Jason Varitek Has Good Feel For Pitch Selection

May 9, 2010 | Boston Herald | By John Tomase



Jason Varitek has caught nearly 1,400 games with the Red Sox in a career that dates back to 1997.


His first season with the team consisted of one September at-bat. The pitching staff that year included Steve Avery, Aaron Sele and Bret Saberhagen.


Varitek assumed more of a regular role as Scott Hatteberg’s backup the following season, when the Sox featured Pedro Martinez, a reborn Saberhagen, and closer Tom Gordon, as well as future Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley in his final season.


Since then, Varitek has caught a who’s who of famous pitchers, from David Cone to David Wells to Curt Schilling.


During a recent morning in the clubhouse -- with a Yahoo! Sports story about Jorge Posada serving as inspiration -- Varitek broke down some of the best pitchers he has handled in his Red Sox career, rating them pitch by pitch.


“I’ve been lucky to catch a lot of great guys here,” Varitek said. “It’s hard to pick just one.”

But here goes:



Best fastball: Varitek didn’t have to think long before naming Martinez, who not surprisingly finds his way onto this list multiple times.


He said young reliever Daniel Bard, with his 100-mph heat, throws the hardest fastball he’s ever caught, but he singles out Martinez, closer Jonathan Papelbon, and Schilling for having the best command of theirs.


“Pedey and Pap, those two can be pretty similar,” Varitek said of Martinez and Papelbon. “They’ve got carry through the zone, and Pedey had the ability to dot it.”


Varitek paused.


“Now that you’ve got my mind thinking, I’ve got to put Curt in there, too,” he said. “Curt in that first year, he could hit 98 in the eighth inning.”



Best curveball: Varitek had never seen a curve quite like the one that came out of Gordon’s right hand.


The diminutive closer with the big heart could unleash one of the purest benders you’ll ever see.


“Flash had a true curveball -- 12 (o’clock) to 6,” Varitek said. “It was fun to call that pitch.”


Honorable mention goes to Josh Beckett, as well as Martinez and Clay Buchholz.



Best changeup: It’s a measure of how much respect Varitek has for Buchholz that the youngster made this list, too, behind the most obvious choice of all -- Martinez.


“Avery had a good one for a left-hander,” Varitek said. “ Hideki Okajima got a good one. Keith Foulke had a great one. But for flat-out control and being able to throw it with that movement and that change of speeds, anywhere he wanted to at any time, that was Pedro.”


Martinez’ changeup dove so hard and in on right-handed hitters, it was often mistaken for another pitch.


“His ball moved about this much,” Varitek said, holding his hands more than two feet apart. “It definitely moved with a screwball kind of rotation.”



Best slider: One mention of Cone ended this discussion.


“Oh gosh, there you go, there’s your slider,” Varitek said. “David Cone.”


With the advent of the cutter in recent seasons, fewer pitchers seem to feature the slider, which is also predicated on lateral movement.


Cone threw a hard slider that could start on one corner before zipping over the other. Honorable mention would go to Martinez, who routinely earned votes in Baseball America’s Best Tools survey, except for one problem.


“Pedey didn’t throw a slider,” Varitek said. “His ball just moved so much that people thought he did.”



Best cutter: Just as the split-fingered fastball revolutionized the game in the late 1980s when thrown by the likes of Astros ace Mike Scott, the cutter has become the weapon du jour of a number of pitchers.


“At one point the cutter was the new wave pitch,” Varitek said. “Before that, it was the split.”


Varitek cited two names for the cutter. The first was veteran reliever Mike Timlin, who paired it with a 95-mph fastball. The second one was current starter Jon Lester, who has ridden the pitch to the verge of superstardom.



Best splitter: Papelbon and Schilling owned outstanding splitters, but in Varitek’s mind, there can be only one.

“The best split has to be (Hideo) Nomo,” he said. “That thing dropped two and a half feet. It was pretty amazing. It was so good, his fastball became even better.”



Best command: This one is basically a tie, although we’ll give it to Martinez simply for longevity.


“It’s Pedey and Curt in their primes,” Varitek said. “You can bring in (Saberhagen), too, with the overall command of his heater. Sabes was pretty special. When he pitched well, he could hit a gnat’s rear end.”


Still, Martinez and Schilling were something to watch. The former could throw any pitch in any count and even on those rare occasions when the hitter knew what was coming, couldn’t do anything with it.

Schilling was more of the classic fastball/split bulldog who could find that extra gear whenever he needed it and who had obscene command of his fastball.


“Catching those guys,” Varitek said, “was a lot of fun.”



Most intimidating: When Yahoo! gave Posada a similar series of questions recently, he noted that he was petrified of Cone when he first caught him and would occasionally be dressed down by the veteran.


Varitek laughed and said he never had that kind of experience.


“Maybe I was fortunate not to have to deal with that,” he said. “Intimidating, no. Respect, yes. There’s a big difference. I’d say there have been a lot of guys like that -- Curt, Sabes, Flash, Pedey, David Wells. Pretty much all of our pitchers. Even the young ones. You have to give respect, but by no means are you intimidated. They’re on your team.”



Best rapport: Varitek hesitated to name just one guy in this category, since he feels he’s had a good connection with a number of pitchers over the years.


However, the first name off his tongue was no surprise: Derek Lowe.


“I was with him for 10 years before he left,” Varitek said of his former Mariners minor league teammate with whom he was paired in the trade that brought them to the Red Sox. “We had a really good relationship.”


That said ...


“That’s a toughie,” Varitek said. “I hope it’s more than just one guy. I had connections with Pedey, Curt, I hope everybody.”



Best game: Varitek has caught four no-hitters (Nomo, Lowe, Buchholz, Lester) and can’t choose just one. Thankfully he doesn’t have to, because he can think of one that just might have been better.


“I’d have to say the 17-strikeout game in New York,” he said.


That would have been in September 1999, when Martinez authored one of the most dominant starts in baseball history, considering the circumstances. The Yankees were trying to hold off the Red Sox down the stretch and boasted baseball’s best team.


Martinez gave them a solo homer by Chili Davis and nothing else. He ended up throwing a one-hitter and facing one hitter over the minimum en route to victory.


Varitek caught a little of the performance on ESPN Classic recently and was transported back to that night.


“It was really just the dominance of all of his pitches,” he said. “There was the movement on his changeup, and the way his fastball took off. I’ve never rewatched it from start to finish, but I think that’s something I’ll do when I’m done.”