mvn
Posted July 4th, 2009 by mvn
Tags: Baseball, Tampa Bay Rays
1%

Fastball, Fastball, Fastball; Rays Pitchers Mantra

An article by Raysbaseball.com beat writer Bill Chastain discusses the mantra of Rays assistant to the pitching coach Brian Anderson of “the fastball is King.” He makes some sense out of an old baseball adage

“Everything comes off the fastball,” said Brian Anderson, former
Major Leaguer and currently an assistant pitching coach for the Rays.
“Everything that you do is based off the fastball. And so if it’s a
pitch that you don’t establish and you’re out there, breaking ball
after breaking ball, changeup after changeup, first of all, it’s tough
to keep feel.

“It also becomes a lot easier for the hitter to read your
breaking stuff. They see the spin if they see too many of them. That’s
when you get into the danger zone during an at-bat if you’ve thrown him
three or four curveballs. You start to get a little nervous. A guy sees
three or four curveballs in an at-bat, he’s going to square one up.

Yes, no matter how hard a fastball is thrown, you can still get guys out in the highest level of baseball in existence. Although throwing very slow (70 mph fastball) gives a hitter more than half a second of time, which is enough to recognize the exact location of the pitch, then crush it if goes into their sweet zone. But I won’t go into that now and rather look at how often Rays pitchers go to the fastball.

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