On The Road With Pat Neshek: Welcome

I got a pretty cool letter a couple weeks back.  It came from the 2008 Topps Ginter Code Champion.  He wanted me to sign up a card of me from 2009 Ginter.  He also included 2 of his cards signed and inscribed. Check it out below.

For the past 2 months my schedule has been going like this, throw long toss, the next day is a bullpen followed by an off day of throwing.  I still come in and work out and do all my arm maintenance exercises.  This stuff gets really repetitive and I think this is why my year down here has went by pretty quickly in my mind if that makes sense...my days seem to run together.  Today I had a bullpen session...my second to last one until January.   It went ok, my velocity was down a little from where I want it to be but my slider's speed picked up a bunch and was starting to run a lot more.  At this phase of my rehab most guys are considered about 80% good.  If I had to guess right now I would say I'm a little past 80%.  I'm throwing max effort and working on all my pitches and location.  The next part of my rehab starts on Tuesday and will be a rest phase.  This is where a lot of guys say they get back their velocity and feel good.  Starting Tuesday for nearly the entire month of December I will be alternating throwing long toss with conditioning afterward by a day of not throwing with a ton of conditioning.   Lanning Tucker our rehab coordinator here thinks once I hit January is when I'm going to start feeling great, not that I don't feel good right now but I'd like to add a couple more MPH's

For one really messed up kid's baseball video click to watch

I had another really good bullpen session today throwing all three pitching really well.  We had the radar gun out but for some reason it wouldn't work right.  The other radars were locked up in the equipment room and the man that had the key wasn't around.  The speed for me really doesn't mean much I just want to know where I am at...if I'm throwing 87 and thinking I'm throwing 93 or vice versa, throwing 93 when I feel like it's 87.  If I had to guess I'm in the 89-92 range right now but that's just a guess.  My slider today was still a little slower than I like and I think it will get faster with time and throwing it more...I've only been throwing it for 3 weeks right now.  At the field the past couple weeks there have been tons of teams from around the country playing in the Roy Hobbs World Series.  They have tons of different age groups, I think one is 29 and under, one is 39 and under, another is 49 and under and right now they have the 50 and over leagues going on.  It amazes me that guys can still throw really well, no offense to anyone but it's pretty cool to see...I noticed tons of sidearmers out there slinging it up.  The teams are from all over but over the past week I met people from 3 different teams in Minnesota...say hi if you are down here. 

For all you metal heads you are going to be happy.  I'm working on a new top 20.  Right now I'm in the gathering process and might have something out soon.  For me music has always helped me relax and escape and in some cases blow some steam off after a tough game.  Over the past couple years the music kind of got away from me a little bit and I feel this was one part of me that helped me get to the big leagues.  Maybe if I can find some awesome songs with riffs we can vote on my "walk in" song for next season.

Another couple weeks have gone by and my arm is feeling great.  I threw another great bullpen session on Saturday.  I'm still ironing out my slider because it's such a feel pitch for me but I'm really surprised at how easy I picked it up after surgery.  I'm very curious to see the velocity on my fastball because I think it might be coming in pretty hard...I'm going to try and get a radar gun out for my bullpen session tomorrow.  It's hard to imagine but I have 1 week left of rehab and then I am done.  On Wednesday it will be 1 year since my surgery, hard to imagine how fast the time went by.  My last day is the 23rd and after that I plan on playing catch every other day until January hits and then approach it like any other season to get ready for spring training.  I will be staying in Florida the entire winter working out with MN TWINS strength coach Perry Castellano and I know he is going to work me. 

I've had some pretty good autograph successes lately.  My brother & I drove up to get NHL autographs in Tampa last week and did pretty good going for the Wild.  The highlight was getting Tony Esposito on a stick.  The week before that I met Gary Puckett from the Union Gap, he had hits in the 60's like Young Girl...very cool guy.  He signed 5 items for me and posed for a pic.  I also met Jewel and got two autographs from her.  I also had a couple failures...one involved Smokey Robinson...just didn't see the guy.  This past week I went for T-Pain and Juvenile & now I see why there are so few autographs of rappers out there, those guys are tough and I wonder if they ever sign that's all I'll say haha, it was a mess.  All in all it was a blast getting stuff signed again, during the season I am so focused on ball that I don't get the chance to do this type of stuff.

I've been messing around with the site and changed the look up a little.  Let me know if you want more changes...looks pretty good for me.  I would like to add a cool banner on top...not that the one up isn't cool but was thinking it would be fun to see who could submit a cool banner that actually matches...write to me on the message board.

I think for the most part I will be updating this site very often from now on.  There seriously wasn't much to talk about with the injury and it got old answering the same questions, I'll go into all the stuff down the road in updates.  For right now though I just wanted to mention a quick update that things are going really well on the mound.  I've been throwing fastballs and change-ups at full speed off the mound and my arm feels better than it did before I went down during the season in 08.  This week we start with sliders and I'm excited because that's my pitch!  Last year I was hesistant when we started messing with breaking balls but this year I'm ready to go because mentally I know I'm good.  The trainers down here say if I didn't do anything the rest of the year I would be good to go for spring training.  It excites me because I'm at month 11 on the rehab and most guys say it takes to months 12-14 to feel 100%.  I'll keep you updated...

Got lots of autograph stories and other stuff, be sure to start checking in on the site often.