Good to know I still have the stuff to be a Major league pitcher. 
Cubs pitching?
That’s pretty wild (no pun intended) and brought a huge smile to my face!
He went three up, three down for that inning!
What happened, a game went so long that they completely ran out of actual relief pitchers, and had to put the third baseman on the mound?
And who was the poor schmuck who was batting (or more precisely, not batting) against that?
Haha, I looked at that pitch and I can guess the batter’s thoughts…
“What the heck, that guy is tossing it up in the air, I’m not even going to swing at that thing which isn’t going to be close to the strike zone.”
I thought the same thing but I guess technically it was a strike. I’m wondering though… Is that kind of pitch easy to hit? (And by hit I mean “get a hit”, possibly even a home run.) If it isn’t, is there any chance a clever pitcher might put it in his bag of tricks?
Teams are so careful about managing bullpen workloads that when a game becomes a blowout loss, they put in a position player to eat the last inning or two. It’s totally common nowadays.
Specialty pitcher throwing eephus pitches, though in the 30 mph range is really slow even for those.
At almost the end of the 2001 season the Diamondbacks were blown out in a meaningless game and, wanting to preserve both starting and bullpen pitchers for the imminent World Series, the manager put in Mark Grace for an inning. He got pasted and in the interview said, “I guess my 80mph fastball just didn’t have enough heat on it.”
Shoulda tried slower, I guess.
Is the 31.3 mph ground speed or air speed? I think the cosine losses might actually matter here…
I did some projectile motion calculations ignoring friction. Looks like this is very close to the slowest total velocity of the ball, as the theoretical value I got was a bit over 30 mph. It’d take nearly 2 seconds to reach home plate and the high point of its trajectory would be about 15 feet.
If ground speed is all you care about, you could just throw the ball very, very high and it would take even longer to reach home plate. The ball’s total velocity would be pretty fast though, given its speed going up and down versus across the ground.
Indeed; it used to be a fairly uncommon thing to have a position player pitch (you might see it a handful of times over an entire season), but now that relief pitchers have become such an important part of the game, teams regularly use a position player in the late innings of a blowout loss. Teams have figured out that it’s not worth wasting an inning or two of pitching in a hopeless game on one of your relievers whom you’re going to need tomorrow.
https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/04/20/position-players-pitching-becomes-practical-the-opener
I get a little less than that. 31.3 mph is 14 m/s, and the pitcher’s mound is 18.4 m away. If the pitch was at 34 degrees, the ground speed is 11.6 m/s, for 1.58 s (the vertical velocity is 7.8 m/s, and twice that divided by 9.8 m/s^2 gives the same number). I timed the video at 1.55 s, so it seems close. I think the figure is airspeed, then. 34 degrees is a pretty steep arc.
I was trying to calculate the slowest possible pitch that could get a ball to home plate. I assumed a 45 degree trajectory as I figured for a given speed, that would get you the furthest. 30.3 mph (13.5 m/s) is what I got from that. The ground speed of said pitch would be 21.4 mph (9.6 m/s). I ignored friction so I imagine the actual minimum speed would be a bit higher.
I think the coaches often checked how fast position players could throw (radar gun) just in case they were ever needed as pitchers in games. Although they might be accurate, the pitches wouldn’t have movement and they might not have a curve ball etc.
A few have played all nine positions in one game.
There also used to be a few position players around who had a Knuckleball decent enough to be in the back of the Manager’s mind for an emergency situation.
Bringing in position players to mop up has definitely become more common as clubs want to protect their bullpens. It’s not going to be competitive, but 75% of position players probably pitched through high school, maybe into college. I’d also bet that most MLB pitchers were excellent hitters when they were 16.
So they bring in someone who can throw strikes and he gets knocked around a bit before they all head to the showers. 162 games is an incredibly long season.
If the batter knows it’s coming, it’s super easy to hit. If the pitcher only uses it sparingly, it may have some utility due to the surprise factor messing up the batter’s timing.
On the other hand, if the pitcher decides to use it twice in a row … this happens:
The final out in the OP’s inning was a fly ball out to RF caught at the fence.
Here’s the cricket version - ‘Spedegue’s Dropper’ - by Arthur Conan Doyle no less.