Even for the Royals’ pros, adding new pitches to their repertoire is no easy task

The concept of pitching at a major-league level seems almost unreasonable.

Hurling a ball 60 feet, 6 inches faster than a speeding car into a tiny, imaginary rectangle of space is difficult enough.

And hitting the right spots isn’t always enough to fool even younger hitters. Pitchers need a whole arsenal of pitches to attack hitters, and they need all of them to be reliable, accurate and effective.

But adding a new pitch is no easy task.

Each one requires a different grip and release, usually without changing the arm slot or throwing motion, which can tip off hitters as to which pitch is coming.

“You get locked into throwing the baseball a certain way, and it’s hard to pick up and get a new pitch,” said Royals pitcher Kris Medlen. “It would probably take some time. I’m sure I could, but I really like to keep things simple.”

Medlen throws four-seam and two-seam fastballs, a curveball and a changeup.

“It’s pretty tough to kind of invent something,” Medlen said. “I think the path of your arm and how you throw the ball kind of dictates the shape of a pitch and all that, so I’ve had the same repertoire for a while.”

Non-roster invitee Brian Duensing added his last pitch, a slider, 14 years ago. And though he’s toyed with another, he’s far from ready to take it between the lines.

“I’ve fiddled around a little with a cutter,” Duensing said. “Actually, just this spring was the first time I really got into trying to do it.

“And it was working playing catch, but I just don’t have the nerve to try it in a game or even off a mound yet. I don’t know if I ever will as long as my slider keeps working as well as it has this spring.”

Duensing’s didn’t take long to learn the slider, but he was an 18-year-old kid then. To add something now, at 33, would be much more difficult.

“The process is finding a grip that, first of all, feels comfortable,” he said. “And then trusting your delivery enough to make it seem comfortable, so it’s just like a fastball as opposed to trying to do all this other stuff.

“Then you start tipping the pitch with maybe a different arm slot, and all of that. So there’s a few things that go into it.”

Few pitchers have the opportunity to take time out of their routines to learn and hone a new pitch — unless something happens that leaves them with unexpected time on their hands.

“Back in 2010, after Tommy John (surgery), I came back with a curve,” said Royals pitcher Edinson Volquez. “My first years, it was just fastball-changeup. So I decided to learn another pitch, and that was my curve.”

Volquez’s reconstructive elbow surgery and the ensuing recovery time, which caused him to miss parts of the 2009 and 2010 seasons, afforded him time to develop a third weapon. But it wasn’t easy.

“It’s hard, you know, throwing a new pitch for the first time. It takes time to get it the right way,” Volquez said. “It’s a long process to learn and to get the ball and throw the pitch the way you want.

Volquez said it took him about three months to learn the pitch, but it was at least another month before he felt comfortable putting it into use.

“Even when you learn, you’ll never feel like you do with my changeup and my fastball,” Volquez said. “Maybe four months.

“But seeing people swing and miss it, I was like ‘Oh, I got it!’ If you get hit the first time, you’re not going to throw it anymore.”

Royals pitcher Danny Duffy also added a pitch following his Tommy John surgery, but it was for a different reason.

“My curveball really struggled out of surgery,” Duffy said. “I was worried about really exposing my elbow that way, so I kind of tightened the spin on my curveball a bit and it turned into a slider.”

Duffy replaced his curve permanently with a slider, discovering the similar yet harder-breaking pitch really worked for him.

“It’s pretty much the same thing, just a little bit sharper, but having that really helps tremendously to be able to get through at bats and punch guys out,” Duffy said.

Volquez loves having another option to go to.

“Before, you’ve got two pitches. Now you’ve got three,” Volquez said. “So you can show them one or two (curveballs), and then they have in their mind, ‘Oh he’s got a curve. He’s got three pitches so I don’t know what’s coming.’ ”

But as helpful as another pitch is, it’s more complicated than that for most pitchers.

“If I get to thinking too much, that’s when I start really messing up,” Medlen said. “Everybody wants 17 pitches that they can throw out there. But there’s the mental side of it and just keeping it simple.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2016 at 3:30 PM with the headline "Even for the Royals’ pros, adding new pitches to their repertoire is no easy task."