There has been stories about VV wanting to pump fastballs.
After the game, Realmuto voiced frustration that Velasquez did not follow his game-calling more.
āIt definitely affected the game,ā Realmuto said of Velasquezās frequent shake-offs. āIt's surprising. I don't really know, for some reason we couldn't get on the same page tonight. Obviously, it had an affect on the game. It's never good when a pitcher and catcher can't get on the same page. We've already discussed it. We talked about it right after the game. So hopefully we fixed it for next time.ā
āI felt like we had him set up pretty good for a breaking ball there,ā Realmuto said. āIt looked like he was on the fastball the whole at-bat. Again, Vinny had confidence in his fastball. He wanted to use it.ā
Under the tutelage of new pitching coach Bryan Price, Velasquez, previously a devotee of the high fastball, has broadened his pitch repertoire and diversified his approach to getting outs. He added a cutter during the quarantine and worked on it religiously with assistant pitching coach Dave Lundquist.
"The whole quarantine made me look back," Velasquez said. "A lot of guys were gearing up on my fastball and me being a power pitcher, I needed to learn how to locate something away from righties and in on lefties. The big lefty guys would ambush fastballs in and everything was pretty much straight, so I wanted to find something that was more comfortable to throw in on lefties and away from righties."
During the down time, Velasquez also polished up his changeup and recommitted himself to throwing the pitch. He still has that big fastball and can ride it up in the zone when he's hunting a strikeout, but he's also working the knees, a practice he and others on the staff got away from last year.
"It's just a matter of mixing speeds, changing eye levels and going from there," Velasquez said.
https://sports.yahoo.com/ready-believe-phillies-vince-velasquez-031439869.html
