Pitcher Control Quotes

I just try to make the pitcher work.

I'll get in that habit of throwing the ball over the plate too much. You want to keep it going, get those guys back into the dugout. But it's not a good thing when you're over more than a third of the plate.

Ball parks are smaller and baseballs are livelier. They've practically got pitchers wearing straitjackets. Bah! They still allow the knuckleball, and that is three times as hard to control.

I'm not used to seeing the ball go wherever she wants. As a pitcher, I like to be - I don't want to say perfect, but I want to know what the ball is going to do.

You had to pitch in and out. The zone didn't belong to the hitters; it belonged to the pitchers. Today, if you pitch too far inside, the umpire would stop you right there. I don't think it's fair.

When the ball is over the middle of the plate, the batter is hitting it with the sweet part of the bat. When it's inside, he's hitting it with the part of the bat from the handle to the trademark. When it's outside, he's hitting it with the end of the bat. You've got to keep the ball away from the sweet part of the bat. To do that, the pitcher has to move the hitter off the plate.

It's nice to have a catcher who knows my mechanics, too. That way if I get into trouble he can stop it before I get out of control.

Probably the most dramatic change in pitching I've observed in my years in baseball has been the disappearance of the knockdown or brushback pitch. This is why record numbers of home runs are flying out of ballparks, why earned run averages are soaring, and why there are so few twenty game winners in the majors.