LOS ANGELES, CA — When was the last time we talked about knuckleball pitchers? They were always those guys who couldn’t get outs or had lost their velocity, but found a way to stay in the game with this “flutterball.” There are other names for this crazy pitch: the floater, the dancer, the butterfly ball, the ghostball, and the bug.
The “Golden Era” for this pitch was the 1960’s and 1970’s, with Hoyt Wilhelm and Phil Niekro as its masters. In 1945, the Washington Senators had a four-man starting rotation of knuckleballers. Imagine that? So who was the best knuckleball pitcher of all time? Without a doubt, it was Phil Niekro. The Hall of Fame starter, inducted in 1997, baffling hitters for 24 seasons until he was 48—won 318 games—which still holds as the only knuckleball pitcher to reach 300 wins on the mound.
There have only been a few left-handed knuckleball pitchers in baseball, including Wilbur Wood, who is often considered the best lefty floater thrower in history, and Ryan Feierabend, who started a game in 2019 as the first lefty knuckleballer to do so in 20 years at that time.
But the best season ever by a knuckleballer was R.A. Dickey in 2012. He began his pitching career with the Texas Rangers at age 26 and was just awful for five years with them. He was traded to the Mariners, the Twins, and, eventually, the Mets when he was 35.
That’s when he developed the pitch that would put him in the history books. He never threw his knuckleball like a floating meatball. He could throw it harder than anyone, and as everyone in baseball knows, a ball with speed that has any movement is tough to hit.
Dickey’s knuckleball would be clocked at anywhere from 75 to 80 mph when the average for that pitch was 65-70 mph. In 2012, he led the National League in batters faced, 927, innings pitched with 233.2, with 230 strikeouts, five complete games, three shutouts, and finished with a record of 20-6. All of that culminated in the only Cy Young Award ever given to a knuckleball pitcher in Major League history. He didn’t have a long career as a knuckler like Niekro, but in 2012, he was the most exciting pitcher in baseball.
The game has changed over the years, and there is only one active knuckleballer today: 30-year-old Matt Waldron of the San Diego Padres. He is not anywhere near the greats who mastered this pitch, but he is still in the big leagues. Maybe he can catch that magic that Dickey found.
Will we ever see a pitcher who can dominate with this unique pitch again? Will we ever see a knuckleball pitcher who can have a career in the Big Leagues and whose name we remember?
Hey, did you ever think we would see a pitcher who could dominate on the mound and hit 50 home runs in a season, every year? Never say never.
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