Congrats on a fantastic season in Chicago Yu. It was a joy watching you pitch every outing. Looking forward to more of the same next year, and good luck in the Cy Young voting!
English Title: Wrapping up the 2020 season, and my thoughts on the most win title and my knuckle curve Body: Hello. Welcome to my RU-vid. It’s been a week since my last game of the season. I am spending my day off now, so I think it’s good timing to look back what happened in 2020. My pitching conditions were really good in the spring training in March. But nearing the end of the spring training, it was getting a little worse. And then MLB postponed the season. The 2020 season has been delayed for almost 4 months, and during that time period, it was hard to set my physical peak because I had no idea when the season starts. I guess it was not just about me, but anybody else. I tried not to make a complaint about that. What I was trying to do was just focusing on my training and getting ready for the season. During this postponement I was not really in good shape. I had some shoulder strain on my right arm. So I was not able to pitch through the 6th or 7th inning once the season started. During the postponement, the Cubs game me a training program and I was following on that. Hendricks was better in shape back then. Now the season finally started! My first start was against the Brewers. I felt something was not just right. I took a look at my notebook, and I found a page that described my detailed pitching mechanics that I wrote it down in last September. It was very detailed memo. I just tried to do the same as described in my notebook. However, my sense of feeling is not exactly the same as last year. When you say “push harder” last year, yet you may have a different feeling and meaning on “push harder” this year. But in my case, it all worked out and I felt lucky. And then against the Pirates I went through the 6th inning and allowing no runs and then I won 6 straight games after that. I was like 7 wins for 7 starts. I was good then. But I felt like something was wrong around my waist after I pitched against the Royals. I have been taking care of my backbone for almost 2 years. Now I notice very quickly when something went wrong around my waist. I feel no pain at first. But in a few days I start to feel something is wrong. When we are on the road we are onboard a charted plane. You can occupy three seats. But I am like a tall man, so I cannot fully relax when you sit in an air plane chair or even lying down on a 3-seat bed. After we landed in Kansas City, I pitched against them. I managed to pitch. But my waist was not good for a few weeks. Clearly I was not in the best shape. Near the end of my 7-game winning streak I also felt pain around my right elbow. When I get tired I feel that kind of pain in my right elbow. In the 2020 season, my waist and elbow pain were big obstacle. That’s my 2020 wrap-up in physical point of view. Now let’s move on my pitching mechanics. I have seen and heard a lot of things about me on TV and everywhere. Some people say Darvish was really good this season because he developed a good knuckle curveball. That’s not true! TV Asahi aired my interview during this season, but what I talked in that interview was just what happened in the last season. I was really good in the second half of the last season because I developed a really good knuckle curveball and splitter as my money pitch. However, those two of my money pitch last season did not entirely work right in this season. I picked up some strikeouts with those two breaking balls, but it was just lucky. I could not command those two where I was supposed to deliver in the strike zone. In fact I delivered a hit-by-pitch to Aguilar of the Marlins. People may think I pitched this season just like the last season, and people may think it’s almost the same. I did not! It’s totally different between last season and this season. This season my knuckle curveball and splitter were both useless, so I was relying on my cutter, which was speeding around average 86 mph. I can speed it up to 91 mph, and also slow it down to 82 mph. My cutter does not move just one way. It moves around 3 different ways, horizontal, vertical and something in between. My cutter helped me a lot in this season. My cutter helped me get a double-play. There is also another key on my success this season. It was my four-seam fastball. My four-seam fastball last season was moving like a slight cutter. But it moves like fading away this season. This fading-away movement was something I thought necessary. I shared this idea with my team. I was lucky enough to be able to develop this fading-away four-seam fastball. For more detail please refer to my previous video on how to develop my fading-away four-seamer. I think my success this season depended on my various cutter and four-seamer. I also increased the speed of my slider since the game against the White Sox. That made my slider strong enough. That was effective to any hitters both side of the home plate. Now let’s talk about a little down side of this season. I was maybe relying too much on my cutter and slider because those two were really easy to pitch and I could get a strike easily anytime I want with those two breaking balls. I just checked some numbers and I figure out that right-handed hitters only made .077 against my four-seamer. So I think maybe I should pitch more and more four-seamer against right-handed hitters. Also my two-seamer was effective against left-handed hitters. In this off season, like I said in a press conference, I will try to be smarter just like deGrom, Verlander and Cole. To compete with those pitchers, I need to be smarter. Let’s talk about that in some other time. Also I want to develop my splitter and knuckle curveball again as my money pitch. If I can do it well, my pitching will be more and more effective. I was relatively stable this season and I received a lot of messages from the fans. One of the impressive messages was like this, saying “Your pitching gave me energy.” and “Your pitching encouraged me.” I was like why? Why did you feel that way? I did not get inspired by seeing someone did a good job. I am that kind of a guy. But I was very happy to know that my pitching made someone happy. All I am doing is just having fun pitching. I was kind of surprised a little because I did not expect that kind of reaction from the fans. I just want to say thank you to all the fans for sending a warm message. I pitched 12 games, and I picked up 8 wins with 3 losses. My ERA was 2.01. I could have done a little better. Maybe I should have pitched more four-seamer. My ERA may (or may not) be better. As a result, I won the most win title. To be honest I did not pay so much attention to how many wins I earn. But being No.1 in any category made me happy. I was thinking to take a 10-day off. Now it’s on my 7th day of my short break, and I feel like I cannot wait to train myself again. I will resume training tomorrow. That’s all for today wrapping up my 2020 season. Thank you for watching. [until 14:10] [Please note that after 14:10 Yu talks about a video game. So I skipped translating that part.]
