Dan Cevette
Director, New York

Our column, Pitching 101, was one of the most viewed articles across the Empire State in our first eight months of operation. In 2016, we are bringing a more in-depth column focused solely on everything pitching.

I get asked a lot of questions about baseball; mainly about Pitching. I was a Professional Baseball Pitcher for 11 years in three different MLB Organizations where I was able to fill my knowledge bank on pitching from some very impressive instructors. John Farrell, Scott Radinsky, Charles Nagy, and Steve Belcher just to name a few, and I have also picked the brain of Giants Gold Glove Catcher Kurt Manwaring (1992) a time or two. It's the heart and soul of this beautiful game, let's get to it.

Is your fastball ready?

Last week I was sitting on a stool during a pitching lesson with a high school athlete I personally train when today’s Pitching 101 article popped into my head. The right-hander I was working with asked if he could “work on” his curveball a few pitches into his first bullpen of the preseason. This got me thinking; how many pitchers focus on throwing the most attractive pitch in the game? How many lose sight of the bigger picture? How many pitchers actually throw the curveball correctly? Questions quickly flooded my brain over this pitchers simple request. My response was something like this – how bout we throw our fastball, it’s going to make your curveball that much better. I’m fairly confident he didn’t understand why it was going to make his curveball better, but he simply obeyed my instruction and kept throwing. Here’s what I’m getting at; your fastball is the most important pitch you have, and using it will make your off-speed pitches better. Is your fastball ready?

Let’s take a deeper look into the fastball, and why every pitcher should be working hard at getting theirs ready...