I think that is one thing I've picked up: follow a routine, be consistent, and everything is going to fall in place. If you are scrambling around, and you are late for stuff, that adds extra stress, and you have to go out there and hit a 97 mph fastball.
Aaron Judge
The big thing I noticed from High-A to Double-A is that when you have an advantage count as a hitter, you're not going to get as many fastballs. Adjusting to the 2-0 changeup, that 3-1 off-speed pitch - things like that. I think my swing can stay the same; I just was getting myself out.
Andrew Benintendi
I have to go with the approach I had in Triple-A. I need to take a lot of those fastballs I am seeing to left field. Also must gear up for the changeup and take them up the middle.
Anthony Rizzo
I'm not like a 90-mph fastball kind of guy, but I can hit 70 on radar gun. I hit 70 one time on a radar guy at one of those pitch-and-throw kind of things. I have a pretty good arm for somebody who's not a baseball player.
Ben Gibbard
When you pinch-hit, you know you're getting their best guys, and usually it's a reliever and a guy that's got a really good slider or a really good fastball.
Billy Butler
The three most important pitches I threw in my life were all fastballs.
Bruce Sutter
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.
I was short with my fastball and breaking ball.
No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.
Casey Stengel
I use fast curves, pitched overhand and sidearm, fastballs, high and inside, and an underhand fade away pitch with the hand almost down to the level of the knees.
Chief Bender
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.
Chili Davis
I thought I had to show all my stuff and I almost tore the boards of the grandstand with my fastball.
Cy Young
We want to play a really physical style ball, and so, for us tackling, we know we are shoulder-based tackling team, and we want to hit that strike zone just like you're throwing fastballs into that catchers' mitt just as hard as you can.
Dan Quinn
Most pitchers fear losing their fastball, but since I don't have one, I have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Dan Quisenberry
Later, I could take something off my slider and I could make my fastball sink, so I really had four pitches.
Dennis Eckersley
I threw a lot of fastballs in college.
Drew Pomeranz
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.
When Bryan Price taught me how to throw a changeup, he made me see myself. All my life, I've been the equivalent of a fastball pitcher - trying to use blazing speed and brute force to wow the people around me.
Eric Liu
David Price comes and finds me out in the lobby and says, 'Dude, I really enjoy watching you pitch.' I'm just like, 'What's wrong with you? Watch your own games, bro. I just throw fastballs inside. You're painting all over the place, striking the world out.'
Gerrit Cole
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.
You continue to try to hammer out fastball command the best you can.
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.
At 19, I was still figuring out how to throw a fastball.
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 looked for the same pitch my whole career, a breaking ball. All of the time. I never worried about the fastball. They couldn't throw it past me, none of them.
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.
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.
Everybody here has the ability to throw a fastball down and away or throw a breaking ball in the dirt for a swing and a miss. But are we able to stay in that moment and understand what we're trying to accomplish and see it in our mind before we execute and then make the pitch?
I've got some good movement on my sinking fastball, and I rely on that.
I know my fastball command will get even better.
Trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.
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.
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 kept listening in the minor leagues, and even earlier than that, people would say, 'If you don't hit the fastball, you're not going to get to the big leagues.' Every game, you're going to get a fastball.
I'm pretty proud of my fastball. I can throw a screwball. It's not as accurate, and I don't have the velocity like I do with my fastball, but I think my fastball is not too shabby.
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.
I'm the kind of guy who, if I look inside and they throw me a fastball outside, and it's a strike, I'm going to swing. Everything in the strike zone, I'm going to swing. Doesn't matter if it's a fastball, changeup, breaking ball. If it's in the strike zone and it's something you like, you've got to swing.
Fastball middle-middle. You can't miss that pitch.
My dad played for a coal-mining team in eastern Ohio; he was a very good pitcher. If he hadn't hurt his arm, he probably would have got a shot somewhere. He hurt his arm one spring, didn't warm up good enough, couldn't throw a fastball anymore. Another coal miner taught him how to throw the knuckleball.
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.
If you can't see the rotation and tell if it's a sink - a fastball, then you have to be able to tell whether that fastball is a two-seamer or a four-seamer. You have to be able to recognize if it's a slider or a curveball. You have to be able to recognize if it's a changeup or a split-finger.
I consciously memorized the speed at which every pitcher in the league threw his fastball, curve, and slider. Then, I'd pick up the speed of the ball in the first 30 feet of its flight and knew how it would move once it has crossed the plate.
The final release point for the fastball is the tips of your fingers.
I lost the good stuff on my fastball. I had to come up with something to keep me in the league. The knuckler rescued me then.
I studied one term of law and then came to realize I had a little better fastball and curve than I did a vocabulary.
You have to hit the fastball to play in the big leagues.
The good rising fastball is the best pitch in baseball.
Pitching is what you have best on the day you work, and if you can't get your fastball over the plate, then maybe you can win with your curve.
I feel like, in general, lefties hit fastballs from right-handed pitchers better than right-handers hit fastballs from right-handed pitchers.
Sometimes my arm wants to throw a hard fastball, but my brain doesn't want to throw it that hard.
