Are there still knuckleball pitchers?
So, you’re watching your local Major League Baseball game and you’re wondering to yourself, “Are there still knuckleball pitchers?”
You’re probably remembering the days when Charlie Hough, Phil Niekro, Tom Candiotti and Tim Wakefield flipped slow-motion knuckleball at the most feared hitters in the game only to illicit swings and misses. Ah, those were the days.
Fortunately, the answer is yes: there are still knuckleball pitchers out there.
There are a few knuckleball pitchers mulling about the minor leagues but there are even more knuckleball pitchers waiting in the wings at a younger age. And it has been my goal to reintroduce the knuckleball as a mainstream pitch through my business — Knuckleball Nation.
If you haven’t heard already, I’m Chris Nowlin — founder and operator of Knuckleball Nation. I was able to break into professional baseball without ever having played in high school or college. And I achieved this remarkable feat because of the knuckleball.
I was lucky enough to learn right besides future Cy Young Award winner RA Dickey. He was instructed by the Texas Rangers to become a knuckleball pitcher and he wasn’t happy about it. And he wasn’t very good in the beginning either.
We were lucky enough to learn baseball’s most mysterious pitch from 25-year Major League Baseball pitcher Charlie Hough. He worked with us during secret sessions at Cypress Community College in Orange County, California.
He poured all of his wisdom into us, but, the difference between me and RA Dickey was pretty huge. He’d been a first-round draft pick and I had never played baseball before, but I signed my first pro contract only four months into learning from Hough.
This proves that the knuckleball can be taught, and, most importantly, it proves that pitchers can learn the knuckleball.
After all, RA Dickey did pretty well with it after looking pretty bad in the beginning.
So, back to the question at hand — are there still knuckleball pitchers…
Yes, and here are their names throughout the minor leagues: Alex Blandino, Kevin Dirby, Colby Lewis, Jordan Powell and David Fletcher. But you’re probably most familiar with the name Matt Waldron. Waldron has been flipping knuckleball at a 33% usage rate for the San Diego Padres Major League team for most of 2024.
But most of these guys throw a more modern type of knuckleball. The protocol for the knuckleball has changed dramatically with the success of RA Dickey because Dickey threw the knuckleball so hard and had so much success. So, now the MLB is looking for guys who throw the knuckleball upwards of 80+ mph.
Very few guys float the knuckleball to the plate like your favorite knuckleballers of yesteryear and that’s because the slow knuckleball — floating in there in the mid-60’s to low-70’s — is much more difficult to learn.
The slower the knuckleball, the much more perfect it has to be in order to compete at the Major League level. Slower knuckleball require less spin and the pitcher needs to control the spin direction of the ball. It needs to rotate less than one spin on the way to the plate and roll forward like a 12-to-6 curveball. And that kind of touch can take years to develop.
But there’s another problem in developing the slower knuckleball.
Most professional teams rely on pitch trackers to gauge their pitching talent. They look at things like release height, extension, spin direction, vertical and horizontal break, spin rate and spin axis to see if any of their minor league arms contain an outlier pitch that can thrive in the Major Leagues.
You need a young and lively arm to achieve many of the metrics coveted by the new paradigm. And you need a lot of velocity. That’s why pitchers are trending younger with higher speed fastballs, and, as a result, there are much more pitching injuries than in the past.
The Major leagues also know that hitters get used to seeing these outlier pitchers if exposed more than two or three times. So now starters are throwing harder, pitching fewer innings to avoid overexposure, and that type of usage is leading to more arm injuries.
Gone are the days of heavyweight starters going deep into games for epic pitching duels. It’s now just a matter of unloading hard-throwing bullpen pitcher after hard-throwing bullpen pitcher until the game is over. Repeat the next night.
So how does a knuckleball pitcher fit into this scheme?
The answer may hold the key to your wondering — are there still knuckleball pitchers?
The most advanced trackers in the Major Leagues cannot reliably gauge the knuckleball. Many of the trackers simply read “no pitch” when the RPM dips below a certain threshold (usually 500 RPM). And teams don’t know what makes a good knuckleball.
Is it release height? Extention? What’s a good RPM or spin axis?
There’s simply not enough data to inform executives who make pitching decisions for the MLB.
And are knuckleballers exposed the third time through the lineup? Of course, the answer is no but try to explain that to an MLB executive who can’t look at the data.
The Major Leagues would do well to bring the knuckleball back. The slower pace of the knuckleball would work really well as an opener. Imagine facing Tim Wakefield’s 65 MPH flutterball before having to regear your timing for 95+ MPH fastball? It would be impossible.
But there are rumblings that the MLB is trying to bring back the pitchers duel by changing rules to force starting pitchers to go at least six innings. If that’s the case, then a knuckleballer would easily be able to navigate six innings without any risk of injury and that would help tamp down this epidemic of elbow and shoulder injuries at baseball’s highest level.
Plus, baseball is simply better when there are old-school knuckleballers taking the hill. It brings me back to my very first experience with the pitch as a kid who snuck down behind the backstop to watch Wakefield’s wobbler against the backdrop fo the green monster. It started a lifetime of fascination with the pitch and is the single most impressionable sports moment of my life.
And it was the great privilege of my life to warmup in minor league ballpark bullpens only to see a father bring over his child to show him the knuckleball. It reminded me of my father and our experiences at Fenway together.
I’m hoping more kids can be similarly inspired, but we’ll have to hope for a knuckleball revival at the MLB level.
I’m doing my part with Knuckleball Nation and there are a few young committed pitchers who have a chance. Hang in there. It’s a longterm project.