The pitcher is in trouble, not me. He has to throw it over the plate and I have to put a good swing on it.
I can't remember a major league game where I could make eye contact with my dad. I kept wondering if he was going to yell at me for hanging a pitch or something.
Strikeouts are something that just happen. You don't go for strikeouts, because your pitch count gets too high. When you do get that opportunity, you have to put them away with whatever is working that day.
The three most important pitches I threw in my life were all fastballs.
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.
Fastball middle-middle. You can't miss that pitch.
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?
My pitch count as a general rule was 135. And I knew how many pitches I had when I went to the mound for the last three innings.
Too many pitchers, that's all, there are just too many pitchers Ten or twelve on a team. Don't see how any of them get enough work. Four starting pitchers and one relief man ought to be enough. Pitch 'em every three days and you'd find they'd get control and good, strong arms.
You feel like a stud out there when people swing and miss. As I've gotten older, I've preached to our young guys that strikeouts are sexy, but outs are outs, man, no matter how you get them. It's a lot cooler for me pitching in the seventh or eighth inning than it is going 5 1/3. Your manager likes it a lot more, too.
Half the time, I have trouble following our own pitcher's sequence.
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.
Six innings, you're doing your job. That's a good target to have, but I'm always looking to improve. There's three more innings of improvement left.
Pitchers are going to break. You can limit their pitches and limit their innings, and they're still going to blow out. Pitching is hard on the arm.
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 a fly-ball pitcher, guys.
If a pitcher goes up there and he's throwing a ball and it's a breaking ball down and away or a fastball up and in, a perfect pitcher's pitch, and you're able to just foul it off and stay alive in the at-bat, just keep grinding, keep working through the at-bat and hoping for that mistake that he's going to make. And if he doesn't, then you walk.
Hitting is business. With two strikes you really protect that plate.
Young pitchers don't throw enough in the minor leagues, and when they get to the majors, they don't have the stamina; their arms haven't been built up.
You aren't going to stick around long with just two pitches.
If I can execute pitches and keep the ball out of the middle of the plate, I know I can have success.
I'm not trying to throw six or seven pitches just to be able to strike you out. I'm trying to do it in three or four. It's the homework and the process between starts that I really focus on to help me do that.
I'm trying to make sure that I get to my 0-2, 1-2 counts. That's really how I would rather phrase it: I'm trying to make sure that I can drive the count into my favor.
Ken Holtzman could pitch a game in ninety minutes. Wouldn't throw a breaking ball. And he had a great breaking ball.
