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Report from the road --- Junkball pitchers in action April 25, 2005 I saw two junkballers this week, the first in Richmond and the second in Anaheim. Jared Fernandez pitched for the Louisville RiverBats when they faced Richmond on Sunday and gave them 6 2/3 innings of very good pitching. Fernandez is a 33-year-old minor league journeyman who throws a knuckleball and works exclusively from the stretch. I have seen Tim Wakefield work before, against the Orioles in 2002, and it was a treat. Tim Raines, Sr. flattened out his stance and drove a homerun over the right field fence at Camden Yards. The younger Orioles flailed miserably that game. I am told there are two ways to handle a knuckleballer when you face one…..you can swing regularly and hope to make contact…or you can flatten out your stance and shorten your swing hoping to make contact. There is a third way --- wait until you get the knuckleballer into a fastball count and try to drive his fastball. The knuckleballer usually has a horrible fastball, which is why he depends upon junk to get batters out. That’s what Carlos Mendez and Scott Pratt did. Both took Fernandez deep when they got into a fastball count where Fernandez had to throw his best fastball. I am estimating it may have reached 80 MPH. All told, Fernandez struck out four R-Braves until his removal, and gave up only one run. It was a shame to see the Bats bullpen let in two runs to tie the game. Even watching Fernandez warm up was a treat, seeing his knuckleball float in the wind (try explaining to a non-fan how a knuckleball works if you want to spend an afternoon being frustrated) and watching the other assorted junk he threw. I know I saw a long, slow curveball which would be described as a backdoor curveball to a right handed batter, and at least one other curveball which had a sharper break. No wonder the young Braves were befuddled. In an interesting situation, Richmond pitcher Sam McConnell, who also threw a respectable game, came up in the third with a runner on first and tried to bunt. All three pitches were knuckleballs which Sam missed. In the fifth, Sam came up again with a runner on second, and saw nothing but fastballs which he swung away at and missed. I think a more reasonable call in that situation would have been to have him try to bunt the fastballs to advance the runner to third. I enjoyed watching McConnell work Edwin Encarnacion. After throwing a first inning, first strike fastball down the middle of the plate, which Encarnacion immediately jumped out of his shirt and drove over the left center wall, McConnell settled down and worked him well. The next time up, Encarnacion did not see a ball squarely over the plate. Instead, he saw a mix of breaking pitches and high heat. I saw my second junkballer in Anaheim (I notice they call it Angels Stadium in Anaheim these days) in the person of Jamie Moyer. The scoreboard in the Big A (I am a traditionalist) has a speed reading on it. One of Moyer’s breaking pitches hit 56 MPH on the radar gun. He worked between 60 and high 70 MPH all afternoon. One pitch seemingly dropped because it ran out of gas right in front of the plate --- the drop was that pronounced. Moyer gave up three runs in seven innings and frustrated the A’s tremendously, except for Vladimir Guerrero and Steve Finley, who both hit home runs. Guerrero had to dig a ball out of the dirt and drove it over the left field fence. After seeing him drive that one, I have to say, I would not know how to get him out. Finley, the veteran, waited until he got his pitch and then drove it. I have no empirical data to back it up, but it seems to me that the older veterans are the guys who hit the junkballers well. Guys who have been around the game a long time know how to approach these guys and get make the adjustments needed to hit the junk, or be patient and wait until they get a good pitch to hit, Guerrero excluded! --- John
Kazlo |
