Zitat des Tages von Jake Arrieta:
There's food and supplements that you can take legally that will better your body and help you stay healthy. Shortcuts are something that's always been around all sports, but as a union, we're trying to do the best we can to weed those guys out of the game.
People have confidence in you. It's easy to have confidence in somebody that's going out there every night and giving the team a chance to win.
You want to be the team that is on the field when the last out is made on the winning side. That's obviously the holy grail in the game that I play, and that's what every player strives for.
At this point, I'm just grinding through it, trying to establish strikes in the zone with my pitches, using some information the opposition gives me, and kind of moving forward in that regard.
You feel everybody has your best interests in mind, but you come to find out that's not necessarily the case.
I try to start every day with some sort of vegetable and fruit juice before I eat any kind of solid food. Because that really jump starts your body and digestive system with the high content of micronutrients that your body needs.
A lot of guys are starting to get away from trying to jerk these heavy weights and throw all these heavy weights around.
You want to be paid in respect to how your peers are paid.
I want to shoot an elk with a bow. Mind you, I've never hunted in my life. But I feel like if I'm ever going to hunt, it's going to be with a bow. I just feel like a bow requires more skill.
Regardless of how long it took or what I had to go through to get there, I had visualizations of throwing no-hitters or throwing shutouts.
There are so many things on Twitter, so many mentions, it's hard to get through all of them.
I'm probably throwing down close to 10,000 calories. And then I don't eat for three or four days.
I've always been in good shape. I just sucked early in my career from a statistical perspective.
I wouldn't change anything I went through for the world, because it got me here.
That's one of my focuses, is to increase my flexibility and strength and have greater range of motion.
There are still things I can do better.
Typically, being under the strike zone with the sinker isn't a big issue. I need to be a little bit higher with the strike zone earlier in the count. If you miss under with one here and there when you're ahead, it's really not an issue.
When it comes up with my age, I'm like, let's just end the conversation there. That's irrelevant to me. I'll pitch until I'm 40.
I had teammates like Chris Davis. Manny Machado was really young and such a good kid. Seeing his development, it's ridiculous. He's going to get bigger. He's going to get stronger. He's going to get even better.
I like my chances toe to toe with just about anybody.
I think flexibility in general is something that needs to be reinforced, and not only baseball players but all sports.
Just know, especially when they were infants and toddlers, the thought these two children depend on us for everything in their lives 24/7. That's a pretty incredible responsibility.
I trust how much my ball moves. I can throw it at you or this far off the plate and have it end up on the black. That's where I kind of went to the next level. I knew what all my pitches were doing. Even in '14, I didn't have that ability.
I care about the integrity of the game.
I wouldn't want to disappoint my family, my friends, my fans.
It's going to come down to executing, trying to keep guys off balance and disrupting timing. That's something you can do regardless of how many times you face a lineup or face certain hitters.
Immersing myself in the Wrigleyville area was special to me and my family.
What I did before in my career you can pretty much throw out the window. Out of sight, out of mind.
I was giving some of my teammates a hard time, saying I've got more pop than they do.
How many people can do what I do, anyways? A handful of guys?
On the road, we're hitting in the cages during our normal batting practice for our position players.
At the end of the day, all we're trying to do is get the hitter off balance. Get him in a position where he's not strong in the strike zone.
I've been through a lot in my career, and the failure that I've gone through makes me really appreciate the moments of success much more.
You play your surroundings. You pitch accordingly. Not that I drastically try to change my game plan based on the score or the team or stadium, but you have to take everything into consideration.
I like to get the body temperature up, the heart rate up. I'll do anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes either on a bike, a rower, a StairMaster, or a combination of the three of those. And then I'll normally run through a 20- to 30-minute session either on the Pilates reformer, the Cadillac, or the Pilates chair.
If two guys want to go see each other, let them be in the middle, let them throw some punches, then break it up.
