Before he tried to take the curveball grip he learned from reliever Sam Clay into a game, Erick Fedde told Jim Hickey, the Washington Nationals’ pitching coach, that he’d seen it work for the left-hander while watching iPad videos of other pitchers and thought it just might be something that could work for him.
“He brought it up to Hickey, and Hickey wanted to see it first before he went out there and did anything,” manager Davey Martinez said, “... and it did, the break was a lot better as we saw.”
Martinez and Fedde discussed his new curveball grip Fedde struck out 10 hitters in a 6 1⁄3-inning start in Miami on August 24th, in an outing in which he threw his breaking ball 38 times overall (a total of 37% of his 103 pitches, up from a full season-average of 17.