The knuckleball: The pitch of maturity

R.A. Dickey struggled Sunday against the Yankees.

Sabermetric types tend to be fascinated by knuckleballers, such as R.A. Dickey -- perhaps because the athletic skill involved in the pitch appears slight enough for us to imagine that we could be doing this.

But there are other reasons more tied to sabermetrics. Knuckleballers tend to break the mold of the statistics. The rules of thumb -- about strikeout rates, about batting average on balls in play -- that can be applied when evaluating pitchers through the stats generally don't apply to these guys.

Most obvious: Unlike most players (pitchers or position players), they usually reach their peak in their 30s. Dickey, for example, is a full decade past the age at which players are most likely to have their best season.

Which makes it impractical for an organization to try to develop knuckleball specialists.

The rules covering player contracts and team control of those contracts have molded themselves around the "normal" development of talent. Typically, when a marginal player reaches his mid 20s, the rules will either push him up to the major leagues or out of the organization.

And typically, knuckleballers are (a) marginal pitchers -- nobody with an adequate fastball takes up the flutterball; and (b) not ready at age 25 or 27 to pitch in the major leagues.

And so, as I described in the Monday print column, Dickey bounced around -- Texas, Milwaukee, Seattle, Minnesota -- before finally emerging. It wasn't that the other organizations didn't give him a chance; it was that he hadn't yet mastered what he needed to have mastered.

As for why most knuckleball specialists arrive late: I suspect emotional stability is a big factor.

Most athletes are aggressive people. They're not given to letting things happen; their preference is to force the action. One of the constant struggles for most players is to learn to "stay within themselves," to NOT always push the action.

That's even more true for knuckleball practitioners. Throw the pitch too hard, and it's going to spin, and if it spins, it won't do anything but get hit. Hard.

So the knuckleballer must develop a certain passivity, or at least a resignation to his fate. He is dependent upon a pitch he cannot command in the same way a conventional pitcher can command his stuff. The knuckleballer throws his pitch and hopes it does something.

Dickey has suggested that his current dominance is connected to his public disclosure of his sexual abuse and other demons. Purging his secrets in his memoirs leaves him with nothing to hide. Nothing that happens on the field can shame him. He is free to fail -- and free to succeed.

Knuckling down

Tim Wakefield on Monday pitched
seven innings against the Twins, allowing
three earned runs, striking out five
and walking none. 

I'd rather not see the Twins lose, but if they had to lose Monday night I would have preferred to see Tim Wakefield get the "W." No luck there, either; the veteran knuckleballer left with the lead, but Alfredo Aceves vultured the decision.

So we still don't have a truly active 200-game winner. Wakefield is stuck on 199.

Watching him toss his flutterball got me to pondering, once more, the apparently dying knuckleball. When I started paying attention to baseball (1969) there were quite a few accomplished knuckleballers — future Hall of Famers Phil Niekro and Hoyt Wilhelm, plus guys like Wilbur Wood (the rare left-handed knucklerballer) and Eddie Fisher — and a few others, such as Jim Bouton, throwing the pitch without great distinction.

Today there's Wakefield, 45 and clearly near the end of his career, and R.A. Dickey, whose record this season with the Mets doesn't look as strong as last season on the surface but really isn't that much worse.

The Twins had Dickey in 2009, and he gave them a half season of good work, then deteriorated rapidly. The Mets have used him almost strictly as a starter, and he's been pretty effective.

Dickey's 36, which is normally a bad sign. But it's a rare knuckleballer who flourishes before age 30. They start late and finish even later. I suspect the pitch requires a sense of fatalism a 20-something hasn't developed. Nobody really controls the knuckleball. The pitcher lets it go and hopes it does something between his hand and the bat.

Which is why knuckleballers are the last to get a chance. Managers like to be in control. We'll pitch this guy inside, that guy outside, and don't throw this one a breaking pitch in the strike zone. There's no control with a knuckleball.

Right now, Dickey is the future of the pitch, although I'm still holding out some hope for Charlie Haeger, who's only 27 and has had some moments in the bigs. None of those moments have come this year, however, and he's not fared well in Triple A this season.

Ex-Twins watch: R.A. Dickey

A rather impressive outing on Tuesday from R.A. Dickey — six shutout innings with seven strikeouts. Against the Phillies.

More proof, I suppose, for the proposition that you really can't kill a knuckleballer.

Dickey, of course, had a pretty strong first half with the Twins last season before completely imploding in July. (On July 1 his ERA was 2.36; by Aug. 5 it was 4.62, and he was gone.) By September I could barely remember that he'd ever been on the roster.

But he's "only" 35 — old by baseball standards, young by knuckleball standards. It's possible he's got the flutterball worked out to the point where he can survive in the majors. More likely, he'll continue to bounce from organization to organization, from Triple A to the bigs and back again.

I root for knuckleballers. They're always the last to get a chance, and that chance usually comes with a bad team. Go get 'em, R.A.

Twins trade for Pavano

The Twins today got veteran starter Carl Pavano from Cleveland for the ever-popular player to be named later.

R.A. Dickey was optioned to Triple A Rochester to make room on the 25-man roster; Boof Bonser was moved to the 60-day DL to clear space on the 40-man roster. News story on the moves here.

Pavano's career has been a real roller coaster. As a minor leaguer he was part of the package the Expos got for Pedro Martinez. While with Montreal, he gave up Mark McGwire's 70th home run of the 1998 season. He was one of the rotation anchors for Florida's 2003 World Series champs, won 18 games for the Marlins in 2004, then signed a big contract with the Yankees, for whom he barely pitched (2005-2008, a total of 145 2/3 innings). One of the tabs called him "American Idle."

With Cleveland this year: 9-8 (for a 46-62 team) with a 5.37 ERA — and, on the plus side, 6.3 strikeouts per 9 innings and 3.83 strikeouts per walk.

He's not a great pitcher, but he gives the Twins a reasonable alternative to trotting Francisco Liriano or Glen Perkins out every fifth game. My guess is that Liriano is more on the edge of losing his rotation spot than Perkins is.

Texas 5, Twins 3 (12 innings)

There were several things about Sunday's 12-inning loss that figure to stick in the Twins' collective craw, but none more irritating than this:

The game-winning homer came off R.A. Dickey's fastball, which isn't so blinking fast.

Rule of thumb No. 1: Relief pitchers shouldn't get beat on anything other than their best pitch. For Dickey, that's the knuckleball. Now, there are exceptions. If somebody like Tony Pena Jr. is up with the bases loaded and the winning run's on third, the danger is more from a wild pitch or passed ball. But Ian Kinsler is a quality hitter.

Rule of thumb No. 2: If the knuckleball's too dangerous for a situation, Dickey ought not be pitching.

There were other irksome things:

*Francisco Liriano apparently deciding in the sixth and seventh innings that this whole strike one thing is overrated. (In the sixth inning, he threw 14 pitches. Eleven were balls, one was a called strike and the other two were hit for a fly out and a double-play grounder.)

* The run that scored on a passed ball, which may have been the result of a cross-up in signals between Joe Mauer and Liriano.

*Mauer, Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer combining to go 0 for 15. (Morneau did draw two walks.)

Mauer, by the way, no longer leads the American League in batting average. He's down to .358 for the season. His average dropped 13 points in Texas (1 for 13 for the series). Ichiro Suzuki is now leading the AL at .363.

The Twins did take the series. But it was yet another winnable game that slipped away.

Rising role for R.A. Dickey

The Greg McMichael rule lives, and R.A. Dickey (left) is abiding by it.

The McMichael rule — dubbed for the pitcher who, in 1993, rose from minor league free agent to closer for the Atlanta Braves — holds that, if you get people out, they'll find a role for you. The Braves of the 1990s had one of the greatest pitching staffs ever assembled, but they found room for McMichael.

Dickey, like McMichael, was a minor league signing. He was supposed to be the long man, the mop-up man, a guy who sucked up innings so more valuable pitchers didn't have to.

In April that's what he looked like. His ERA that month (11 innings): 5.73. Nothing great there.

In May, he started getting outs: 1.86 ERA (19.3 innings).

June has been even better: No earned runs so far (11.1 innings). Just four hits and one walk this month.

So on Thursday afternoon, with the Twins holding a 6-3 lead, it was Dickey who got the seventh inning. Not Sean Henn, not the departed Luis Ayala, not the demoted Jesse Crain. He faced three men, none of whom got it out of the infield, and collected his first hold of the season. He threw 10 pitches, seven of them strikes.

Dickey has earned this bigger role. His emergence may slightly diminish the burden on Matt Guerrier (who surrendered a home run in the eighth inning Thursday) and Jose Mijares, but that's OK. The Twins have been aching for somebody to do just that.

The Crain train detrailed

The moment I saw Jesse Crain warming up Sunday, I knew the Twins were in trouble.

And sure enough, four of the five men he faced in the bottom of the ninth reached safely, which was more than enough for the Cubs to break the 2-2 tie.

Crain this month has faced 17 batters, eight of whom have either gotten a hit or walk.

The telling quote from Ron Gardenhire after the game: "You try to find the right situation to put him in ballgames, but when you get to this point there is no right situation."

I have some sympathy for Gardy on this one: Matt Guerrier had pitched on June 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13 — five times in six days. Granted, most of those outings were brief — he totaled eight outs in those five games — but that's still excessive use. Luis Ayala had pitched the eighth — more on that later. And the Cubs had a string of right-handed hitters up, so it's understandable that he wanted to avoid calling on Sean Henn or Jose Mijares.

Which left Joe Nathan, Crain or R.A. Dickey. Nathan had pitched four times in five days himself, so he wasn't going to be asked to pitch multiple innings. And Dickey ...

Well, frankly, why not Dickey? I know: He's the long man. Well, guess what? He's been far more effective than Crain — his ERA since April is 1.52 — he's right-handed, and if the game goes extra innings, he's equipped to soak up the extra work. And he hadn't pitched in a week.

The underlying issue here remains bullpen depth. Guerrier has been far better than I could have hoped; Mijares has bounced back from his spring training disaster; Henn and Ayala are contributing in limited fashion; and Dickey has been marvelous in the long role.

Crain's supposed to be the eighth-inning right-handed power arm. And he's been useless.

The Gardenhire quote above sounds like he's running out of patience with Crain. A lot of fans reached that point a few weeks ago.

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Ayala had a perfect eighth inning Sunday — three up-three down, three first-pitch strikes, even a strikeout.

And somehow it took him 22 pitches to accomplish it, because there were 10 foul balls. The man just cannot miss bats.

Which is why I say he's useful in a limited fashion.