Jason Schmidt Throw Quotations

It's too embarrassing to come off the field before you've thrown a pitch, ... Basically, I just played catch with (Mike) Matheny the whole game. I was at 75 percent. One guy would pop it up, another would hit a ground ball. It was fun in a way.

For me, being a guy who doesn't usually get too many guys thrown out, Mike's doing a good job picking up my back.

Last year I felt good. I just didn't get any results. It seems like since I've been on this team the changeup has been impossible to throw here. I attribute that to Arizona. It hasn't been half-bad this year. I don't know what to attribute that too, but I'm happy with it.

It's always embarrassing to come off the field, especially before throwing your first pitch, ... I was going to see what I could do with the first hitter and go from there. Basically, I played catch with (catcher Mike) Matheny the whole game. I was about 75 percent. One guy would pop it up, one guy would hit a ground ball. I just ran with it as long as I could. It was fun in a way.

You can say whatever -- you hope you roll out of bed and throw as many strikes as you want to.

I was laughing at myself. Every time I'd throw one 85 and Jeff Kent would pop it up, I was like, 'Oh my gosh,' ... There are other guys in the league who can do it, and it made me a believer in how you can get guys out doing it.

I felt good. I just couldn't get things going. I couldn't line up my arm with my lower half and throw strikes.

The arm felt good, but mechanically I just couldn't get going. I couldn't line up my arm with the lower half and give myself a chance to throw strikes. That's the name of the game, and I just didn't do that.

I think when I did it in L.A. the first time (on Sept. 7), I couldn't have thrown even one more pitch, ... (Saturday) I ended up making five innings. I don't know if that's progress; I don't think it's going backwards. I don't think I've made it severely worse, by any means, and now I get another week to let it rest.

It was a definite improvement over last year. The changeup has been difficult to throw for me in Arizona, but it wasn't bad (Saturday), and I've always had that slide step, but after coming off surgery it's hard to speed up mechanically.