Top 121 Pitcher Quotes

But because I could throw so hard when I got to college they made me a pitcher.

Because I could throw so hard when I got to college, they made me a pitcher. If I had to it all over again, I would have stuck to playing in the outfield. I loved running. I can catch everything in the outfield. I could throw people out from the fence.

I figured that pitchers had a better chance of getting drafted than fielders, so I decided I should be a pitcher. But I never expected to be picked in the first round. I wasn’t even sure I’d get picked at all.

Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80% of being a successful hitter. The other 20% is just execution.

That’s sometimes the hardest thing to do as a professional athlete, because when you get lit up, you wear it, especially as a starting pitcher.

You can watch videos and hit off the tee, stuff like that, but at the same time, it’s you against the pitcher. I just need one swing or one pitch to click, and you can find your swing.

A pitcher will never be a big winner until he hates hitters.

When I went to home plate in a game-tied situation or with a chance to do something and help the ballclub win one, I’d try to make eye contact with the pitcher.

Never let yourself get fooled by the same pitcher on the same pitch on the same day.

When I stepped into the box, I felt the at-bat belonged to me. Everybody else was there for my convenience. The pitcher was there to throw me a ball to hit. The catcher was there to throw it back to him if he didn’t give me what I wanted the first time. And the umpire was lucky that he was close enough to watch.

You don’t save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain.

I was a pitcher, shortstop and outfielder, and the Yankees tried to sign me out of high school as a first-round draft pick in 1981. I turned them down to go to college.

Baseball’s Opening Day is full of time-honored traditions: the President throws out the first ball, the Cubs’ starting pitcher walks away with a 54.00 ERA, the Royals get mathematically eliminated from the pennant race.

Pitchers did me a favor when they knocked me down. It made me more determined. I wouldn’t let that pitcher get me out. They say you can’t hit if you’re on your back, but I didn’t hit on my back. I got up.

Preparation is very important. The pitcher is going to do his job and prepare for you, so you as a hitter must do the same. I always watch videotape of pitchers before the game and even sometimes during.

I’ve done literally everything there is to do on a baseball field as a pitcher.

Any pitcher who might throw at me should know I’m not giving up my day job or trying to get anyone else’s job. I just can’t think of anything cooler than being one of the boys of summer!

I understand what sabermetrics get across, and what they’re getting across is to keep it simple. Especially for me, as a pitcher, that’s something that helps me – finding ways to keep it simple. Numbers can only tell so much.

I started out real young as a tight end, but I was never getting the football. I knew when I played basketball, I loved to have control of the ball. When I played baseball, I was a pitcher. I always wanted to be the guy throwing the passes and making a difference, I guess.

In baseball, you can do something poorly and still get credit. A pitcher could throw a bad ball, the batter hit a screaming line drive, and an outfielder make a fantastic diving catch. Yet, when you look at historical databases, 80% of the time when a ball is struck with that trajectory and velocity, it is a hit.

When I’m at the plate, I’m not thinking about what I’m trying to do with the bat – I’m thinking about what the pitcher is trying to do with the ball.

I can understand the fact you don’t want the ball slipping out of a pitcher’s hand because someone can get hurt.

Watching Clayton Kershaw in the very first game of the 2014 season, I realized that he’s not overpowering; he’s deceptive. It’s the sum of his parts that makes the Los Angeles Dodgers ace baseball’s most successful pitcher.

Anytime a pitcher hasn’t faced a hitter, I feel the pitcher has the advantage. The more times the hitter sees somebody, the more the advantage goes to the hitter.

A manager uses a relief pitcher like a six shooter, he fires until it’s empty then takes the gun and throws it at the villain.

No. No, no, no, no, Blyleven wasn’t even the dominant pitcher of his era – it was Jack Morris.

I don’t really look at the catcher at all. I think you steal bases off the pitcher.

The pitcher setting up the batter. It’s chess, and you play with it.

What is life, after all, but a challenge? And what better challenge can there be than the one between the pitcher and the hitter.

I do not want my name to be presented to the public as an Indian, but as a pitcher.

Even if I have a successful and plentiful N.B.A. career, someday I am going to go back and try to be a big league pitcher.

I think there’s a growing number of pitchers who want to have a plan going into a game about how they’re going to go after that lineup. I’d say 75 percent want to have an idea, and they plan their attack. I know that 75 percent of hitters do not have that same type of plan against a pitcher.

You don’t always make an out. Sometimes the pitcher gets you out.

What’s important is to get into the pitcher’s head: to know what he’s made of.

It doesn’t matter what the scoreboard says. I’m always having fun, talking to other guys. They even come to first base and ask me about hitting. I try to help them out as much as I can in the 30 seconds before the pitcher throws the next pitch. That’s me. I don’t think I will ever change that.

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.

Tiger Woods, Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky, a pitcher just before a game, I would imagine they all have nervous energy. But as you perform, the nervous energy dissipates and you start to relax and you start to do what you do best.

If a pitcher makes a mistake inside, I’m going to hit it.

Balls and strikes are the basic tenet to everything in baseball. From the perspective of hitting, pitching, offense and defense, it’s all about the strike zone and how the battle is waged there between the pitcher and hitter.

I’m like a pitcher. I’m either on or off.

Jamie Moyer was in his third year as a major league pitcher and was, by his own admission, still wide-eyed, watching everything going on around him and soaking it in. He paid particular attention to older teammates on his Chicago Cubs squad, hoping to emulate habits that had allowed those veterans to extend their careers.

My flexibility is probably my No. 1 asset. Obviously we need to have a strong shoulder, strong scapula, strong lats, and a durable elbow to have longevity as a pitcher, but being mobile in the hips and flexible in the hamstrings takes so much pressure and stress off of my arm.

I played Little League. I was a ‘pitcher.’ But we had a pitching machine, so I was just basically an ‘in-infield’ shortstop because all I got to do was field bloopers six feet from the plate. I couldn’t hit, so that was pretty much my entire job.

I had a lot of fun playing football and basketball, but deep down, the chess match or cat-and-mouse game between the pitcher and batter in baseball really drew me in. It’s a thinking man’s game, and for me, nothing can compare to that.

Certain guys, they can see a guy do a certain thing with their glove and know what pitch is coming. I couldn’t do that. But I can get on first base and I can tell you by his move if that pitcher is going to first base or home plate every time.

In the White House, you can be on the pitcher’s mound or you can be in the catcher’s position. Put points on the board. Show people you can govern. Deliver on what you said you were going to deliver on.

To me grinding out a good at-bat is pretty much fighting. And it’s not trying to do too much with pitches, just finding a way to spoil a good pitcher’s pitches, really.

For me, the most important thing is running a good clubhouse. The X’s and the O’s – you sit up in the stands and, for the most part, a lot of fans go to the game and they know what’s going to happen. You’re going to hit and run, steal, put a pitcher in, take a pitcher out.

Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a communist.

It’s really impressive when you’ve got two teams that are really battling it out, low-scoring game, a pitcher’s duel. To me, that’s so fun to watch.

I played for Almendares in Cuba. Guess who was trying out for the team? Castro. Fidel Castro, as a pitcher. He could throw pretty hard, but he was wild. He didn’t have any control.

When I hit, I felt I was in control of the home-plate area, and it was important that I felt that way. If I let the pitcher control it, it would give him an advantage.

This day and age, you look at baseball as a whole, and not just the pitchers’ side of it. You have the weight programs, you have the technology, and as a pitcher, you need to keep up.