Here’s another variable to consider: rehab has gotten a lot better, and so a person who might have decided to lean the kuckleball when their throwing velocity diminished is instead able to return to their former strength. Just a WAG.
Veering off topic in my own thread I agree with this Ted is my favorite player since I was a yout. Recently someone did the research on his best year and found that he hit 6 caught balls that would today be considered sacrifice flies thus making his average .410 instead of .406. And he was the most walked batter of all time, walking every 4.8 times at bat.
You might enjoy this, which I read recently:
Interesting idea - the author collected recollections from pitchers on what it was like to pitch to Ted Williams: A number of them agreed that umpires gave him a lot of deference and sometimes didn’t call good pitches strikes if Williams chose not to swing at them (some disputed this as well). A few mentioned how he watched the pitchers like a hawk and always remembered what he learned about them from each encounter. Several also mentioned Williams never lunged at a pitch or changed his mind about swinging. He was either completely still or fully committed to swinging, and he seldom failed to make contact.
One that made me laugh was a pitcher who gave up a rifle shot line drive to Williams which startled the second baseman so much that when Ted came up again the guy visited the mound to remind him he had a wife and kids waiting for him when the season was over, and could he please NOT throw Williams another fastball.
Indeed, I’ve read elsewhere that because Williams was so selective about pitches that he could often manipulate the at-bat. And if a pitcher was put in the position of having to throw Williams a fastball in the strike zone he was basically taking his life in his hands.
Williams was a fascinating guy. End of hijack, thanks.
A thought: If position players sometimes learn the knuckleball just against the off chance they might be called upon to sub for a pitcher, it can’t be that hard to learn. And even if it’s inferior, in itself, to a standard fastball, throwing one occasionally would still make a pitcher more unpredictable, which would probably increase the effectiveness of all of their other pitches. So you’d think that more pitchers would be interested in learning it.
My impression is that it’s fairly straightforward to learn the mechanics of the pitch, but actually getting the ball to move regularly is much more difficult. Getting the pitch to work 1 in 10 times doesn’t help you on the mound. I imagine it’s like golf, where you can learn the mechanics in a weekend and spend the rest of your life trying to master it.
Yeah, I think the downside of throwing a “bad” knuckleball is just too high to make it worthwhile. Every pitcher knows how to throw a changeup and a curveball, but many starters don’t bother with both (or sometimes either) because it just isn’t good enough and the risk isn’t worth the variety of pitches.
A bad knuckleball is even worse than a bad changeup because even if you fool the hitter they have plenty of time to adjust and hammer it.
That is my impression, as well. All other pitches have spin (and typically a lot of it); a properly-thrown knuckleball has effectively no spin, and rather than being “flung” to the plate like a normal pitch, it has to be, in essence, “pushed.” A properly-thrown knuckleball will exhibit only a tiny bit of spin, and it’s that which causes it to flutter unpredictably and make it harder to hit, as the seams encounter airflow. As noted upthread, a knuckleball which has too much spin is predictable, and is effectively an easy-to-hit “batting practice” pitch.
The fact that pitchers who have learned it and used it well have consistently indicated that it took a lot of practice to master it indicates that @Chronos 's comment of “it can’t be that hard to learn” is almost undoubtedly not correct – at least not if “learn” means “learn it well enough to actually be effective using the pitch,” especially for position players who play around with it (and pitching, in general) a bit on the side, because it’s not their primary job.