Tommy Lasorda said, “You don’t want a knuckleballer pitching for you. Or against you”.
And Tim McCarver is supposed to have said that a really good outing by a knuckleballer will mess with the minds of the hitters the next day.
That appeared true for the 90s and 2000s Yanks at least. Wakefield especially left most of our power hitters messed up the next day too.
Hitters like Jeter not so much. Strawberry had such insanely quick wrists, that knuckleballs didn’t mess with him either.
Favorite knuckleballer factoid: RA Dickey was born without a UCL, so Tommy John Surgery was never going to be a problem for him.
I’ve heard that a lot of position players like to practice throwing a knuckleball. Probably most famously Wade Boggs would brag about his knuckleball. In 1997 he came into a blowout game and pitched a scoreless inning against the Angels.
The Wikipedia article mentions four position players who have used a knuckleball during “blowout relief” appearances: Boggs, Danny Worth, Alex Blandino, and Ernie Clement (though it may well not be an exhaustive list). Of those four, only Clement is a currently-active player (he’s Toronto’s starting second baseman), and he hasn’t made a pitching appearance since 2024.
I have no doubt that other major league non-pitchers have played around with it, but I suspect that few have gotten any formal training with the pitch, and/or practiced it enough to be at all effective with it – even acknowledging that they are only going out there to finish up a blowout loss.
Or possibly an extra-innings marathon?
Position players being brought in to pitch late in blowouts (nearly always for the team that’s in the process of losing) has increased tremendously over the last 10-15 years, largely because teams use more relievers, more often, than they used to, and managers don’t want to burn innings from actual relievers in a hopeless cause. This has become such a prevalent strategy that MLB introduced rules regarding when it can be done (initially in 2020, then further tightened in 2023).
Yes, there have been occasions when position players have had to pitch in long extra-inning games, but it’s much rarer, and obviously done out of desperation. The “designated runner” rule for extra innings (which was also instituted in 2020, and made permanent in 2023) was designed to reduce the frequency of games going well past 10 or 11 innings, and that has led to it becoming even less frequent for a position player being used to pitch in an extra-inning game
So, my semi-sober reading of this thread is that the knuckleball is disappearing for two main reasons:
- It’s a very exacting skill, which is best taught directly, and there are today fewer people who know it well; and
- Hitters have gotten better at hitting it.
Yes/no/maybe?
I would hypothesize that it’s nearly all due to the first point.
Most current MLB hitters have not ever batted against a dedicated knuckleball pitcher, so I don’t see how they could have “gotten better at hitting it.” As noted above, it’s now nine seasons since R.A. Dickey pitched in the majors, and 15 seasons since Tim Wakefield did.
I’m thinking of post #22, where @ What_Exit suggests that Strawberry and Jeter had skills that rendered knuckleballs moot.
Two particularly excellent hitters, from a generation ago.
Another factor which likely has fueled the death of the knuckleball is teams focusing on velocity, control, and spin rate, all of which the knuckleball lacks. With young pitchers knowing that those are the metrics on which they will be graded, and which determine whether they will be successful, they aren’t going to focus on learning a pitch like the knuckler.
Straw was a “unicorn”, you couldn’t learn his wrist speed, it was compared to Ted Williams.
Jeter wasn’t a power hitter and even more disciplined singles hitters were usually better against knuckles.
Today’s swing up for the fences batters wouldn’t do well at all.
For those interested, there’s a 2012 documentary called “Knuckleball!” about this subject, centering around Wakefield and Dickey. It used to be in Netflix years ago, but I don’t see it there now. It is one hundred percent worth a watch if you have any inkling of interest in the knuckleball and all that surrounds the pitch.
I’ve heard this before and maybe so on the wrist speed. But I’ve always thought any comparison between him and Williams (or nearly ANYBODY and Williams) is absurd. I was a Mets fan in the 80s and my predominant memory of Strawberry was of him striking out and fouling out when the team needed a hit.
His stats are… OK. Maybe he developed some plate discipline later in his career when I wasn’t seeing him as much. But apart from an ability to put balls into orbit every so often, I never thought he was a particularly good hitter.
My favorite baseball stat:
Hoyt Wilhelm (the patron saint of the knuckleball) hit a home run in his first major league at bat. His career lasted 20+ years. He never hit another home run.
I was strictly talking wrist speed. In no other respects was he Ted Williams. He was able to wait late on a pitch and snap, ball in play. Really handy vs. a knuckle ball.
Otherwise he wasn’t particularly disciplined, he never had over a .400 On Base Percentage, except for his final and very abbreviated season. Ted Williams only had under a .400 OBP 1 of his 19 seasons. He had 5 over .500. For power hitters, only Ruth, Gehrig and Cheaty McCheaty Bonds were in that category.
I think the main issue is if a knuckleball doesn’t knuckle it becomes a batting practice pitch. When a regular pitcher is having an off day they are still throwing 95mph.
The Yankees generally did pretty well against Wakefield. He was 12-16 with a 5.01 ERA in 58 appearances.
So keep your eye out for Kenny Serwa in the Detroit organization. He was promoted to AAA Toledo this year and has a knuckleball. Biggest issue, he is really hard to catch by reports.
I should add, he is 28 and spent some time in the independent leagues.
There are a few others in the minors, but I’m pretty sure Serwa is the closest to the show.
You aren’t wrong, but that has always been the issue with the knuckleball. I’m not sure that that’s a significant part of explaining why it’s become nearly extinct in recent years, after decades in which it was, while a niche pitch, still thrown successfully by a handful of MLB pitchers at any given time.