When you look at starting pitchers, once they make it through year four, then - knock on wood - you see a lot of injury risk go down.
— Max Scherzer
All of the off-field stuff, I can promise you, it doesn't even register with me.
You want to create the fans that are following the team year in, year out.
Having a pitch clock, if you have ball-strike implications, that's messing with the fabric of the game. There's no clock in baseball, and there's no clock in baseball for a reason.
Who would people rather see, a real hitter hitting home runs or a pitcher swinging a wet newspaper?
There's so much information now, and that even goes down to the college game. You have so much video, you can watch every YouTube video of guys and mechanics, and so I just feel like the younger generation's more educated than ever before.
You can't get too caught up in trying to pitch a complete game, because that's hard to do.
The business part of the game is ugly.
I've got a high-school swing. I know that. But you know what? It's good enough to get a ball in play.
I'm looking to generate strikeouts in every way I can.
If I got hurt or anything, I was going to need a college degree. Nothing was going to stop me from getting that.
You have to look back on everything that you've done and critique yourself and find the holes in your game that you can continue to get better.
Look, the umpires behind the plate? They're human. They're doing the best they can to try to call balls and strikes. I understand that there's a lot of calls that kinda are 50-50. They can go either way. And as a starting pitcher, you try to manage, 'Alright, if you didn't get that call, maybe you'll get it again here a few innings later.'
I take a great deal of pride in pitching deep into ballgames.
There's so many great things I learned at Mizzou. I took a sports psychology class. It was kind of eye-opening on certain different ways to look at things.
I don't worry about infield shifts at all - you play where you're gonna play. I'm just gonna pitch my game.
My slider's been very, very good to me.
The advanced stats are great to look at for my long-term goals and what I'm trying to accomplish. It shows me there is an inherent failure in pitching. The luck involved, the factors you can't control. You just have to let go of those and focus on the next batter, the next game.
You worry about how you're throwing the ball, how you're executing your pitches.
If you're constantly just trying to go in this win-loss cycle that MLB is pushing, you are creating bandwagon fans, and that's not the type of fans you want to create.
Any type of discomfort is going to alter the way I throw the ball. If I alter the way I throw the ball, I run the risk of major injury to my arm.
I know when I get to 0-2, 1-2, when I'm ahead in the count, that I hold a distinct advantage over every single hitter. I have so many options because I don't have to work within the strike zone anymore.
I never want the ball above my shoulders until I'm really firing. I feel like I can generate more velocity with my arm path. The way my arm works, there's so many benefits to it - from a health standpoint, as well.
When I can buy strikes with that curveball, that just lets everything else play up.
I've said it, I'll keep saying it, I want to be in Detroit. I've really enjoyed my time here. I really enjoy the clubhouse and everyone that's involved.
For me, it's all about winning.
Strikeouts are part of my game.
I really wanted to go to college.
You've got to get better every single year, it doesn't matter.
I understand why there is a push for an automated strike zone. However, I do think there would be some unintended consequences of having it that I think need to be addressed first before we would go down that road.
I grew up with dogs. My wife really loves dogs.
Perfectionist is sometimes the wrong word... It means like you're never satisfied, or you're upset by every single failure - any type of failure. And so for me, I don't look at failure as necessarily a bad thing as long as I'm able to learn from it and take something from it, so that next time I'm in that situation I know how to succeed.
Pitching is both an art and a science.
I'm not trying to strike them out, but there are certain situations, when it's an 0-2 count or a 1-2 count, when I want to have a pitch where I want to strike you out.
There's more to pitching than just striking guys out, but also it is a big reason why you can have success.
I'm not worried about good numbers or bad numbers. You worry about the process.
When there's too many teams that are not trying to win, that poisons the game, poisons the fan experience, and it creates bandwagon fans.
If you look at it long-term, I think eventually there will be a DH in the National League.
I'm trying to make sure that I get to my 0-2, 1-2 counts. That's really how I would rather phrase it: I'm trying to make sure that I can drive the count into my favor.
You're just trying to go out there and give seven innings. Seven innings, 105 pitches, that's a good outing.
I've seen so many of my friends get cut and released and all taken advantage of because at the end of the day, we say it's the business part of the game.
For me, I'm not going to be hitting the ball out of the ballpark. I know that.
I'm not trying to throw six or seven pitches just to be able to strike you out. I'm trying to do it in three or four. It's the homework and the process between starts that I really focus on to help me do that.
I beat the odds, and I beat the odds so many times.
You have to find a way to improve yourself.
For me, I really enjoy helping out the Youth Baseball Academy. That's something that any time you're helping out the game of baseball with at risk children, that puts a smile on my face.
That's been kinda my secret. You use everything off the field to help make you better on the field.
I need to eat a large meal before I play, and the one thing that was kind of consistent in every single clubhouse at least in the minors was a roast beef sandwich. So that kind of stuck there, and it just kind of stuck in the big leagues as well.
When you allow stolen bases, that changes the game.
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.
