Furthermore

Furthermore

Not only do I want fewer pitchers on a staff, I want them throwing an array of pitches now out-of-fashion.  Call it my guerilla war against the boppers.

Hitting right now is all about the launch angle.  Ever bigger guys want the ball over the plate, waist down to the knees, the better to drive deep into the stands.  This is why I like White Sox starter Lucas Giolito, who consistently throws high strikes.  You can’t launch a ball that comes in at the letters.  (Are you listening, daughter?)

Being a Sox fan of a certain age, I’m also a believer in the knuckleball as thrown by Hoyt Wilhelm and Wilbur Wood.  Wilhelm came to the Sox at the age of 39 and pitched outstanding relief on the South Side for six seasons, 1963-1968.  He never pitched fewer than 81 innings and never had an ERA higher than 2.64; in fact, he had five seasons with an ERA of 1.99 or lower.  Wilhelm then managed to pitch another four years after leaving the Sox.

Wood was almost as good, but different, switching from reliever to starter once Chuck Tanner took over as manager in 1971.  Wood had four straight years of twenty or more wins followed by a season where he went 16-20.  If the knuckleball (which is actually thrown by digging your fingertips into the ball) allowed Wilhelm to throw a lot of innings in relief, it allowed Wood to throw from 320 to 376.2 (1972) as a starter.  The knuckleball thrown right does away with the need for extra pitchers, relievers or starters.

Hitters love to hit fastballs. They hate the knuckler because it stays in the 70s, if not lower.  (Managers and catchers hate it because the grip leads to unpredictability, as evidenced by increased wild pitches and passed balls.)  But there are at least two other pitches that can also leave batters unsure and unsteady at the plate.

First is the screwball, which breaks opposite of a curveball.  When a right-hander throws a curve, it breaks into a left-handed hitter and away from a right-handed hitter.  Well, the screwball does the exact opposite.  The knock on the screwball is that the motion puta increased stress on the pitcher’s elbow, but some recent research questions that assumption.  As luck would have it, Hector Santiago of the Sox throws a good screwball.  If pitching coach Don Cooper is awake, he might want to have Santiago show teammates how it’s done.

Last but not least we have the palm ball, held, yes, in the palm of the pitcher’s hand.  It’s a kind of super changeup used by the likes of Trevor Hoffman, Jim Palmer and Satchel Paige.  Imagine a relief staff featuring knuckleball, screwball, palm ball; the big boppers would hate it.  Just for added misery, I might even throw in a fork ball or two.