  Easter Seals ambassadors Sylvian Labelle (left) and Julia Oliver are joined by Jays pitcher Shaun Marcum before the Conn Smythe dinner last night. (SUN MEDIA/Alex Urosevic) |
It's a luxury Shaun Marcum plans to take advantage of.
In past seasons, Marcum's goal upon arriving at spring training was to work on making the team.
This spring, the goal of the Blue Jays right-hander is to work on improving his pitches, specifically his two-seam fastball.
Slotted in as the fourth man in the Jays rotation after a breakout season last year when he went 12-6 with a 4.13 earned-run average in 38 appearances, 25 of them starts, Marcum said yesterday he'll be working hard at becoming, well, another Roy Halladay. Now that's a goal worth pursuing.
"I can actually go into spring training and work on certain pitches and that's what I've done this off-season," said Marcum, who was in town for the annual Conn Smythe dinner to support Easter Seals Ontario. "I've taken my two-seam fastball and tried to get more movement on it and tried to get it located better.
"In the past it has been a pitch where one time I'll throw it and it will go up and in, and the next time it will stay right down the middle. For me to go into spring training and be able to focus on that one pitch, well, it's exciting for me."
The two-seam fastball, when thrown properly, moves down and away from left-handed hitters. It's a pitch that is the basis for Halladay's success and results in a lot of ground-ball outs to both right- and left-handed hitters.
With Marcum, though, there's added benefit.
"For the most part (last year) it was a show pitch (thrown out of the strike zone)," Marcum said of his faulty two-seamer. "I throw a two-seam changeup (which is by far his most effective pitch) so I wanted to show that so when I threw my changeup it kind of had that same effect.
"Now I'm starting to get this pitch down and this off-season I'm throwing it a lot. So it not only will help my changeup, but getting that pitch down will help me as well. If I pitch off that and with my cut fastball (which moves into a left-handed hitter), not take the same thing as Doc does but try to make things similar to what he does. I mean he's had so much success, you can't go wrong following his steps."
Another benefit is that it may help him keep the ball in the park. Last year in 159 innings, Marcum gave up a whopping 27 home runs, a staggering 21 of them at Rogers Centre. In fact, 27% of all the hits he surrendered at home last year (21 of 78) ended up in the seats.
"I know the ball does fly there but I might have been putting too much pressure on myself to not miss since I knew that if they hit it, there was a good chance it was going to go out," Marcum said of the mind-set that developed when he pitched at Rogers Centre.
"Not being an overpowering guy, they could sit back and wait for their pitch and if it's not located very well, they could get good wood on it and any fly ball can go out in that park.
"It was almost like a timid thing. I was trying too hard not to miss instead of just going up there and throwing."
The hope is the two-seamer can be part of the cure.
