“My biggest thing on how to read batters was to learn how to follow foul balls,” says Wakefield. For righty batters, “pushing” the foul right means they’re reacting late, and “pulling” the foul left means they’re swinging too soon but are almost on the money. For some strange reason, batters swing under the ball much more frequently than over the ball, despite the fact that knuckleballs tend to swerve randomly in all directions – up, down and sideways. The following stills from MLB.TV show two examples where the batter and the catcher both made the same mistake when facing a Dickey knuckleball. In both cases, the batter missed the ball by an inch or two and the ball hit the edge of the catchers glove. The pitch has a high success rate if thrown correctly, but if not, hitters will likely hit the ball out of the park.
For either style, release the ball at the hip, squeezing your fingers together as you snap the ball out of your fingertips. To keep ball spin at a minimum, your fingers should come off the ball simultaneously. You can see by the complexity of the explanation of how to grip and throw a knuckleball, the extreme difficulty in learning to master the pitch, and if you don’t master it, don’t throw it with any regularity. It’s alright to sneak it in every now and then, as it can be effective as an off speed pitch. (4.) Perhaps surprisingly, the pitching motion and arm speed for throwing a knuckleball is no different than any other pitch, because it’s arm speed that creates the momentum for the ball to travel.
Some pitchers will grip the ball with their fingernails to throw a knuckleball, but the pressure on the fingernails comes from those same knuckles, so the outcome is the same. A knuckleball is thrown with normal arm action, but the wrist remains stiff until the baseball has completely left the hand. When thrown well with little to no spin, the ball feels like it slips out of your palm. Instead, you will feel like it “shoots” out as the ball leaves your fingertips. Lastly, as far as location goes, aim for the top-middle of the strike zone and hope for the best.
But since a knuckleball has very little spin, it behaves more erratically. As of 2021, four primary knuckleball pitchers are in the Baseball Hall of Fame today. The four pitchers in the hall of fame include Phil Niekro, Ted Lyons, Jesse Haines, and Hoyt Wilhelm. All four of these pitchers had a baseball WHIP below 1.35, which shows how effective they were at reducing hits and limiting walks per inning. Big leaguers are always looking for ways to stay relevant in the game.
The pitch won’t look any different at all until you’re just about to release it from your hand. With the four-finger grip, only your thumb will be providing stability. Remember that if a grip does not feel comfortable, it will not be easy to throw a pitch successfully. Get throwing off a mound so that you are used 2-seam fastball to the push off you need and all the differences of throwing it off flat ground and a mound. The ball rests against the palm and that’s what allows the forward momentum of the arm to create speed on the ball . Once the momentum starts going forward, the ball starts to fly away from the palm by inertia and gravity.
Otherwise, they will not develop a good fast ball, change up, or other important pitches. The two fingers and thumb must remain in contact with the ball and release the ball at the exact same time. This triangle position and release is what prevents the ball from rotating, which gives it it’s butterfly effect.
Like how it is difficult for batters and catchers to follow knuckleball pitches, umpires also have a hard time. Sometimes a knuckleball will land directly in the strike zone, but the zigzag behavior might confuse the umpire, and they might make the wrong call. Like how some calls might not go for strikes, some balls might go as strikes due to the strange movement. When originally developed, the knuckleball was used by a number of pitchers as simply one pitch in their repertoire, usually as part of changing speeds from their fastball. At the same time, pitchers rarely focus on the knuckleball if they have reasonable skill with more standard pitches, so knuckleball pitchers have become quite rare. The knuckleball pitch is difficult to master because if you get it wrong, the ball will just be a slow, straight pitch that major league hitters will hit out of the ballpark every time.
This makes the pitch difficult for batters to hit, but also difficult for pitchers to control. The challenge also extends to the catcher—who must at least attempt to catch the pitch—and the umpire, who must determine whether the pitch was a strike or ball. On occasion, teams have traded knuckleball pitchers and their catchers in the same transaction.
From 2001 – 2006, R.A Dickey would consistently yield a 1.6 WHIP, which was alright. After experimenting with the knuckleball grip, he reduced that WHIP to around 1.2 from 2010 – 2017. The addition of the knuckleball to this arsenal was able to rejuvenate and prolonged his career in the big leagues. Other names for the knuckleball have generally alluded to its motion and slower speed. These include the flutterball, the floater, the dancer, the butterfly ball, the ghostball, and the bug.