Posted on 05/26/2017 3:09:00 PM PDT by TBP
Growing up, Dylan Rosnick just wanted to play baseball, a simple enough request for a child growing up in the Loudoun County exurbs.
He wanted to tie his shoes, too, and hold a pencil the right way and button his shirt and brush his teeth. There’s not a lot of guidance, though, for a child with Proteus syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects fewer than one in 1 million births worldwide, according to the National Institutes of Health.
It causes overgrowth in bones, skin and other tissues. Those organs grow out of proportion with other tissues in the body.
For Rosnick, the most obvious features impacted by the condition are his fingers. Three on each hand are overgrown, maybe six inches long and the width of an extra-wide thumb. Great pitchers are often defined by one dominant pitch developed over years of trial and error. Take Mariano Rivera’s cutter, Randy Johnson’s fastball, Roger Clemens’s splitter.
Rosnick has that, just not by choice. His fastball tops out at 65 mph, well below what high school hitters are used to seeing, because his fingers spend more time wrapped around the ball, reducing his velocity. But when Rosnick uses those larger fingers to apply a little pressure to either side of the baseball, it causes it to dance across the plate.
“When we saw that, it jumped out at us,” Champe Coach Joe McDonald said. “And not in a bad way. We thought, what could we do with that?”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It’s better than Justin Verlander’s right now.
Is Justin Verlander pitching in high school?
Further proof that 'women weaken legs.'
Yeah, it sounds like something George "the Shill" Will would write …
Velocity is overrated to big time hitters. It just goes out faster and longer. Any pitcher grooving a 90 mph plus will get fenced. The key is movement and deception. Maybe he could develop a knuckle ball also with those fingers so long.
R A Dickey reinvented his career with the knuckleball, and won a Cy Young in 2012. He will have a long career if he can develop a nice pitch.
Control
Movement on the pitch
Velocity.
In that order.
Note that velocity comes last.
Velocity is overrated. You need control (location) or you’re not going anywhere. If you can’t throw strikes, you can’t pitch.
A good fastball helps, but if you can get people out with the other pitches (”junk”0, you can do well. Orlando Hernandez wasn’t especially fast, but he had a funky motion and effective control.
Even a guy who can throw a ball down the pipe at 120 mph will eventually get creamed.
MLB batters aren't stupid
They will always adjust to a juicy fastball, no matter how hard it is thrown.
Put it down the middle of the plate and kapow!
The pitchers with the fastest velocity can ONLY be effective if they have a change-up, or something else in their repertoire.
Maybe not 120. There is a certain speed at which it's physically impossible to catch up with the ball. According to Tony Gwynn Jr., son of one of the greatest hitters ever, that is about 105 or so.
The only pitcher I’ve ever heard of who was successful on basically one pitch was Mariano Rivera. Mo threw the cutter almost exclusively.
Have you ever heard of the knuckleball?
Wilbur Wood, Phil Niekro, Hoyt Wilhelm, Charlie Hough, Tim Wakefield, RA Dickey, Steven Wright?
There are actually a bunch of them in the HoF. They don’t get as much of a chance because of the way scouts are impressed only withy raw velocity nowadays, which is a shame.
Freegards
http://imgur.com/gallery/MbYee
RA Dickey throwing something out of a bugs bunny cartoon. A true corkscrew knuckleball.
Freegards
Yes, the kncukler can be effective if thrown well, but it’s dangerous if thrown badly.
Bob Uecker was once asked, “What’s teh best way to catch a knuckleball?”
He said, “Wait till it stops rolling and pick it up.”
(BTW, Charlie Hough was another. I think Tom Candiotti adopted one late in his career.)
Change ups and breaking balls are feel pitches compared to a fastball. A pitcher needs to get the feel of them, it might take a while. Usually fastball command comes much quicker. The problem with the knuckleball is it is the ultimate feel pitch, you don’t have it you are in trouble quick. You have to do it without spinning the baseball, and somehow throw strikes when you manage to not spin it, because it is moving all over.
Hitting major league pitching is very very hard. Try throwing a baseball without spinning it to major league hitting and be successful. There’s a reason they have always been kind of rare.
Freegards
My dad used to throw knucklers when we’d play catch. Even with a softball, he could get that thing to dance. I got beaned a couple of times as the ball flight is so unpredictable.
That gif of Dickey was an 80+ mph knuckleball. It was the year he won the cy young, he threw back to back one hitters if I recall.
Many folks mess around with it playing catch, but not from 60 feet six inches for strikes that would get major league hitters out.
Freegards
Even the catcher can barely follow it.
He threw that thing 80+ mph. There’s only two knucklers in the bigs currently, RA Dickey for the Braves and Steven Wright for the Red Sox. At least to my understanding. I will always try to watch a knuckleball game. You never know what you will see.
Freegards
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