FanGraphs Q&A and Sunday Notes: The Best Quotes of 2019

In 2019, I once again had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of people within baseball. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came courtesy of the FanGraphs Q&A series, the Learning and Developing a Pitch series, the Talks Hitting series, and a smattering of feature stories. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations, with the bolded lines linking to the pieces they were excerpted from.

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“I think Abner [Doubleday] when he set this game up a long time ago, he set it up the right way. Boom, boom, boom… Let’s try to keep it normal here. I was a shortstop. If you stuck me on the other side, then I became a second baseman. I played shortstop as a second baseman. That’s confusing. That’s Laurel and Hardy stuff.” — Ron Gardenhire, Detroit Tigers manager, January 2019

“[Gaylord] Perry threw a spitter. He wasn’t going to share that. Not unless I brought $3,000 to the park. That’s how much he said he’d charge to teach me the spitter. I was taking home $8,500. I didn’t want to give him 40% of my yearly take-home pay to try to learn a pitch that very few people can master.” — Steve Stone, Chicago White Sox broadcaster, January 2019

“My grandfather would tell me stories about the Orioles and the Yankees going down to Cuba for spring training. I’d hear about Hoyt Wilhelm, who’d rented the house right next to theirs. Minnie Minoso is from Cuba. He’s the only player to play in five decades, which is something we’ll never see again. Hopefully he gets into the Hall of Fame someday.” — Dan Otero, Cleveland Indians pitcher, January 2019

“[John Denny] would actually catch me against the radar gun. I’d be throwing in the mid 90s, and at 65 years old he’d be back there with the gear on. He had no fear… I don’t want to say that’s old, but I wouldn’t recommend a 65-year-old catching any professional player’s bullpens. Not even guys throwing 88. And my fastball is different than other guys fastballs.” — Brett Hanewich, Los Angeles Angels prospect, February 2019

“He’s a kid. He likes to do things like throw wet naps at people on the plane. Childish things. Kevin [Cash] gets a kick out of doing things like that. Childish things. Before you know it, everyone else is acting like a child. Then he’s happy.” — Rocco Baldelli, Minnesota Twins manager, February 2019

“I started realizing how good of a pitch it was when coaches and scouts would say, ‘Hey man, your changeup is really good.’ When you’re a 17-year-old kid, you don’t really know what you have in the bag until other people start noticing, and giving you compliments. Yeah, man, I just continued to stick with the plan and throw it with intent.” — Chris Paddack, San Diego Padres pitcher, February 2019

“It’s easy to go, ‘Here’s the information, player.’ Player X is like, ‘OK, cool. Thank you. What does this mean?’ Player Y could be Trevor Bauer. He knows exactly what all that stuff means, so he can use it and make himself a better pitcher. That’s what I’m trying to do.” — Josh Tomlin, Milwaukee Brewers pitcher, February 2019

“They called down and said, ’Hey, get Loup loose; we want to see him in a game.’ I’m thinking ‘whaaat?’ I mentioned the 35-pitch bullpen and those 75 balls at the wall. I said, ‘My arm is dead.’ They said, ‘Well, whatever.’ I went in and got three outs.” — Aaron Loup, San Diego Padres pitcher, February 2019

“You’re not going to not start LeBron James because you want him at the end of the game. You’re going to put him in to start the game, and you’re going to have him in at the end of the game. If we’re fortunate enough to go that long, great. If not, that’s why we pay our closers. I just… yeah.” — Jon Lester, Chicago Cubs pitcher, March 2019

“I guess you could call it swings. But it’s really multiple entry points, based around the same foundation. If I get someone who’s got what I’d describe as a ‘skip fastball’ — spin rate, a spin-axis fastball — I’m going to look to enter in a little bit higher, as opposed to how someone who has a lower spin rate is going to try to sink it and get below my barrel.” — Daniel Murphy, Colorado Rockies infielder, March 2019

“The ‘Rice slider’ is kind of a mythology in college baseball — college baseball in the Wayne Graham era — and again, it’s really a matter of terminology. Depending on where you are in the country, or even the world, it’s a different dialect. But it’s all the same breaking ball.” — Jon Duplantier, Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher, March 2019

“My pitching coach might laugh about this, but I think curveball in my head — that allows me to get on top of it — but the spin that comes out is slider spin. When people ask me which pitches I throw, I say fastball, changeup, slider. But again, I’m thinking curveball. That’s just how baseball players are. We’re mental. We have to trick ourselves sometimes.” — Ty Buttrey, Los Angeles Angels pitcher, April 2019

“Good proprioception, good awareness of everything. Training with this guy, Portal, has really gotten me into awareness of my spine. If you’re able to move your spine in a certain way… it’s like how you have that brain-muscle connection where you’re telling your fingers you want your hand to close. That’s what happens: they close. — Michael Lorenzen, Cincinnati Reds pitcher, April 2019

“People ask me if there’s anything I didn’t realize I was getting myself into, and it’s that I’m talking a lot more than I ever have. To the media. To players. To coaches. To a lot of people. You talk a lot as a manager.” — Brandon Hyde, Baltimore Orioles manager, April 2019

“Walking up to the plate, I heard them announce, ‘Making his major league debut…,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, my god.’ I almost cried in the batter’s box. It’s something I’d dreamed about, many times, as a kid. That exact situation. We had a garden in the back yard, and I used to go out there with what was basically a stick, and would toss up rocks like they were baseballs.” — Michael Chavis, Boston Red Sox infielder, April 2019

“It’s kind of like when you’re skipping rocks when you’re a kid. You kind of develop how to use your wrist; how to snap it. I skipped a lot of rocks growing up. That may have something to do with my slider doing what it does.” — Kyle Crick, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher, April 2019

“I had a ball in my hand the other day and was thinking about how, as pitchers, we’re partial to our pitches. They’re almost like friends. Sometimes you have the ebb and flow of a friendship. Maybe you guys are super close, and then maybe one of you moves away, and you kind of get far apart.” — Daniel Norris, Detroit Tigers pitcher, April 2019

“I think of life, and baseball, like hunting. Let’s say you’re hunting a mule deer. Their purpose in life is eat, sleep, reproduce, and survive. It’s easy to overcomplicate things. My wife and I keep things simple. We love each other, each and every day. We make sure we eat. We make sure we sleep. We survive.” — Stephen Nogosek, New York Mets pitcher, May 2019

“When you’re feeling good, you feel like you can hit anything — you just let it go — but when you’re not feeling good, you need to have good at-bats. You need to be able to take your walks, find your barrel, and use the whole field. You don’t want to let yourself go up-and-down, up-and-down. You want to stay even.” — Matt Chapman, Oakland A’s infielder, May 2019

“A lot of people would have said [Francisco] Liriano had the best slider. But you’d look at it from a movement standpoint, and it would say zero vertical movement, zero horizontal movement. It had a lot of gyro, bullet spin. Technically, it didn’t really move, even though your eyes would tell you the bottom was falling out of it. That was in comparison to what his fastball would do.” — Paul Davis, Seattle Mariners pitching coach, May 2019

“My changeup actually had more spin rate than my fastball. It didn’t make any sense. Last year it was around 2,300 [rpm], while my fastball was around 2,200. It was incredible. No one could figure it out. I guess it’s because I would get behind it so much, trying to make it look like my four-seam fastball.” — John Means, Baltimore Orioles pitcher, May 2019

“Again, I’m not afraid to mess around with it. I’ll change grips in-season. I’ve changed grips in the middle of a game. My fastball always stays the same — I try to keep that consistent — but I’ll do it with my slider and my curveball. My changeup. My off-speed.” — Justin Verlander, Houston Astros pitcher, May 2019

“I walked Yaz on strike three — a 3-2 fastball right down the middle for ball four. He dropped his bat and walked to first. I’m waiting for the umpire to ring him up. No chance. Five-days-in-the-big leagues left-handed pitcher. Carl Yastrzemski. It was ball four.” — Bud Black, Colorado Rockies manager, May 2019

“I think of it a domino effect. You want your body sequencing in a way that when you tip the first domino over, they all fall. When you’re missing some of those important pieces, that doesn’t happen. You tip over the first one, and the kinetic sequence doesn’t happen efficiently enough for you to respond in the fractions of a second that you have to respond.” — Rick Eckstein, Pittsburgh Pirates hitting coach, June 2019

“I like Weighted Runs Created. I like OPS, because it tells a story of slugging, which is damage — creating runs, essentially — and getting on base. I’ve hit .200 before in the big leagues, but I had a .330 on-base percentage. In my head, I was essentially hitting .330, because I was getting on base 33% of the time.” — Joey Gallo, Texas Rangers outfielder, June 2019

“I don’t believe in the stat, I don’t feel that BABiP is mostly indicative of luck; I think it’s more a reflection of how hard you hit the ball. I do talk about exit velocity. That’s one we use quite a bit. And we’ll refer to spin rate, but without using the numbers.” — Eric Nadel, Texas Rangers broadcaster, June 2019

“When I came into the clubhouse, Koufax said, ‘Regan, you’re a real vulture getting my wins like that.’ A reporter heard that, and it went from there. I must have gotten a thousand of these little rubber vultures that people would send me. A zoo was even going to put a vulture in the bullpen, but the Dodgers, or somebody, wouldn’t let them do it.” — Phil Regan, New York Mets pitching coach, June 2019

“The chicken kept me sane. I mean, I didn’t want to watch that crap — we weren’t playing all that well — but here comes the chicken on roller skates, or something. Hilarious… You’d know when the chicken had too much beer. He’d get a little wild in the stands.” — Randy Jones, former Padres pitcher, June 2019

“For me, a big thing is to remember that I’m playing baseball. I’m just a kid playing in a park. Yes, I have to make adjustments sometimes, but as simple as I can be at the plate is way better.” — Fernando Tatis Jr, San Diego Padres infielder, July 2019

“I don’t really want to find out what would happen if I stuck to just one. I’ve been doing both sides of the ball for as long as I can remember. For me, it’s almost like I am doing one thing. If that makes sense.” — Brendan McKay, Tampa Bay Rays two-way player, July 2019

“John Hart always used to say, ‘Pitchers, they break your heart.’ Even so, we didn’t think the right high school arm was there for us at the top, so we weren’t really faced with that decision. A year ago we felt Cole Winn was that guy, so we were comfortable.” — Jon Daniels, Texas Rangers GM, July 2019

“If you see my changeup release, when the ball is coming out of my hand it’s like I’m pushing it with my middle finger and my ring finger… I don’t feel it when I’m throwing — I’m just trying to throw it like a fastball — but it comes all the way off my fingers, and at the very end gets pushed off my middle finger. I think that takes away spin and helps create the big speed differential.” — Lucas Giolitto, Chicago White Sox pitcher, July 2019

“I feel that rotational swings are more collision-hitting. You’re in and out of the zone so fast when you’re rotational. The more linear you are, the sooner you’re in the zone, and the longer you’re in the zone. There’s more room for error.” — Justin Turner, Los Angeles Dodgers infielder, July 2019

“I read a snippet from what I think was Ken Ravizza’s last book. He had a long conversation with Albert Pujols, and asked him about that. Pujols said he doesn’t even think about the shift. He’s just going to try to hit the ball hard, and if they’re standing there, he can’t affect that. He doesn’t want to change what makes him successful.” — Evan Longoria, San Francisco Giants infielder, July 2019

“He’s a guy who was already good, and has taken the technology and made himself even better. But if you take a C-student pitcher, and are trying to make him an A-student… it’s hard to get these guys from a C to an A. You can get them a little bit better, but they’re probably never going to be elite, whether they add a pitch or not.” — Scott Emerson, Oakland A’s pitching coach, July 2019

“It’s a changeup grip, but I throw it like a football and it moves kind of like a slider. I don’t know why. I’ve tried to show it to my compañeros — to my teammates — and they can’t do it. Sam Dyson; he asked me to show it to him. A few others did, as well. Some of them could kind of throw it, but they couldn’t command it like I do.” — Jose Leclerc, Texas Rangers pitcher, July 2019

“My grip is a little unique. I’m a little around the seam, but the main thing is that I have a double-jointed thumb. I can kind of turn my thumb over weird, and get a little more spin on the end of the pitch.” — Adam Wainwright, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, July 2019

“We were in Baltimore, at the hotel. [Red Sox Manager] John McNamara called me at one o’clock in the morning — I think Mac had had a few — and he said, ‘You’ve been traded to the White Sox; call this number in the morning.’ I’m like, OK, that’s kind of weird. I said, ‘Can we talk about this?’ He said, ‘We can talk in the morning.’ We never did talk in the morning.” — Steve Lyons, Boston Red Sox broadcaster, July 2019

“It really was a schizophrenic pitch for me. It was like, ‘It feels good,’ or ‘It doesn’t feel good.’ Sometimes I was going to throw it and show it, but not get beat with it. Again, a lot of that was climate. Sometimes I would have a bad road trip and a good home stand. I just never knew, because I have smaller hands.” — “>Jason Frasor, former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher, July 2019

“I think my hand shape might have something to do with the spike having the thumb be too involved. I couldn’t fit the spike how I liked it with my thumb flat, if that makes sense. It had to be more angled up, so I was almost finishing pointing at the hitter, instead of up and over it.” — Walker Buehler, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher, August 2019

“Like a professional blackjack player, you’re calculating your odds. It’s not always going to work, but what you’re doing is maximizing your chances of winning. It’s the same concept with hitting.” — Aaron Bates, Los Angeles Dodgers assistant hitting coach, August 2019

“Having someone under control for six years is more important than them actually being good. The game has turned into where being young is a tool. If you ask baseball people, and fans who want their teams to win, that shouldn’t be the case. Unfortunately it is.” — Logan Morrison, Philadelphia Phillies infielder, August 2019

“When I was younger I didn’t understand the concept of gyro spin, or anything like that. I just knew my curveball was top-spinning, and I thought that if I wanted it to break left — be horizontal; in to a lefty — I needed to sidespin it. So I tried to get completely on the side of the ball.” — Adam Ottavino, New York Yankees pitcher, August 2019

“I pretty much find myself saying ‘cutter-slider,’ just so there’s no confusion. I originally wanted to call it a slider, but it ended up with most people calling it a cutter. Movement-wise… in relation to my fastball it’s kind of like the speed of a cutter, but it moves a little more like a slider.” — Madison Bumgarner, San Francisco Giants pitcher, September 2019

“First day, first game, Hells Bells, and I’m like, ‘This is awesome.’ Hoffman comes in, I run out to the mound. OK. He looks at me and says, ‘Do you not remember the signs?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, crap.’ ‘Yep!’ I turned around and ran back with my tail between my legs. And I didn’t know the signs! I’d completely blanked on what they were.” — Luke Carlin, Cleveland Indians minor league manager, September 2019

“If you want to keep the same manager, rotating the crops, player-wise, might be an interesting way. If you look at a college coach who stays someplace for a long time, the business never gets old because he has a new set of ears every four years.” — Joe Maddon, Chicago Cubs manager, September 2019

“Once we started realizing that your hand pronates more on a changeup than it can on a two-seamer, we could get the depth of an elite two-seamer by throwing our changeups as hard as possible. It added that element where it was almost a Brandon Webb sinker, but you’re holding it with a changeup grip.” — Brian Bannister, Boston Red Sox pitching analyst, October 2019

“They have more carry to them, because the spin rate is up. That’s all because of being a little more flexible, where I’m getting down and still staying back. In a way, it’s maybe kind of a twisted one-piece. Your bottom side is down, and your top side is coiled up in back.” — Jake Odorizzi, Minnesota Twins pitcher, October 2019

“When you move on the rubber it’s only like 10 inches, but it feels like it’s two feet. Really, it’s my spine angle that got lower, not so much my arm slot. From the third base side of the rubber, it’s almost impossible to get the ball over there without being lower.” — Tyler Rogers, San Francisco Giants submariner, October 2019

“If you go to Detroit, you’ll see the high wall so the pitcher looks like he’s… I guess farther than normal; the mound looks farther away. If you go to places where the wall is shorter, and it looks right on center field, it feels like the pitcher is on top of you. So the way you see… if you go to Oakland it feels different than any other place for timing. “ — Nelson Cruz, Minnesota Twins DH, October 2019

“I do think that in a world down the road, home run totals are going to come down a little bit. That would give the power-first guys more of a role. Home runs are always going to beneficial to a team. But again, right now we’re at a point where you can find home run power at virtually every position.” — Mark Trumbo, Baltimore Orioles DH, October 2019

“Dave [Dombrowski] came from a much smaller front office. He’d be the first one to admit that they weren’t doing a lot analytically with the Tigers. But he was very open to learning, so they were just slightly different conversations, with a different level of engagement. There was a different comfort level with him.” — Zack Scott, Boston Red Sox assistant GM, October 2019

“Chaim [Bloom] will be the leader of our baseball operations department, so he’ll be the decision-maker to the extent that they’re decisions the baseball ops department is empowered to make on their own. Decisions involving major free agent dollars, or major trades — potential franchise-altering decisions — are always brought to the ownership level for discussions. They always have been.” — Sam Kennedy, Boston Red Sox President/CEO, November 2019

“I think when we list priorities, it’s probably more for [the media], to give you some talking points. When I look at the roster, I just want to get better. Whether that comes in the form of an addition or a subtraction… Dollars could be better allocated for Player X instead of Player Y… There are a lot of ways you might slice that up.” — David Forst, Oakland A’s GM, November 2019

“If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you can get lost in it. There’s a ton of good information in all the new tracking stuff that’s available, but you can’t just go in looking to be inspired. You kind of need to have a question you’re trying to answer, otherwise you can dig yourself a big old hole of nothingness.” — Michael Girsch, St. Louis Cardinals GM, November 2019

“Joey [Votto] is an elite hitter. I mean, you talk to some people who think his thought process is a little flawed. It’s ‘Hey, he’s the best hitter on the team, so he should be driving in more runs.’ Blah, blah, blah. But how can you argue with… I mean, this guy has led the league in on-base percentage seven or eight times. And when I say, ‘led the league,’ I mean by like 40 points. It’s not even close.” — Jay Bruce, Philadelphia Phillies outfielder, November 2019

“People think these guys are robots. They think we put them on a path and they’re just going to stay on that path the whole year. Well, it doesn’t work that way. They’re going to get out of sync. They’re going to need an occasional tuneup.” — Wes Johnson, Minnesota Twins pitching coach, November 2019

“Basically, my index finger is on one seam, and the middle finger is just off the other seam. I try to not cross my face with it. You’re going to, no matter what, but I try to think, ‘Don’t cross my nose with it.’ Whether that means more pronation… I don’t know.” — Dylan Bundy, Baltimore Orioles pitcher, November 2019

“I want to see the game played with joy and excitement. I want to see the celebrations. I don’t want to see mean-spirited taunting. And if there are things that happen that are inappropriate… I hope we get to a point where, as an industry, we can figure out how to police them in a way that pitchers don’t feel they need to retaliate, that they’re the ones responsible for extracting justice.” — Dick Williams, Cincinnati Reds President of Baseball Operations, November 2019

“When I throw it down, it’s two-seam sink, but when it’s up, it has this tailing to it. Not a sink tail, but a little bit of a rise tail, running up and away from the batter. It’s weird.” — Seth Corry, San Francisco Giants prospect, November 2019

“You can pitch at a really high level with very average stuff if you throw pitches that complement each other well, and you sequence them well. Tunneling is crazy important. Hitters swing based on how the ball comes out of your hand. If they can’t see anything telling, on any pitch, you’ve already won.” — Eric Lauer, San Diego Padres pitcher, December 2019

“There can be reasonable opinions from reasonable people, smart people, about the right direction, the right way to build. I can tell you that within our room, within baseball operations, we’re not thinking about it that way. We’re thinking about it more as ‘needing to get to a winning team.’” — Ben Cherington, Pittsburgh Pirates GM, December 2019

“End of season, everyone kind of takes a breath and looks at what’s going on. Then you have the GM meetings and start a lot of the conversations. This is just an extension of that. In many ways, we sit in our suites and text, and call, other teams. We’re not necessarily even walking down the hall, or going to another floor.” — Derek Falvey, Minnesota Twins President of Baseball Operations, December 2019

“I think the Kansas City Royals maybe have downplayed a little bit the amount of analytic involvement they have. I don’t think it’s an organization that runs around waving a banner that tells everybody how data-driven they are. I’ve been extremely impressed and excited about some of the information we have to help us make decisions.” — Mike Matheny, Kansas City Royals manager, December 2019

“My background is my background. I’m not going to be ashamed of that. I grew up in a very traditional way. I grew up as a coach. I grew up as a scout. But the game has changed since I came to Kansas City in 2006.” — Dayton Moore, Kansas City Royals GM, December 2019