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CLEARWATER, Fla. – Pitchers are always looking for an edge, so maybe Mark Buehrle was playing a little con game, like the wily rabbit of folklore who begged the fox not to throw him in the briar patch.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Toronto Blue Jays speedy pitcher Mark Buehrle actually gets rattled when he's forced to work faster — or so he says Back to video

But the veteran Blue Jays pitcher certainly looked and sounded sincere when he admitted that a batter can compel him to work too fast for comfort.

Buehrle’s pace from pitch to pitch is the quickest in baseball, and has been for 14 years. Suddenly we’re to believe a batter can rattle him simply by standing in the box and staring him down between pitches?

“Whenever a guy’s staying in the batter’s box, they try to speed me up and work faster,” Buehrle said after pitching a couple of crisp innings against the Phillies. “So then I try to work faster than I usually do, and that’s when I get out of my game because I’m trying to rush too much, and then I’m not making quality pitches. If a guy just takes a pitch and stands there and looks at me and he’s ready to go, I try to speed up and go even faster. Then I get in trouble.”