NewsFastball top priority for Rays pitchers
Tampa Bay hurlers know importance of control, command
By Bill Chastain / MLB.com
07/02/09 4:57 PM ET
ST. PETERSBURG -- You can make a baseball dip, curve or slow down, but Rays pitchers know the one true thing about pitching: The fastball is king."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."
A well-located fastball is a tough pitch to hit.
"I don't care if it's 85, 90, 95 mph," Anderson said. "You put it where you want it and you can move that thing around, it's a pitch that sets up every other pitch."
In addition to using a fastball, a pitcher must have fastball command. Some might think fastball command and controlling the fastball are synonymous, but there is actually a big difference between the two.
"Control is always being around the strike zone," Rays right-hander James Shields said. "The command part is you know where your strikes are going. So if I wanted to throw a fastball on the inside corner, I know I'm going to hit the inside corner with my fastball. So that's a guy who has command with his stuff. Control is a guy who may not be on the corners all the time, but is around the plate."
Right-hander Dan Wheeler added: "I always throw strikes, but what kind of strikes I'm throwing makes all the difference. When I'm commanding my fastball, I'm putting the fastball in pitchers' locations rather than just throwing strikes."
A pitcher without fastball command won't stay in the Major Leagues long, yet time and again, a pitcher will explain why he's been in a slump by citing the fact he got away from his fastball.
Whenever those remarks are uttered, one is tempted to question why a pitcher has such a hard time remembering to throw his fastball. Why would a pitcher quit trying to locate his fastball when doing so is necessary to winning?
"For starters, [you might get away from it] if you can't command the fastball," Anderson said. "It's tough to establish a pitch when the first two times you throw it, you're 2-0. That's not establishing your fastball. Establishing your fastball is to be able to get strike one or get into a 1-1 count and use both sides of the plate. A lot of guys get away from that because they want to trick guys.
"Because guys have better breaking stuff and they try to trick guys, they just get too heavy with the breaking stuff. And the more breaking stuff a hitter sees, the easier it is for him to react to it. What makes those pitches effective is based on the hitter always being ready for that fastball, and that fastball being used enough, and used effectively enough that they have to respect it. And now you can trick them."
A lack of confidence in one's fastball can also put a pitcher in the mind-set that he needs to get away from baseball's No. 1 pitching principle and into a trick mode.
"You throw a couple of heaters that get centered, then all of a sudden, now your confidence in your fastball is not that good," Anderson said. "You're feeling like you can't put it where you want to put it. 'Man, I'm going to start tricking them.'"
And you can trick Major League hitters for only so long.
When Shields was called up to the Rays in 2006, he won his first four decisions and fell in love with his best pitch, the changeup. Hitters caught on to what Shields was doing and began looking for the changeup. Shields then lost his next six decisions.
"I threw my changeup 45, 50 times a game," Shields said. "And I quickly realized that I can't just rely on that one pitch, that I have to rely on the command of my fastball. If I'm aggressive with my fastball, you get hitters in the swing mode. Then you can throw the offspeed stuff that you have."
Anderson says that pitchers with less velocity must have the ability to put the fastball exactly where they want it.
"If you've got more velocity, you have more margin for error," Anderson said. "[If you have less] velocity, you better be able to spot it up on both sides of the plate. Because if you're a guy with less velocity and you're going to pitch to just one side of the plate, stay away from everybody, they're going to get wise to that, too."
The Rays recently got to see Jamie Moyer when they played the Phillies, and the veteran left-hander put on a display as to why he is a master at effectively pitching without a hard fastball.
"What makes him effective is everything is still off his fastball at 81 [mph]," Anderson said. "Because then the changeup is at 72 [mph] and they don't know what they're looking for."
But when you're not equipped with the hard fastball, courage is almost as big of a component for success as precision.
"It's a tough situation," said Andy Sonnanstine, who was optioned to Triple-A Durham on Friday. "These hitters are incredible, especially in [the American League East]. So you have to have faith in yourself -- even if it's not a 97-, 98-mph fastball. You have to know you can throw that pitch with conviction.
"In your mind, you have to know that you're better than the other guy, even if you're not. Like I have to pretend that I'm better than Alex Rodriguez to be able to throw that pitch with conviction, even though everybody in Yankee Stadium knows that I'm not. It's tough. But once you get through it and you do it a couple of times and have success, it's doable. It's not easy, but it's doable."
Bill Chastain is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
