Max Scherzer Quotes

My pitching philosophy is simple - keep the ball way from the bat.

If I can execute pitches and keep the ball out of the middle of the plate, I know I can have success.

I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it.

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.

All I really try to do is whatever hitter gets in there, I just try to get him out in as few pitches as possible.

The big thing will be having two pitches you can throw for strikes and developing a change-up, too.

Half the time, I have trouble following our own pitcher's sequence.

When I can buy strikes with that curveball, that just lets everything else play up.

I just try to make the pitcher work.

That's when I'm at my best. When I can throw a fastball over in the count, just throw strikes both in and away, it just sets up all my stuff.

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.

If you can constantly just put pressure on all four quadrants, it gives you a little more leverage to be able to fill the zone up with breaking balls and fastball counts - or with breaking balls when guys are maybe sitting on the fastball that you've established.

The reason I think I'm a good pitcher is I locate my fastball and I change speeds. Period. That's what you do to pitch. That's what pitchers have to do to win games.

I've got a fastball, change-up, forkball, curve, slider, knuckle-slider, knuckle-curve, I had about seven pitches I could have used at any time.

I'm not executing my pitches. I'm not commanding my fastball, and I get behind in the count. When I try to throw strikes, I'm getting hurt. That's not the way I pitch.

You aren't going to stick around long with just two pitches.

Getting my curveball back and finding another pitch just helped me figure out how to pitch.

I'm not trying to strike them out, but there are certain situations, when it's an 0-2 count or a 1-2 count, when I want to have a pitch where I want to strike you out.

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.

Typically, being under the strike zone with the sinker isn't a big issue. I need to be a little bit higher with the strike zone earlier in the count. If you miss under with one here and there when you're ahead, it's really not an issue.

That's why it's so important to have that gap between your fastball and off-speed pitches: then, when you effectively locate your fastball, it plays at a higher velocity.

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.

I was never a strikeout pitcher. Why should I throw eight or nine balls to get a man out when I got away with three or four?

I was short with my fastball and breaking ball.

I think the changeup has become more popular recently by pitchers like Pedro Martinez and the success he had with it.