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.
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.
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.
It's hard to be a two-pitch guy. People tell you that, but you don't really believe it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
