Past time for NFL to consider 'bullpen drive-closers' as part of QB roles? [Tebow vanity]

Maybe 8 or 9 different receivers (of various title). And no actually that’s the indication timing and rhythm is what the game is all about. The structure of NFL offense now is read and know how your team is going to react. From snap to pass is an average of 2.4 seconds, QBs are throwing to spots they know their player will be based on pre-snap read, and the only reason they know that is repetition. And no teams don’t run 55% of the time inside the 30, in the modern NFL 3rd and inches is a passing down.

And no teams don’t run 55% of the time inside the 30, in the modern NFL 3rd and inches is a passing down.

When Tebow headed up the 2011 Broncos, once the ball got to the 31 yard line of the opposition or inside of that, they ran the ball fifty nine percent of the time.

If you've got a QB who while inside the red zone, runs the ball in for a score 37 to 38 percent of the time, runs the ball for a first down just as often, then we're not even talking about your "average NFL" team...and to think this article was addressing the "average NFL" team...as if the "average NFL" team would buy into what this article highlighted isn't paying close attention.

And in general with less room to work tight in the end zone is considered to be the spot QBs need to be more accurate, not less, so you’re really not going to have a guy who’s not good enough for midfield but good enough to close the drive.

Most passes inside the 30 of the opposition these days isn't a direct end zone route...more & more relying upon YAC. The toughest defensive assignments are when they know the QB has legs for either scrambling for positive yardage or scrambling for extra finding a receiver open.

This isn't simplistic "good enough" or "not good enough" ... or they wouldn't likely be in an NFL uniform... it's about throwing wrinkles to the defense

In baseball, managers will bring in lefties to throw to lefty batters. They might bring in a speedy pinchrunner @ 3b to force the infield to play in with less than 2 outs...

Your "not good enough for midfield" comment is like critiquing a baseball manager who brings in a reliever for a starter ... even tho that reliever is "not good enough" for for the starting rotation.

Look up average ERA for pitchers per times through the batting order. The more times you see a pitcher generally the easier it is to hit off him.

Yes, and when you look up the NFL teams in 2014 who struggled scoring TDs in the red zone...

...Especially...
...the Jets...
...Jacksonville...
...Buffalo...

...Even tho the closer you get to the goal line, the easier it is to score...teams like the Jets were only scoring TDs thirtysix percent of the time once they got to the red zone...

So just as starting pitchers struggle with increased exposure vs. some hitters, some QBs seem to struggle more with redzone pressure.

Soccer, basketball, and hockey (and tons of other) players are expected to read dynamically-changing offenses and defenses and change their game accordingly, I don’t see why it would be such a stretch for a football player to do it. The entire sport is admitting that their players are morons that can’t walk and chew gum.

Soccer, basketball, and hockey (and tons of other) players are expected to read dynamically-changing offenses and defenses and change their game accordingly, I don’t see why it would be such a stretch for a football player to do it.

And yet you don't apply this concept to baseball?

No critiques for baseball mgrs who pinchhit when the ones they are batting for should be able to "handle" the pitcher on the mound? What about critiques for mgrs who take out a pitcher who's only been throwing for a third of an inning? 2/3rds of an inning? An inning? Those pitchers are expected to be able, with the pitch calling of the catcher, to be able to hold down the opposition, are they not?

Why do they need to leave in favor of another bullpen pitcher?

Seems to me you apply expectations to some professional athletes, while letting others off the hook.

That was a team with a very bad QB who threw completion less than 50% of the time relying on the one thing he could consistently do: run. The league as a whole is a passing league. Nobody has their QB run by design more than 10% of the time, even teams with good running QBs (Seahawks, Steelers, Colts) know volunteering your QB to get tackled is a risky plan. Just look at the Redskins, planning on running the QB often cost Shanahan his job, and the damage he left behind is probably going to cost Gruden his job.

The article says “past time for the NFL to consider”, anything the league should consider would be for the average NFL team. If it isn’t for the average team then it is NOT time for the league to consider. If it’s only something to be considered for teams who have QBs that can’t actually throw the ball that’s not the league, and those teams would probably be better served by getting one QB that doesn’t suck rather than squading multiple bad QBs.

Inside the 30, but eventually you’re going to be in the tight zone. You’re going to be inside the 10. You’re going to be goal line. And then you need a QB that’s more accurate.

Actually it is as simple as good enough or not. You either can throw accurately in tight space or not. Wrinkles are nice, they help keep the defense guessing. But at the end of the day the QBs job is to complete passes.

Baseball and football are VASTLY different games. 90% of baseball boils down to a one on one battle between the pitcher and the hitter. Football is almost never a one on one battle, it’s 11 guys trying to out smart and out perform 11 other guys. Baseball pitchers are easily divided into guys that have the skill set to go multiple rotations and guys that don’t. The relief pitcher concept is built around realizing that your guy with just one pitch he does well will get killed if he has to go through the rotation multiple times, but if you put him in a situation of 9 outs or less he’ll be OK. Relief pitchers are innately not as good as starter, but they can fill a roll.

There’s no role in the NFL for relief QBs, because there’s no set of down available for the guy whose not good enough to be the starter. We’ve seen that in the failure of the wild cat, which basically was doing exactly what you propose, and worked OK for about half a season. Then defenses go wise to the fact that the offense was about to hand the ball to a guy who can’t throw for crap, and now it’s dead. Remember the Jets picked up Tebow specifically to become a wild cat heavy offense, and then every time they tried to use it it failed, not only did Tebow not accomplish anything, but getting yanked out for random plays killed Sanchez’s rhythm, and they have since fired everybody involved in that idea.

I said “others”. I’m not going to sit here and list every sport for you with an analysis. I’d spend the rest of my natural life on that post.

I’m not going to sit here and list every sport for you with an analysis. I’d spend the rest of my natural life on that post.

(Hey, it's REAL simple: This article wasn't about "every sport." It compared baseball with football...two sports)

Look up average ERA for pitchers per times through the batting order. The more times you see a pitcher generally the easier it is to hit off him. A big part of the offensive low problems and length/pace of game problems currently in baseball are because the bullpens are generally more effective and more used than ever before, while taking more time in pitching changes.

There's another factor people might wish to ponder when talking about relief pitching. It's not often thought about, and until I read Whitey Herzog's You're Missin' a Great Game even I never thought about it:

How many pitches did a relief pitcher throw in the bullpen before his manager brought him into the game; and, did his manager warm him up, sit him back down, then warm him up subsequently before bringing him in?

You won't necessarily see a reserve quarterback on the sideline throwing all that many warmup passes during a game. But you will see relief pitchers firing away in the bullpen in the event of trouble in the inning. You will see, still too often, a relief pitcher warmed up, sat back down, then warmed up once again. You may even see that happen two or more days' in succession. (This ain't football. We do this every day.---Earl Weaver.)

And what many people don't stop to ponder is that that reliever who was warmed up, sat down, warmed up again, and then brought into a game might already have thrown the equivalent of four or even five innings of baseball. Even a reliever who was warmed up but once before being brought in might have thrown the equivalent of three innings' ball before going into the game.

Herzog told the story that, when he had relievers on his 1980s Cardinals who moved elsewhere but returned to the Cardinals, they'd tell him which managers were clueless enough about their bullpen men by way of things like warming them, sitting them, warming them again, watching them get murdered once they finally did take the mound, and wondering why those pitchers couldn't get anyone out. Herzog singled out Tommy Lasorda (Dodgers) and Pete Rose (Reds) as the two worst such offenders.

Well, [Lasorda] won 1,600-some ballgames and two World Series, and that's no accident, but the fly in his ointment---and it baffled me, because Tommy was a pitcher himself---was that he never figured out how to handle a bullpen. He'd take a reliever and warm him up four or five times and not use him; then, he'd do the same thing the next day. The day after that, he'd put the guy in a game. He'd have nothing out there, and Tommy'd say, "Hell, you ain't pitched in two days, what's the matter with you?" Some managers think if a guy's not actually in a game, he's not pitching. But if he's tossing on the sidelines, man, he's getting hot. Over the years I dealt some of my pitchers to L.A.---[John] Tudor, [Todd] Worrell, Ricky Horton, Ken Dayler---and they always came back with the same report: Tommy was still messing up the pen.
A guy's only got so many innings in his arm. That's why I would never let Bruce Sutter or Todd Worrell or Lee Smith, my bullpen stoppers, warm up unless I knew that they were about to go in. If I didn't use them this inning, then they'd pitch the next one. I would never let them warm up without putting them in the game.
Pete Rose was like Tommy. Wonderful baseball man, but he was impaired when it came to handling pitchers. Here he had three worldclass relievers, Norm Charlton, Rob Murphy, and Rob Dibble, all in the same pen. Two were lefties; Dibble, the righty, threw 100 miles an hour. With those three guys on your side, you shouldn't lose games after the sixth. Not too damn many. But Pete found a way.
He'd get Murphy up in the third; he'd warm him up in the fourth. Then he'd sit him down. He'd get Charlton up in the fifth. Sometimes I'd look down there and he'd have both lefthanders going at the same time. Why would you warm 'em both up at once? You're only going to use one lefty or the other! Then, after he'd worked 'em out three or four times, Pete would put one in the game and be surprised he had no zip. "He can't be tired," he'd say. "He ain't pitched in three days!" Somebody counted how many times he warmed Murphy up one year and it was over 200. I like Pete, boy---but I loved managing against him.
---Whitey Herzog, in You're Missin' a Great Game.

To the original poster: You missed three men who really helped bump baseball toward the real era of the relief specialist:

* Satchel Paige, 1948-53, American League. The Negro Leagues legend was used primarily as a reliever---and a solid one---when he finally made the Show. His legend helped bring people to the park to see him, his pitching kept them there and made a few opposing managers nervous. (Casey Stengel merely added to Paige's legend when, seeing Paige warming up in the pen, he'd hector his Yankee hitters, Get your runs now---Father Time is coming!) Helped the 1948 Indians win a pennant, then grinned and bore it with the last lame St. Louis Browns teams, though he did lead the American League in games finished in 1952 though it was clear enough that the real Father Time was finally catching up to him.

* Joe Page, 1947-49 Yankees. Big guy. Threw like a howitzer. His career year was 1949 (including winning the first World Series MVP award); the next season, felt a pop in his hip and the spring after that something blew in his arm. Never the same pitcher again; his taste for carousing didn't help, but Page

* Jim Konstanty, 1950 Phillies. Konstanty was 37 when he won the 1950 National League MVP, making his living in relief with the Whiz Kids Phillies; never a power pitcher, Konstanty made his living with a tight slider and a dancing changeup, and set a record by appearing in 74 games that season. He remains the only relief pitcher ever to win the National League MVP and was credited retroactively with 22 saves in addition to his 16-7 won-lost record, and his 2.66 ERA, though his fielding-independent pitching average of 3.77 tells you how often and how smartly Konstanty pitched to his defenders considering he wasn't a strikeout pitcher: 56 punchouts in 152 innings that year.

Now, I wonder: So much talk for years enough about the one-inning closer . . . yet how many innings' worth of warmup pitches did the like of Dennis Eckersley, Trevor Hoffman, or The Mariano himself pitch before getting into each night's game?

A good post. Burning a bullpen isn’t just the innings vactually pitched, it’s getting people up and throwing and then sitting them, then maybe getting them hot again. I think it’s much better than it used to be, generally. They still burn out after a while, especially the non-dedicated spot guys, who get up and down more.

Mariano used to throw a weighted ball for part of his warm up, if I recall.

The first ‘dedicated’ relief pitcher in the Hall was Hoyt Wilhelm. Ted Williams always swore that he had the best knuckler he ever saw. And that’s the feeliest of the feel pitches, it’s just on when it’s on and off when it’s off. And he didn’t have any time to get the feel of it, as he was mostly relieving.

“Wilhelm spent seven seasons in the minors before getting to the majors with the New York Giants in 1952. He’d been a starter throughout his minor league career, but Giants manager Leo Durocher moved him to the bullpen. All Wilhelm did was lead the National League in ERA and appearances as a rookie.
A few years later, Orioles manager Paul Richards gave Wilhelm the chance to be starter again after he came over from the Indians in August 1958. In just his third start for Baltimore, Wilhelm threw a no-hitter against the Yankees on Sept. 20, striking out eight. He remained in the Orioles rotation in 1959 and won the AL’s ERA title, though he moved back to the bullpen again the following season. Richards helped make this success possible by devising a larger catcher’s mitt that was 41 inches in diameter—later reduced to 38 by rule—for Wilhelm’s receivers to use, cutting down the passed balls that plagued him and so many other knuckleballers.

Wilhelm settled in as the premier relief pitcher in an era dominated by pitching. He posted ERAs under 2.00 in five consecutive seasons from 1964-68 with the White Sox, doing all of it after his 40th birthday. While some marveled at Wilhelm’s longevity—he was the majors’ oldest player from 1966 through the end of his career in 1972—he himself was quite pragmatic about it. He took care of himself, and he recognized that the knuckleball wasn’t as taxing on his arm as conventional pitches would be.
Wilhelm also believed that the knuckleball wasn’t a pitch that could be taught. A pitcher either had a knack for it or he didn’t. Wilhelm certainly did, perhaps better than anyone ever has.

“He had the best knuckleball you’d ever want to see,” said Brooks Robinson. “He knew where it was going when he threw it, but when he got two strikes on you, he’d break out one that even he didn’t know where it was going.”

He also got the purple heart at the battle of the bulge. Pitched in 1,070 games with a career ERA of 2.52.

FReegards

I could be wrong, but I think Mariano Rivera would throw the weighted ball maybe two or three pitches worth just to get started, then pick up a normal ball and finish his warming up.

Hoyt Wilhelm was in his own class, of course, but I've always noticed that knuckleball pitchers at once fascinate and unnerve baseball people. Matter of fact, the year R.A. Dickey was gunning for and won the Cy Young Award---he was the first knuckleballer to win it---I did a little run-down (for my blog Throneberry Fields Forever) on how pitchers who were either pure knuckleballers or featured the pitch as a regular part of their repertoire did in Cy Young voting. I listed and discussed these pitchers in the order in which their careers began:

Wilhelm---Never factored in Cy Young voting. Though he did once inspire Leo Durocher (who managed him on the Giants) to regret making a relief pitcher of him, when Wilhelm opened 1959 as a starter and with a 9-0 record astride an ERA below 1.00: "If I'd ever had any idea he could go the distance like that I’d have used him as a starter when I had him on the Giants. Maybe I made a big mistake."

Al Worthington: Like Wilhelm, Worthington put in time as a starter before being moved permanently to relief while with the Giants. He never factored in any Cy Young voting, and he used the knuckleball in hand with an array of other off-speed pitches—he didn’t go to the pitch as more of his money pitch until 1966. Once he settled in in Minnesota (he was sold to the Twins by the Reds in 1964) he personified the better-with-age adage. He was one of the American League’s best relief pitchers from there until his retirement after the 1969 season, a year after he led the American League with 18 saves.

Worthington made a reputation as a man of integrity even when it cost him Show time; he once opted to stay in the minors rather than look the other way when the White Sox (to whom he belonged in 1960) were known to be stealing signs rapaciously enough. (He didn’t return to the majors until 1964.) When he was 38, Worthington came into a game against the Senators and pitched eight and two thirds innings of two-hit relief.

Bob Purkey: The knuckleballers didn’t even show up in the top four or five in Cy voting until 1962, when Purkey finished third in the vote (Hall of Famer Don Drysdale won the award) after going 23-5 and leading the National League with an .815 winning percentage. Bear in mind: from 1956 through 1966 (when Sandy Koufax won his staggering second consecutive and third overall), the Cy Young Award was given to one pitcher across the board.

Think about that: In 1962, Cy Young Award voters thought Bob Purkey—whose preponderant pitch was a pitch many still think either a gimmick or an illegitimate pitch—was the third-best pitcher in baseball, and some future sabermetricians (Bill James among them) would come to argue that Purkey might have been slightly more worthy of the 1962 Cy than Drysdale actually was. (It kind of makes you wonder, too, what might have been if Wilhelm, arguably a better pitcher than Purkey, hadn’t been sent back to the bullpen after 1959.)

A lot of the possible factor: Drysdale’s team went to the wire for the pennant, tying the Giants at season’s end—they lost in a three-game playoff to the Giants—while Purkey’s Reds finished third, six games out, and Cy Young voters in those years were usually inclined to think about pennant winners in hand with individual performances. The actual or perceived prejudice against the knuckleball may even have been the reason why, following his 1952-53 military service, it took Purkey four seasons to establish himself as a useful regular pitcher.

He was a very late bloomer, as it turned out. The Pirates signed him in 1948 (Purkey was a hometown signing), keeping him in the minors until he was drafted for military service (in the same seasons in which the Army kept Willie Mays), then used him mostly in relief from 1954-57, before trading him to the Reds after the 1957 season (for a no-name, Don Gross). In Cincinnati, Purkey became a rotation mainstay and a three-time All-Star, and was one of the keys to the Reds’ 1961 pennant. He hadn’t made the majors until he was 27 (two years younger than Wilhelm on arrival), he wasn’t thought of as a regular pitcher until he was 28, and his 1962 would be his career year and his last good year.

Purkey retired in 1966, after he had a quiet swan song with his first club, the Pirates. (The Reds traded him to the Cardinals after the 1964 season; he pitched usefully if unspectacularly for the Cardinals until they sold him to the Pirates coming out of spring training 1966.) He became a television sportscaster for a time in Pittsburgh, then launched a successful insurance business, before dying of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at 78 in 2008.

Phil Niekro: Knucksie actually finished second to fellow Hall of Famer Tom Seaver in the 1969 National League Cy Young voting. In 1978-79, after about a decade of earning no such votes, Niekro finished sixth in the league’s Cy voting each season, even as he posted a 21-20 record in 1979. In 1982, he led the National League in winning percentage and finished fifth in the Cy Young voting, the last time Niekro would finish in the award’s top ten vote.

Niekro would pitch 20 seasons for the Braves before they released him to be signed by the Yankees, where he made his final All-Star team; he’d win his 300th game during his Yankee days, not to mention setting the record Jamie Moyer would break in due course—the oldest man in baseball to throw a shutout. He spent time in Cleveland and Toronto before having a farewell tour of sorts with the Braves, retiring to manage an all-women’s baseball team and serve as sports advisor to a toy and game manufacturer.

Classic Niekro story: In his Yankee days, Lou Piniella was his manager. One night, Piniella and a couple of reporters were schmoozing in the Yankee hotel bar when Niekro walked through the lobby, well past the team curfew. When one of the reporters asked Piniella after that, he cracked, “Hell, I can’t tell Knucksie to go to bed—he’s older than I am!”

Wilbur Wood: Already a ten-year veteran as a relief pitcher, Wood was converted to starting by the White Sox in 1971. He finished third that year’s American League Cy Young voting (he went 22-13 with an astonishing 1.91 ERA), second in the following season’s vote, and fifth in 1973 . . . when he turned the unusual feat of winning 24 (leading the league for the second straight season) and losing 20. Wood would go from there to hang up a fourth straight 20+-win season before hanging up a second 20-game losing season.

For four years following his conversion to starting Wood was one of the best pitchers in the American League. His career was all but ended when Detroit’s Ron LeFlore smashed his kneecap with a low line drive in 1976. Wood underwent surgery and returned in due course, but he was never the same pitcher again and retired in 1978. Among his unusual feats are included a 1973 accomplishment in which he started the carryover of a suspended 21-inning game and won with five innings’ work, then started the regularly-scheduled game (against the Indians) and pitched a shutout.

Joe Niekro: Knucksie’s brother was one reason why the Hall of Famer finished sixth in the National League’s 1979 Cy voting: brother Joe finished second. (Bruce Sutter, another Hall of Famer and a relief pitcher in the bargain, won the award.) The following season, the younger Niekro finished fourth. He would never again see a top-ten Cy Young vote finish for himself. He wasn’t even close to big brother as a Hall of Fame candidate, but Joe Niekro did forge a very long and distinguished career.

Brother Joe, alas, is probably remembered most for a hilarious incident in 1987, when he toiled for the Twins. (He’d eventually make his only World Series appearance on that team.) During one 1987 game, umpire Steve Palermo caught Niekro with an emery board in his pocket. Niekro reached into his pockets and yanked them out with the board flying out to the ground, making blooper highlight reels for years to come and getting suspended ten games after then-American League president Dr. Bobby Brown refused to buy his story that he filed his nails between innings in the dugout.

Niekro retired when the Twins released him in 1988. He died of a brain aneurysm in 2006.

Classic anecdote: When fabled broadcaster Bob Uecker was elected to the Hall of Fame as a Frick Award winner, Uecker's hilarious induction speech (Willie Mays was in tears throughout from laughter) included a memory of catching Phil Niekro the day he faced brother Joe for the first time as the game's starting pitchers. Referring to the erratic knuckleball travel, Uecker cracked: "Their parents were sitting behind the plate. I saw more of their parents during that game than they saw of them that weekend."

Phil Niekro busted his gut laughing at that one.

Charlie Hough: Never finished in the top ten Cy Young Award voting; only ever made one All-Star team. He’s probably remembered best as being one of the three pitchers Reggie Jackson abused while hitting three straight home runs, on three straight pitches, in Game Six of the 1977 World Series. (Perhaps speaking of a good nature, Hough has been known to autograph photos showing Jackson hitting that bomb.) Like most knuckleballers, Hough was durable; he retired in 1994 as the last active major league player to have been born in the 1940s.

He’s since made his way as a pitching coach, including brief stints in that job for the Dodgers and the Mets.

Tom Candiotti: Like Hough, Candiotti never finished in the top ten Cy Young voting. He had a respectable career, though. And he did, however, get to portray a Hall of Fame knuckleballer on film after he retired from baseball.

Candiotti portrayed Hoyt Wilhelm in 61*, Billy Crystal’s loving if occasionally factually-challenged revisitation of the Roger Maris-Mickey Mantle home run chase of 1961. The scene in question: Baltimore manager Paul Richards brought Wilhelm in late to face Maris, in a game the Yankees had sewn up to clinch the American League pennant but in which Maris had already hit number 59 . . . and might yet have another in him, since he’d hit several long fouls and a to-the-wall fly out otherwise. (Maris was trying to hit number 60 at least, under commissioner Ford Frick’s arbitrary—and disingenuous—deadline of 154 games.)

Playing Wilhelm, Candiotti cocked his head to one side, with a look of sober determination on his face, as Richards threatened to fine him $5,000 if he threw Maris anything but knuckleballs. Maris (played by Barry Pepper, an actor whose physical resemblance to the real Roger Maris was stupefying) grounded out feebly back to the box, Wilhelm (Candiotti) picking it up toward the first base line and—with an unmistakeably somber look on his face—tagging Maris out gently on the chest.

Tim Wakefield: Got to finish third in the Cy Young voting in his third full major league season; never got anywhere near the top ten in Cy Young voting for the rest of his career. He had a long and somewhat distinguished career as an innings-eater, though, and he was one of the most popular Red Sox, yet he only ever got one World Series assignment in the two to which he went.

He's remembered most, unfortunately, for the gallant relief duel he mounted against Mariano Rivera in Game Seven of the 2003 American League Championship Series, a duel that ended when Aaron Boone parked Wakefield's first pitch of the bottom of the eleventh in the left field seats for game, set, pennant, and one last Boston heartbreak before the 2004 surreality . . .

A forgotten factoid: Wakefield was actually moved to the Boston bullpen in mid-1999, when Tom Gordon was injured; Wakefield nailed fifteen saves before Derek Lowe became the new Boston closer and Wakefield returned to the starting rotation.

His best game, perhaps: 15 April 2009. Knowing the Boston bullpen had gone eleven innings of relief the previous day, Wakefield convinced manager Terry Francona to leave him in for the distance: I understand the circumstances and I just wanted you to know: Whatever happens, don't take me out; let me keep going.. He took a no-hitter into the eighth inning and ended up going the distance for the win, making him the oldest Red Sox pitcher to pitch a complete game.

You’re forgetting what you’re original complaint is. I talked about reading offenses on-the-fly, listed several sports as comparison, and then you went on your “What about baseball?!” rant. Follow the conversation, I can only pull you along so much.

That Wilbur Wood run in the 70s is one of the great modern runs ever, like you say probably minimized due to the prevailing knuckleball sentiment.

1972:

379 innings, 2.51 ERA in 49 games. That’s not going to be done again unless somebody goes back to the 4 man rotation AND they have a knuckleballer.

Anyhow very cool knuckleball stuff you posted. Have you seen the recent documentary ‘Knuckleball!’? It’s a got a cool part where Wakefield, RA Dickey, Niekro, and Hough sit around and just talk throwing the flutter ball.

And here’s RA Dickey throwing something that looks like it came out of looney tunes. Supposedly Wilhelm could throw the corkscrew knuckleball at will. I’ll always try to watch a game where a knuckler is going, you never know what it is going to be. With today’s hitting approaches you would think there would be more than one in a regular rotation.

http://www.sportsgrid.com/mlb/watching-r-a-dickeys-knuckleball-in-slow-motion-proves-how-difficult-it-is-to-hit/

Freegards

I don't know that I ever saw two knuckleballers throwing quite the same type of knuckler. For a time Hoyt Wilhelm's White Sox teammate was Eddie Fisher and his knuckler tended to "sway" as opposed to Wilhelm's kind of twister.

Knuckelballers depend a lot on the elements to make that pitch do its thing. If you remember how Wilhelm was depicted in 61*, there was a pretty stiff wind in Baltimore's Memorial Stadium that night that, presumably, made the Wilhelm pitch swing and sway to the plate without being thrown particularly hard. (I remember watching Wilhelm and thinking his had to be about the most effortless delivery of any relief pitcher in that time. Wilbur Wood looked more like he was throwing a changeup but didn't look particularly taxed in his delivery, either.)

Watch a knuckleball pitcher on particularly windy days and see some real variations in the pitch's travel. And R.A. Dickey has often been described as throwing his knuckleball harder than the typical flutter pitcher throws it. So you never really know.

I haven’t seen that 61* movie, I will have to check it out. I have seen video of Wilbur Wood (he’s way before my time) and yes, he had a very fluid follow-through at the end. A lefty too, although I’m not sure if a knuckleballer has meaningful splits for batters.

I think the red sox and orioles both have knuckleballers in their minor league systems. I think it’s so rare anymore because of how scouts give considerations and the current day perception that the knuckleball is exclusively a fall back option trick pitch to implement after failure at ‘traditional pitching.’ And it does work that way sometimes. But Niekro and Wilhelm were knuckleballers pretty much from the start, and they are both in the hall. Now scouts concentrate on 6’6 guys that throw mid 90s in high school. With the hitting approaches of today you would think someone would be exploiting having a knuckler on the roster.

Freegards

Question: How do waning complete games by starting pitchers + the advent of baseball closers 'fit in' with a potential new NFL strategic paradigm shift?