The Knuckleballer Thread

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by struggles_mightily

Yeh, I agree. And I'm not sure that *anyone* should have 100 stamina, which suggests the ability to throw perpetually without any recognition of pitch count.

How about Joe "Iron Man" McGinnity, who used to pitch both games of a doubleheader?

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

How about Joe "Iron Man" McGinnity, who used to pitch both games of a doubleheader?

He had a clone that pitched the 2nd one.

[PhillieFever]

Originally Posted by bababui

Ive heard that knucklers dont want to be too fresh/strong because they occasionally throw it too hard and that puts more spin on the pitch.

Bouton used to constantly throw in the bullpen,and even between innings when he was pitching! He was almost obsessed about losing the touch

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

How about Joe "Iron Man" McGinnity, who used to pitch both games of a doubleheader?

I've done that with a guy in OOTP before, he didn't do too bad.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by StyxNCa

He had a clone that pitched the 2nd one.

Looked just like him, right? You bet.

[Afino]

In my fictional league, there's no one who throws a knuckleball who has a pitch rating higher than 5/10


No knucklers in my ML, but there's two in AAA and one in AA.


7 out of 1848 created pitchers throw it. I thought it seemed low at first, but that actually seems about right the more I think about it.

[JohnBigBoots]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

How about Joe "Iron Man" McGinnity, who used to pitch both games of a doubleheader?

Wilbur Wood also pitched both ends of a double header once.

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by JohnBigBoots

Wilbur Wood also pitched both ends of a double header once.

Bah. Iron Man McGinnity once pitched three complete game double headers during a single month.

[JohnBigBoots]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

Bah. Iron Man McGinnity once pitched three complete game double headers during a single month.

It would still take 2-3 Joe McGinnitys to equal one Wilbur Wood.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by struggles_mightily

Yeh, I agree. And I'm not sure that *anyone* should have 100 stamina, which suggests the ability to throw perpetually without any recognition of pitch count.

Halladay? At least in the Modern Era.

[struggles_mightily]

Originally Posted by RchW

Halladay? At least in the Modern Era.

He's only pitched more than 120 pitches in a start once this year. He did it twice during the whole of last season. He did do it five times in 2007; but not at all in 2006 and only once in 2005. Any further back, and you're getting back into his prime years (age 27 and younger), which probably aren't all that relevant when grading him today.

He was joint 1st in the AL in Pitches/GS in 2008; but was only tied 2nd in 2007; 39th in 2006; and 24th in 2005.

Immaculate, perfect, 100/100 stamina? I don't see that. A guy with that kind of stamina rating would be able to go 120+ pitches every time out, wouldn't he? A 100 rating suggests that he's way out on his own -- but that doesn't seem to be the case.

If one is going to award that designation to anyone, then surely it has to be a deadball-era guy, as other people have mentioned (when I made the comment originally, I was thinking about a modern major-league environment; but I think it should be rare in any context).

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

Can we get some discussion from beta testers who dealt with this issue?

With which issue, exactly?

As far as I know, pitchers with knuckleballs are given increased endurance. It isn't cut down by extra pitches. There isn't some sort of code that makes them improve as they get tired, to my knowledge.

[Afino]

Originally Posted by Nutlaw

With which issue, exactly?

As far as I know, pitchers with knuckleballs are given increased endurance. It isn't cut down by extra pitches. There isn't some sort of code that makes them improve as they get tired, to my knowledge.

Yep, all seven knuckleballers in my universe have staminas of

250 scale: 160, 196, 145, 173, 158, 159, 195.

However, only one has "starter" for my ML. Two have "bullpen/emergency starter", and the other four have "strictly bullpen" attached to them. Is that more of a result of their knuckleballs just not being that good? The four that have "strictly bullpen" have knuckleball ratings of 4/10 or below.

[Nutlaw]

Yeah, bad pitchers are typically kept to the bullpen.

[struggles_mightily]

Originally Posted by Afino

Is that more of a result of their knuckleballs just not being that good? The four that have "strictly bullpen" have knuckleball ratings of 4/10 or below.

Expect so. Nutlaw said in the old pinned "This is What the Pitching System is Like" thread that knucklers would not be deprived of starter status just for having an arsenal comprised of under three pitches.

EDIT: Aaaaand 'ee juss said it agiiiiiin. (Imagine this edit being said in the voice that Todd Stottlemyre says "and I just lost it again" in that audio recording where he goes crazy at some beat reporters. It makes the post more worthwhile.)

[Malleus Dei]

Originally Posted by JohnBigBoots

It would still take 2-3 Joe McGinnitys to equal one Wilbur Wood.

Yeah, but weight isn't everything.

Seriously, it would take about one and half Wilbur Woods (164 lifetime wins) to equal one Iron Man McGinnity (246 lifetime wins).

[tombair]

It seems that a 20/20 knuckleball and a good second pitch can make a pitching god.

Here are Dick Scherer's stats. He had a 20/20 knuckleball and a 14/20 cutter. In '52 and '53 he suffered two arm injuries that reduced his cutter to 9/20 and made him a mere mortal (a top 10 pitcher) for about 6 more years. So far he's had 5 out of the top 6 years (using VORP) in my league.

[Simmo13]

I think the 1945 Washington Senators had 4 knuckleballers in the rotation...now there's a job for a catcher.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by struggles_mightily

Immaculate, perfect, 100/100 stamina?

100 Stamina isn't perfect, just very high. If you allow ratings over 100, then the max is 125 or 126 (250 in the Player Editor), and even that's not perfect; it's just as high as the rating system will let you go.

For starters, while Stamina does affect how many pitches they can throw, I believe it has more impact on how long it takes to recover from being fatigued.

[CBL-Commish]

Originally Posted by Simmo13

I think the 1945 Washington Senators had 4 knuckleballers in the rotation...now there's a job for a catcher.

Sometime in the late 50s or early 60s somebody came up with the idea that a knuckleballer would be much more effective if he only threw knuckleballs, or nearly all knuckleballs. Like a lot of things in baseball this was strange and new and different and probably ridiculed, and shortly afterward universally accepted. By the 1970s the fastball/curve/change/knuckler pitcher had become extinct, and so far nobody has Jurassic Parked them back into reality.

But prior to ~1960 it was completely commonplace for many pitchers to use the knuckler as just another pitch. I think the Neyer/James guide speculated about numbers, and I don't remember exactly, but probably a quarter or more of all MLB pitchers threw a knuckler as part of a wider array of pitches.

Strange that in 1955 you had all kinds of starters, relievers, swingmen and whatever else throwing knucklers whenever they felt like it, but today we have a handful of knuckleballers working almost exclusively as starters, throwing almost exclusively knuckleballs. I'm not sure we're any better off because of this.