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Post by moonstone2 on Mar 23, 2015 18:27:05 GMT -5
This looks like something that can be detected though not persicely measured because of overlapping factors. Well, it's the ProJo, not FanGraphs - pretty sure he was just trying for back-of-the-envelope, and that it's not really the spot for a deep dive into the data. It's interesting, at least. I agree...but at the very least I think it's pretty good evidence that such an effect exists.
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Post by moonstone2 on Mar 24, 2015 15:45:19 GMT -5
So to continue our discussion on Wright from earlier this fall...I did a little research on knucklers in general. As many of you know a knuckleball is very different from other breaking pitches in that it doesn't spin as much as other pitches. A typical curve ball for instance may make five full rotations from the pitchers hand to the catcher's glove. The knuckleball, however, makes only one half rotation traveling the same distance. Its' movement comes from the aerodynamic wind resistance which will cause it to fall and shift at different points in the pitch's journey. This makes the pitch's movement unpredictable which leads to a lot of passed balls and hopefully hitters swinging and missing. To my surprise I discovered that not all knuckleballs are the same. The harder a knuckleball is thrown the less erratic the movement of the pitch. Movement for a knuckleball is a double edged sword. If the ball moves in the strike zone it can be very hard to hit. However if it moves outside of the strike zone it's irrelevant, because it's a ball. As with any pitcher, any pitch that can't be consistently thrown for a strike in the major leagues has limited effectiveness because eventually, hitters will just lay off the pitch and wait for a juicier one. Dickey throws his knuckler harder than most and thus is able to throw it for more often for strikes. Wright, however, throws his knuckleball less hard, so he should overtime have a harder time throwing strikes than Dickey does. One of the large differences between minor league hitters and major league hitters is plate discipline. I don't have the data, and if someone wants to question this I am fine, but I would surmise that minor league hitters as a group swing at pitches out of the zone far more often than major league hitters do. Further, major league hitters should be far more likely to take advantage of a knucklers middling fastball or a knuckler that simply spins too much and thus stays up in the zone as opposed to falling due to wind resistance. A pitcher who's success is based upon a pitch that moves greatly outside of the strike zone should therefor . Such a pitcher should not only see his walks increase, but will also see harder and more valuable contact. He will be forced into more hitters counts, forcing him to rely on a middling fastball for strikes. Further, he will be forced to throw more pitches, increasing the liklihood that he will throw more "bad knuckleballs". This could explain why only one knuckleballer, Dickey, has been able to reliably translate his success from the minors to the majors over the past twenty years. In short, I still maintain that the idea that Steven Wright is a low risk perennial CY Young contender, as was previously argued, is an extremely flawed conclusion based upon the current information that we have. Even 65 successful starts in the high minors can't tell you if a knuckleball pitcher will have consistent success in the majors. I would suggest that those that see Wright this year look at three factors: 1. How often are hitters swinging at a knuckleball that isn't in the strike zone. 2. How successful are these hitters when Wright throws his fastball, slow curve, or a bad knuckler. 3. How often is Wright's knuckler thrown in the zone. blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/06/24/one-hit-wonder-dickeys-knuckleball/www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/sports/g1164/anatomy-of-a-knuckleball/
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Post by jimed14 on Mar 24, 2015 15:55:07 GMT -5
Come back from that limb you climbed out on and talk to the rest of us who think there's a good chance he can be an effective back of the rotation starter.
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Post by moonstone2 on Mar 24, 2015 16:24:57 GMT -5
Come back from that limb you climbed out on and talk to the rest of us who think there's a good chance he can be an effective back of the rotation starter. Jim I am aware that this is not an opinion held by the majority of posters. It is an opinion however that was specifically expressed and heavily defended in this thread. I am perfectly happy to talk to all of you The chances that Wright will be a decent back-end starter also depend on the same factors that I expressed above. Further they maybe lower than his minor league history would indicate. If Wright were to become an established back-end starter as Wakefield did, he would still be the only starter other than Dickey to achieve such heights in the past 20 years.
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Post by mgoetze on Mar 24, 2015 17:18:15 GMT -5
In short, I still maintain that the idea that Steven Wright is a low risk perennial CY Young contender, as was previously argued, LOL, that's one big strawman you are building there by ripping some quotes out of context and mashing them together.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Mar 24, 2015 22:49:08 GMT -5
So to continue our discussion on Wright from earlier this fall...I did a little research on knucklers in general. As many of you know a knuckleball is very different from other breaking pitches in that it doesn't spin as much as other pitches. A typical curve ball for instance may make five full rotations from the pitchers hand to the catcher's glove. The knuckleball, however, makes only one half rotation traveling the same distance. Its' movement comes from the aerodynamic wind resistance which will cause it to fall and shift at different points in the pitch's journey. This makes the pitch's movement unpredictable which leads to a lot of passed balls and hopefully hitters swinging and missing. To my surprise I discovered that not all knuckleballs are the same. The harder a knuckleball is thrown the less erratic the movement of the pitch. Movement for a knuckleball is a double edged sword. If the ball moves in the strike zone it can be very hard to hit. However if it moves outside of the strike zone it's irrelevant, because it's a ball. As with any pitcher, any pitch that can't be consistently thrown for a strike in the major leagues has limited effectiveness because eventually, hitters will just lay off the pitch and wait for a juicier one. Dickey throws his knuckler harder than most and thus is able to throw it for more often for strikes. Wright, however, throws his knuckleball less hard, so he should overtime have a harder time throwing strikes than Dickey does. One of the large differences between minor league hitters and major league hitters is plate discipline. I don't have the data, and if someone wants to question this I am fine, but I would surmise that minor league hitters as a group swing at pitches out of the zone far more often than major league hitters do. Further, major league hitters should be far more likely to take advantage of a knucklers middling fastball or a knuckler that simply spins too much and thus stays up in the zone as opposed to falling due to wind resistance. A pitcher who's success is based upon a pitch that moves greatly outside of the strike zone should therefor . Such a pitcher should not only see his walks increase, but will also see harder and more valuable contact. He will be forced into more hitters counts, forcing him to rely on a middling fastball for strikes. Further, he will be forced to throw more pitches, increasing the liklihood that he will throw more "bad knuckleballs". This could explain why only one knuckleballer, Dickey, has been able to reliably translate his success from the minors to the majors over the past twenty years. In short, I still maintain that the idea that Steven Wright is a low risk perennial CY Young contender, as was previously argued, is an extremely flawed conclusion based upon the current information that we have. Even 65 successful starts in the high minors can't tell you if a knuckleball pitcher will have consistent success in the majors. I would suggest that those that see Wright this year look at three factors: 1. How often are hitters swinging at a knuckleball that isn't in the strike zone. 2. How successful are these hitters when Wright throws his fastball, slow curve, or a bad knuckler. 3. How often is Wright's knuckler thrown in the zone. blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/06/24/one-hit-wonder-dickeys-knuckleball/www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/sports/g1164/anatomy-of-a-knuckleball/ 1) I don't know where you got the 5 rotations for a curve. A typical 80 mph curve rotates 9 times. An elite curve can get 12 or 13. 2) Your analysis assumes that the swing decision on a knuckleball resembles that of a normal pitch, and it doesn't. Here is the sequence of events: A) The knuckler is either thrown headed towards the zone initially, or it isn't. That's the first basic knuckleball skill. The control of the knuckler is so difficult that I don't believe it's ever thrown towards the edges of the plate. I do think it may be thrown a bit higher or lower, to change the proverbial eye level, but for the most part it's simply thrown into the heart of the zone, and the pitcher is relying on the fact that a properly thrown knuckleball will change direction in a random fashion on its way to the plate. B1) A knuckleball is very easy to pick up spin-wise. No one gets fooled into swinging at a knuckler that they mistook for a fastball. (They do hit the fastball weakly because they were expecting a knuckler and have their timing off completely, but that's an entire issue altogether.) The batter knows it's coming. B2) If the knuckler appears to the batter to be heading into the zone, he has a standard swing / no swing decision based on the count and whether he thinks he will get a fatter pitch later in the count. Since most knucklers are thrown towards the heart of the plate and will look fat initially, you would expect the Z-Swing% of a knuckleballer to be high. In fact, of 613 pitchers who threw 400 or more pitches in 2013-4 (Wright threw 590), Wright ranked 85th in Z-Swing%. If you exclude his premature April 2013 start (leaving 508 pitches, which is why I set the minimum to 400 rather than 500), and I think you ought to, he ranks 72nd. B3) If the knuckler appears to the batter to be headed out of the zone, he takes the pitch. B4) The swing decision is made before the ball changes direction. The ball changes direction (if it does) at random. It very rarely moves so much as to have started towards the heart of the zone and finished wide of it. So there's no chasing a knuckler as it "breaks out of the zone" twice over. A hitter that chases a slider as it "breaks out of the zone" has failed to identify the slider as a fastball (a learnable skill) and has therefore misjudged the smooth arc of the ball's flight (which only looks like it has a break due to optical illusions) as it fails to land in the zone. A knuckleball is never misidentified and it basically either goes into the zone or it doesn't. And it actually changes direction, and if it does so successfully, it causes the hitter an unavoidable problem. Of those 613 pitchers, Steven Wright ranked 610th in O-Swing%. (Furthermore, he ranked 572nd in best O-Contact%, 583rd without April. I'm guessing that this is driven by hitters swinging at fastballs and curves out of the zone. Almost no one in MLB relied less on hitters swinging and missing at pitches outside the zone than Wright did.) C) If the knuckleball is thrown correctly, that is, if it doesn't spin too much, it changes direction at random. As I have explained far too often already, a properly thrown knuckleball is impossible to hit except by luck. It changes its direction after the batter has neuobiologically committed to his swing path. MLB hitters are better than AAA hitters at hitting a well-thrown knuckler just as much as they're better at roulette. D) A knuckleball pitcher's effectiveness is thus based on two things. -- How often he can throw it into the zone. We can measure that by Zone%. -- How often he can get it to change direction sufficiently. If it changes direction a lot, he gets a swing and a miss. If it changes direction a little, he gets weak contact (and knuckleballers have been shown to have a lower BABIP than average). If it doesn't change direction, it gets hit hard. We can measure his percentage of well-thrown knucklers by Z-Contact% and (with vastly more noise) BABIP, etc. Steven Wright ranks 105th in Zone% of the 613 guys. Without the bogus April start, 91st. Wright ranks 27th of the 613 guys in lowest Z-Contact% (a stat which stabilizes very quickly). Without the April start, he ranks 13th.Conclusion: A perfect knuckleball pitcher would be as successful in MLB as in Little League. No one could hit anything he threw. There's simply no such skill as hitting a good knuckleball. Period. The less good he is, the more bad knuckleballs he'll throw (and the more guys he'll walk). The better the hitters he is facing, the harder they will hit his mistakes. All we have to do watching Wright is watch whether he's still throwing the knuckler for strikes, and whether he's still throwing a high percentage of them with the right low amount of spin to induce a sufficiently large change of direction. You really don't have to watch the hitters at all. They are pretty much helpless pawns, waiting for a mistake. Unless they get one, they have only luck to fall back on.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Mar 24, 2015 23:15:58 GMT -5
Come back from that limb you climbed out on and talk to the rest of us who think there's a good chance he can be an effective back of the rotation starter. Jim I am aware that this is not an opinion held by the majority of posters. It is an opinion however that was specifically expressed and heavily defended in this thread. I am perfectly happy to talk to all of you The chances that Wright will be a decent back-end starter also depend on the same factors that I expressed above. Further they maybe lower than his minor league history would indicate. If Wright were to become an established back-end starter as Wakefield did, he would still be the only starter other than Dickey to achieve such heights in the past 20 years. No, the chances may not be lower. In fact, they are quite certainly higher. Look, the knuckleball is fiendishly difficult to throw. Even the best knuckleball pitchers throw a decent percentage of stinkers. Wright is risky in that he may lose the touch on the pitch at any time, and lose it for an extended period of time, as Wakefield did in 1993 and 1994. However, every pitcher has an injury risk (compare Masterson last year), and knuckleballers really don't. So it's unclear whether it makes sense to put a Steven Wright in the rotation and worry extra about his being not nearly as good as he has been, when you are doing the same thing for Clay Buchholz and everyone else (but for a different reason). Will Wright throw the pitch as well this year as he did last year? We have no way of knowing for certain, but there's no reason at all to think otherwise. If he does, he should be a very solid back-of-rotation starter and possibly a #3. If he continues to improve, better than that. His absolute upside (best imaginable outcome, non-zero percentage of happening) is indeed as a perennial CY contender. That's true of any very good knuckleball pitcher. And why can we make this projection from his numbers so far? Both the physics of the pitch and hard statistical evidence show that the better a knuckleball pitcher is, the better his minor league performance translates to the majors. (The same physics says that the better knuckleballers will have a smaller times-around-the-order split, and that's true, too.) To say to oneself, "gee, that knuckleball pitch fools AAA pitchers completely, but I'm not sure it'll fool MLB hitters since they're so much better" suggests that you don't understand the pitch at all, and that, furthermore, you've never watched MLB hitters flail at a well-thrown one (or are refusing to remember it). I would not go so far as to say God Himself could not hit a well-thrown knuckleball consistently, but that, my good man, is a theological debate*, not a baseball one. *The impossible Biblical God certainly could, but the genuinely possible, genderless God could not.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Mar 25, 2015 21:34:21 GMT -5
From the Steven Wright thread in the subforum, moonstone: "There have been seven knuckleballers to debut in the last 20 years, and every single one of them had at least one strong season in the high minors. But only one of them, R.A. Dickey, became a regular starting pitcher." Read more: forum.soxprospects.com/thread/2330/steven-wrights-ranking?page=2#ixzz3VSHGrhUiAnd even Dickey has been incredibly erratic (very pedestrian except his 2012 Cy year). I don't recall a single knuckler since Wake 10+ years ago that has had sustained success at the majors, not one. This is troubling to me. ADD: 6th starter for the first three weeks is not at all troubling to me. ADD2: A brilliant philosopher once said: "I agree with you, in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory."
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Post by moonstone2 on Mar 26, 2015 12:01:51 GMT -5
From the Steven Wright thread in the subforum, moonstone: "There have been seven knuckleballers to debut in the last 20 years, and every single one of them had at least one strong season in the high minors. But only one of them, R.A. Dickey, became a regular starting pitcher." Read more: forum.soxprospects.com/thread/2330/steven-wrights-ranking?page=2#ixzz3VSHGrhUiAnd even Dickey has been incredibly erratic (very pedestrian except his 2012 Cy year). I don't recall a single knuckler since Wake 10+ years ago that has had sustained success at the majors, not one. This is troubling to me. ADD: 6th starter for the first three weeks is not at all troubling to me. ADD2: A brilliant philosopher once said: "I agree with you, in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory." I will respond more to this and to Eric's post later.....but what is interesting to me is that out of all of the knuckleballers who have come along since Wakefield debuted, Dickey was probably the best pitcher pre-knuckleball. Dickey after all was good enough to be a high draft pick, and to make the majors even before he took up the knuckleball and I don't think any of the others ever did that. There is a long-standing idea in the sabermetric community that teams could just teach their washed out pichers the knuckleball and eventually you would end up with a major league rotation member. What I think that Dickey has demonstrated is that you need to have a high level of pitching talent already, to have even stay in the major league rotation as a knuckleball pitcher. You can't just pluck a guy out of the independent leagues and teach him the pitch as some have suggested. There is no doubt that the proliferation of successful knuckleball pitchers has decreased over time. The question then becomes why this is. I have my own theories. What do others think? And for the record, I don't consider teams are lazy, stupid, biased etc. to be a valid reason.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Mar 26, 2015 12:11:47 GMT -5
There is a long-standing idea in the sabermetric community that teams could just teach their washed out pichers the knuckleball and eventually you would end up with a major league rotation member. Uh, there is? Look, if you want to disagree with Eric, say you disagree with Eric. That's fine - it's not like it's against the ground rules to disagree with someone. Heck, I disagree with him more often than not myself, although I respect that there are things he has more familiarity with than I do in terms of things like statistical analysis. But back to the point, there's no need to make up these weird generalized straw men to argue against. Who suggested this? Have there have been enough of them ever to say this? Dropping from like, 3 to 1 in the game at a given time isn't "no doubt" that the "proliferation" of them has decreased over time, imho.
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wcp3
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Post by wcp3 on Mar 26, 2015 12:33:38 GMT -5
All I'm gonna say is Wright is probably the worst pitcher in the Red Sox system right now.
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Post by okin15 on Mar 26, 2015 12:35:25 GMT -5
There is a long-standing idea in the sabermetric community that teams could just teach their washed out pichers the knuckleball and eventually you would end up with a major league rotation member. Uh, there is? To be fair, Rob Neyer is a huge fan of the knuckler and has advocated exactly that. Given that he is often the loudest self-proclaimed sabrmetrician (and I love him and his work, so I'm not deriding him, just the claim) I think mooney has a toe to stand on here.
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Post by johnmark on Mar 26, 2015 12:44:09 GMT -5
Looking at the need for 6th starter potentially, I would prefer Johnson to Wright. I understand some of the reasoning to keep Brian at AAA for now, but I am a proponent to put your best team out there and given the way he approaches the game, his control, I like Johnson.
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Post by moonstone2 on Mar 26, 2015 12:49:57 GMT -5
To be fair, Rob Neyer is a huge fan of the knuckler and has advocated exactly that. Given that he is often the loudest self-proclaimed sabrmetrician (and I love him and his work, so I'm not deriding him, just the claim) I think mooney has a toe to stand on here. Thank you Okin. To be clear, I am not arguing that Eric himself or anyone else in this thread has espoused this view only that it has been prominently espoused. So it's not a "weird straw man", if we agree that at least one prominent sabermatrician has argued it in the past. In fact, the Baltimore Orioles have tried a version of this idea on a small scale. www.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/blog/bal-orioles-resign-righthanders-eddie-gamboa-and-zach-clark-to-minor-league-deals-20140107-story.htmlI do believe that among the flaws in Eric's argument is that he is underestimating the innate ability required to be a successful knucleball pitcher in the majors and how that has changed over time. The main point of Eric's argument that a pitcher who throws a knuckelball properly will have equal success against little leaguers and big leaguers requires more time to respond to more thoroughly.
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Post by jimed14 on Mar 26, 2015 13:07:03 GMT -5
The main problem in analyzing any of this is just how rare knuckleball pitchers are. So there is almost nothing normal about them because they are pretty much all exceptions.
Also, one guy in Rob Neyer believing in teaching washed out pitchers the knuckleball is not the same thing as "long-standing idea in the sabermetric community that teams could just teach their washed out pichers the knuckleball". It's one guy with one idea. Or it's one team in the Orioles. I don't see the Red Sox or A's or Cubs even considering it, and they're pretty sabermetric.
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Post by klostrophobic on Mar 26, 2015 13:19:33 GMT -5
The main problem in analyzing any of this is just how rare knuckleball pitchers are. So there is almost nothing normal about them because they are pretty much all exceptions. Also, one guy in Rob Neyer believing in teaching washed out pitchers the knuckleball is not the same thing as "long-standing idea in the sabermetric community that teams could just teach their washed out pichers the knuckleball". It's one guy with one idea. Or it's one team in the Orioles. I don't see the Red Sox or A's or Cubs even considering it, and they're pretty sabermetric. There has to be a willingness on the part of the player, too. How many players are realistically open to becoming knuckleball pitchers? I imagine a lot of players look at it as a gimmick pitch. And how old are you when you're officially a failed prospect; it takes a lot of mental toughness to start over, spending the next 3+ years toiling in the minors making $20K a year.
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Post by jimed14 on Mar 26, 2015 13:21:27 GMT -5
The main problem in analyzing any of this is just how rare knuckleball pitchers are. So there is almost nothing normal about them because they are pretty much all exceptions. Also, one guy in Rob Neyer believing in teaching washed out pitchers the knuckleball is not the same thing as "long-standing idea in the sabermetric community that teams could just teach their washed out pichers the knuckleball". It's one guy with one idea. Or it's one team in the Orioles. I don't see the Red Sox or A's or Cubs even considering it, and they're pretty sabermetric. There has to be a willingness on the part of the player, too. How many players are realistically open to becoming knuckleball pitchers? I imagine a lot of players look at it as a gimmick pitch. This is a sport where you can't steal a base when up by five run without getting shit from the other team, so we're not dealing with the most open and reasonable people on earth. Yeah, I mean if I'm 27-28, I wouldn't screw around for 3 years making $1100 a month trying to become a major league knuckleball pitcher. I'd probably go get a job at Target and make more money.
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Post by klostrophobic on Mar 26, 2015 13:22:59 GMT -5
Same wavelength; I was editing that into my post as you clicked POST REPLY.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Mar 26, 2015 13:34:50 GMT -5
Didn't know that re: Neyer, so thanks for the heads up on that.
That said, I also agree with jimed's point too. You were making it sound like to be into sabermetrics is to believe you can teach anyone the knuckleball. I'm not sure that's the case. The debate is about wording at this point though, so whatever.
Frankly, I'm more inclined to think that dropping a guy's arm slot and seeing if that'd play up in the bullpen is a better bet. Tommy Hottovy comes to mind as a guy who at least got a cup of coffee out of it. Turned Celestino's prospects around too. (EDIT: Was thinking of Jose Vaquedano, and even that didn't really work.)
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mobaz
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Post by mobaz on Mar 26, 2015 14:15:24 GMT -5
I did an econometrics research paper back in college analyzing weather effects on and indoor performance of the knuckleball. Sample size problems are greatly magnified with any systematic knuckleball analysis; I could find 3 guys with enough starts and associated weather data to analyze (must have been Charlie Hough, Tim Wakefield, and Tom Candiotti).
Verdict: there was no difference in indoor vs. outdoor performance, but there were some weather-related differences that escape me. Also, data collection is a pain in the butt. And don't spend all your time writing a knuckleball paper, fun as it is, because you will fail your final.
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Post by moonstone2 on Mar 26, 2015 14:58:26 GMT -5
The main problem in analyzing any of this is just how rare knuckleball pitchers are. So there is almost nothing normal about them because they are pretty much all exceptions. Also, one guy in Rob Neyer believing in teaching washed out pitchers the knuckleball is not the same thing as "long-standing idea in the sabermetric community that teams could just teach their washed out pichers the knuckleball". It's one guy with one idea. Or it's one team in the Orioles. I don't see the Red Sox or A's or Cubs even considering it, and they're pretty sabermetric. Well your criticism would be more fair had I said that it was a long-standing idea held "by" the sabermetric community as opposed to "in". Probably a better wording would have been using "by some" or "by a few"....but in any case. The Red Sox did actually ironically try this with Duquette and ended up with Charlie Zink and Jarred Fernandez.
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Post by moonstone2 on Mar 26, 2015 15:22:33 GMT -5
There has to be a willingness on the part of the player, too. How many players are realistically open to becoming knuckleball pitchers? I imagine a lot of players look at it as a gimmick pitch. This is a sport where you can't steal a base when up by five run without getting shit from the other team, so we're not dealing with the most open and reasonable people on earth. Yeah, I mean if I'm 27-28, I wouldn't screw around for 3 years making $1100 a month trying to become a major league knuckleball pitcher. I'd probably go get a job at Target and make more money. I think if the idea were to be tried despite the low wages involved you would still find plenty of willing participants. If you told a kid, that he could screw around with a knuckleball for three years even at poverty wages and keep his dream of playing in the major leagues alilve, I think there are plenty who would jump at that chance over working at Target. I think it's more that to be successful as a knuckleball pitcher you have to be a pretty good pitcher already. That was probably a big reason guys like Charlie Zink, and Jarred Fernandez, who were undrafted free agents, were not able to make the translation successfully. It's not by accident that the only successful knuckleballer since Wakefield also happens to be the guy who was most successful before he became a knuckleball pitcher in the first place. To keep on topic, Wright did have some success before taking on the knuckler full time in 2011. As many of you know he was an All-American at the University of Hawaii, and made it to AAA. He did not have the pre-knuckleball success or pedigree that Dickey had.
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Post by okin15 on Mar 26, 2015 15:25:27 GMT -5
The main problem in analyzing any of this is just how rare knuckleball pitchers are. So there is almost nothing normal about them because they are pretty much all exceptions. Also, one guy in Rob Neyer believing in teaching washed out pitchers the knuckleball is not the same thing as "long-standing idea in the sabermetric community that teams could just teach their washed out pichers the knuckleball". It's one guy with one idea. Or it's one team in the Orioles. Well your criticism would be more fair had I said that it was a long-standing idea held "by" the sabermetric community as opposed to "in". Probably a better wording would have been using "by some" or "by a few"....but in any case. Just stop digging. It was clear to everyone what you meant, and also frustrating to us that you didn't note with whom your disagreement lay, saving us all time and aggravation. Given this is not the topic of the thread, I should also mention that I think it is the Wright time, or should be if there's a rotation need. I never fell out of love with Wakefield (though I acknowledge he was done a little before he was actually gone), and I'm hoping that Wright could be the next Wake. And yes, I know how sick that thought makes some of y'all.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Mar 26, 2015 15:38:22 GMT -5
The main problem in analyzing any of this is just how rare knuckleball pitchers are. So there is almost nothing normal about them because they are pretty much all exceptions. Also, one guy in Rob Neyer believing in teaching washed out pitchers the knuckleball is not the same thing as "long-standing idea in the sabermetric community that teams could just teach their washed out pichers the knuckleball". It's one guy with one idea. Or it's one team in the Orioles. I don't see the Red Sox or A's or Cubs even considering it, and they're pretty sabermetric. Well your criticism would be more fair had I said that it was a long-standing idea held "by" the sabermetric community as opposed to "in". Probably a better wording would have been using "by some" or "by a few"....but in any case. The Red Sox did actually ironically try this with Duquette and ended up with Charlie Zink and Jarred Fernandez. Charlie Zink threw the knuckleball when they drafted him. El Tiante was his coach at SCAD (by the way, in hindsight, wtf was Tiant doing as SCAD's baseball coach, of all places?) and tipped them off. I don't know about Jared Fernandez because he's before my time, but it looks like he always threw it as well.
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Post by jimed14 on Mar 26, 2015 15:41:32 GMT -5
I dream of a pitcher like Pedro who can also throw a knuckleball for strikes. His fastball would look like it was 120 mph.
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