After taking a few days to recharge my batteries following our recent draft coverage, I felt compelled to examine New York Mets starting pitcher R.A. Dickey and the future of the knuckleball. Watching Dickey overwhelm the Nationals lineup last Thursday with 7.1 shutout innings with 8 strikeouts to keep the Mets from getting swept, I was captivated with how well he commands the knuckleball and how devastating the pitch is with its low-80s velocity and considerable movement. I quickly realized how much I have underrated him and have underappreciated his talents the past three seasons. Consider his last three years, in 2010 Dickey went 11-9 with a 2.84 ERA in 174.1 innings pitched with 104 strikeouts against 165 hits and 42 walks, last season saw him go 8-13 with a 3.28 ERA over 208.2 innings pitched with 134 strikeouts against 202 hits and 54 walks. At 37 years old, he has begun this season 9-1 with a 2.44 ERA in 81 innings pitched with 78 strikeouts against 65 hits and 19 walks; those are close to Ace-Level numbers.
In the past 30 years, only a handful of knuckleball pitchers have reached the majors leagues, even fewer achieving any notable success, namely Tom Candiotti, Charlie Hough, Joe and Phil Niekro in the 80s, Steve Sparks, Tim Wakefield… and R.A. Dickey. This got me thinking why we do not see more knuckleball pitchers, or at the very least, pitchers that feature it as part of their repertoire? I have watched more college baseball than any one person should, and excluding the rare pitcher that throws a knuckle-curveball, I cannot recall ever seeing a college pitcher feature a pure knuckleball. Why is this? Granted the knuckleball is a difficult pitch to command, but I have to assume the ultimate reason is because “no one else does it” and the overwhelming majority of coaches are ill-equipped to teach the pitch. Nevertheless, I have to imagine an amateur pitcher with any aptitude to throw a knuckleball would achieve tremendous success because inexperienced and impatient batters would be demoralized trying to hit such a slow, devilish pitch.
In addition, considering the overwhelming amount of arm injuries occurring to pitchers, are we doing a disservice to the next generation of prospects by not introducing them to this pitch at an earlier stage of their development? Currently the biggest area professional teams are trying to advance their knowledge is helping players avoid injuries or predicting them before they occur, especially arm injuries with pitchers. I would argue that more pitchers adding the knuckleball to their repertoire would be the simplest way to decrease pitcher injuries in the next few decades due to the decreased stress it places on the pitching arm. Certainly this would not solve the entire problem, but any pitcher that subtracted a breaking pitch from their arsenal and added the knuckleball would significantly reduce their chances of injury and thus, increase the potential longevity of their career.
Finally, will R.A. Dickey’s recent success bolster a new wave of knuckleball pitchers in the amateur ranks? At the very least, can his achievements improve the reputation of the knuckleball from a final attempt for a player almost out of professional baseball to remain in the league, and advance like the cutter has in the past 20 years from a rarely featured offering into a respected, if not feared, pitch in many pitcher’s repertoire? The baseball fan in me hopes so, as there is little more intriguing than watching major league hitters try to alter their approach and face a knuckleballer on a few rare occasions each season. The sabermetrician in me would appreciate seeing fewer pitcher injuries, and examining new data to see if pitcher ERA and BAA (Batting Average Against) would decline as a result of implementing and refining the pitch as part of their arsenal or if hitters would correspondingly adjust and improve once seeing a larger amount of knuckleballs per season. It would be a fascinating experiment to observe within the game.
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Realistically however, conventional wisdom is a tough thing to debunk in professional baseball (Exhibit A – Closer Usage) and I fear that another generation of pitchers will continue to injure themselves at an alarming rate without ever considering the knuckleball as their 2nd off-speed offering in addition to the changeup. The easy conclusion is that many years from now, the knuckleball will still be the oddball pitch it is today featured by only 1 or 2 big league pitchers, but my hope is that numbers-oriented front offices take note of Dickey’s success and paired with the potential to prevent injuries, push pitchers to experiment with the pitch and view it as more than a last-ditch effort to remain in baseball. Only time will tell, but I look forward to the day when I am watching a college game with two starting pitchers featuring a knuckleball.
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My — admittedly incomplete — understanding has always been that a pitcher would not have the knuckleball as a second (or third or fourth) pitch. To be a good knuckleball pitcher you have to devote yourself to it; it’s your first pitch and you have to throw it thousands of times to get the feel for it. You may have another pitch or two available, but if you’re a knuckleball pitcher, that’s the pitch you’ll use 75-90 percent of the time. The nature of the pitch is such that if you don’t use it almost constantly, you lose it. And most pitchers are only going to go that route when it’s either develop the knuckled or transition to a new career. Again, I don’t claim personal expertise, but that’s what I’ve always understood.
Eugene-
I think I agree with what you’ve said above, but what I was trying to convey was, “why” can’t a pitcher use a knuckleball as part of his arsenal, not the feature pitch. I know the accepted answer is the knuckleball is difficult to control (which is true), but how much more difficult can it be to control than a curveball or a slider? If youth coaches were teaching the pitch to kids at a young age, would years of practice allow them to refine the pitch to make it something they could control and use as part of their repertoire. Or if conventional wisdom is correct and one must throw the knuckler almost exclusively to be successful, if kids were learning the pitch at a younger age, one might expect their to be a higher percentage of knuckleball pitchers to play professional baseball.
In general, the point I was trying to convey in the piece is could R.A. Dickey having such success in recent years allow the knuckleball too be taken a bit more seriously – if so, then perhaps we could/should start teaching it to kids to help generate a new wave of knuckleball pitchers in the next few decades, which, if it happened, would only be a positive for the game of baseball in the form of fewer pitcher injuries and more excitement watching hitters trying to hit such a tricky pitch.
Thanks for writing-