my go-to (pitch).
Getting my curveball back and finding another pitch just helped me figure out how to pitch.
The thing that kept me from going to the next level was, I really didn't have an out-pitch. My story in baseball could have been a lot different if that's all I focused on.
When you don't have one that you throw for strikes - they are good hitters - they can cancel out one pitch and go to another. Now I have four pitches. If one's not working, I've got three others. It makes the game totally different.
