Top 40 Fastball Quotes

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.

I’ve got some good movement on my sinking fastball, and I rely on that.

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.

At 19, I was still figuring out how to throw a fastball.

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.

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.

No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.

Most pitchers fear losing their fastball, but since I don’t have one, I have nothing to fear but fear itself.

I was short with my fastball and breaking ball.

I’m trying to throw more curves because I’m always throwing fastball, slider, fastball, slider.

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 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.

You continue to try to hammer out fastball command the best you can.

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 biggest thing was just working on fastball location and getting ahead of guys.

Sometimes my arm wants to throw a hard fastball, but my brain doesn’t want to throw it that hard.

I threw a good fastball and changeup, but a below-average curveball.

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 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.

I can maybe depend on my fastball a little more than some other pitchers.

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.

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.

Fastball middle-middle. You can’t miss that pitch.

I know my fastball command will get even better.

Everyone wants to talk about my slider, and how effective it is, but it really can’t be without fastball command. It starts with my fastball, even if the slider is the pitch I want to get to.

My best pitch is my fastball. It’s probably the most difficult pitch to hit. In my case, batters have very little reaction time.

Later, I could take something off my slider and I could make my fastball sink, so I really had four pitches.

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.

I want to throw a faster fastball. I want a sharper curve. I want to improve all my pitches.

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.

The final release point for the fastball is the tips of your fingers.

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.

You have to hit the fastball to play in the big leagues.

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.

The foundation is spotting my fastball, early in counts and especially if I fall behind.

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?

Trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.

The good rising fastball is the best pitch in baseball.

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.

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.