Knuckleballers

[Solonor]

Quick question that I hope a Dev can answer...what happened to knuckleballers? In my league, which was started in OOTP 5 and has carried through to 22, there are currently just 15 pitchers who throw a knuckleball That includes 2 Major Leagues, 4 Minor Leagues, 2 College Leagues and 2 High School Leagues (total of 228 teams).

Additionally, it looks like when a pitcher has a knuckleball, they either do not have any type of Fastball (including Sinker, Splitter and Cutter), or their fastball is the dominant pitch, and they can't throw the knuckler for crap.

Only 8 of the 15 have a fastball, and of those only 2 have a knuckleball rated 40+...one has a changeup as his main pitch, with a curve and fast ball as 2nd and 3rd...the KB is last, and the other throws 97-99mph with his main pitch being the cutter (rated 80), and he has the KB as his 5th pitch.

So, there are no pitchers who feature the knuckleball as their main pitch who also have a fastball in their repertoire. Is that by design? Is there no way to have a knuckleballer who also can throw heat? I think that's fine, but I just want to know if that is on purpose in the game.

Thanks!

[brotherblues]

It was rare to begin with. It's even rarer today. Coaches don't even know how to teach it. I read an article about that.

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by brotherblues

It was rare to begin with. It's even rarer today. Coaches don't even know how to teach it. I read an article about that.

This isn't answering the OP but... that's not going to change any time soon, since teams are scouring the earth for fireballers. It's like scouting, signing, and developing someone who is good at the Baltimore Chop.


That said, I'd like it to be something we could control a little more finely in terms of representation, and I don't even play in eras before the 70s.

[brotherblues]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

This isn't answering the OP but... that's not going to change any time soon, since teams are scouring the earth for fireballers. It's like scouting, signing, and developing someone who is good at the Baltimore Chop.


That said, I'd like it to be something we could control a little more finely in terms of representation, and I don't even play in eras before the 70s.

It does sort of answer the OP in that it's a pitch almost in extinction among players with big league aspirations. Just about every pitching coach tied to a MLB organization has zero experience with it.

The ootp simulation reflects that.

To further answer the OP about pitch ratings and combinations... think of how many players the game engine creates per amateur draft. Think of how many of those players in the draft pool become 3 stars (or better) big leaguers. It's a very tiny percentage. Now apply that percentage to a mere 15 players in the entire universe. Odds are they will all stink, never reach 3 stars, and thus have bad ratings accross the board.

[brotherblues]

As a semi aside, when you do get a good knuckleballer (either from sheer luck or commish mode) it's a blast. I once saw one pop up as the #1 overall prospect in the draft pool. I traded everything to be able to draft him. He was a 5 star knuckleballer. I had waited too long for such a player, I wasn't gonna let him get away. He played over 20 seasons, countless Cy Youngs and ERA crowns, threw 240 innings regularly, was still performing when he retired in his mid 40s.

[ezpkns34]

Originally Posted by brotherblues

As a semi aside, when you do get a good knuckleballer (either from sheer luck or commish mode) it's a blast. I once saw one pop up as the #1 overall prospect in the draft pool. I traded everything to be able to draft him. He was a 5 star knuckleballer. I had waited too long for such a player, I wasn't gonna let him get away. He played over 20 seasons, countless Cy Youngs and ERA crowns, threw 240 innings regularly, was still performing when he retired in his mid 40s.

Was a thread a few years ago where someone ran sims comparing effectiveness of pitches on OOTP and the clear "winner" was the knuckleball

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by brotherblues

It does sort of answer the OP in that it's a pitch almost in extinction among players with big league aspirations. Just about every pitching coach tied to a MLB organization has zero experience with it.

The ootp simulation reflects that.

Right, but that's a problem if you try to play a game set before 2021.Which is supposed to be a big feature of the game.

Thanks for the report about the knuckleballer, I don't recall seeing that in my longest sim but I never thought to look before. The only guys I've noticed have it as a very very mediocre off pitch. Once in a while I'll edit a rag-armed guy that comes up through the minors to throw one, but I leave the other ratings alone so I haven't seen that level of success.

[fredbeene]

Originally Posted by brotherblues

As a semi aside, when you do get a good knuckleballer (either from sheer luck or commish mode) it's a blast. I once saw one pop up as the #1 overall prospect in the draft pool. I traded everything to be able to draft him. He was a 5 star knuckleballer. I had waited too long for such a player, I wasn't gonna let him get away. He played over 20 seasons, countless Cy Youngs and ERA crowns, threw 240 innings regularly, was still performing when he retired in his mid 40s.

So how can we set this up for historical sims?
is each classic knuckleballer already handled?
how does it handle for players who developed it later in their career?
does say charlie hough start out as normal pitcher and ALWAYS turn to a knuckleballer later in career no matter what year you start a sim?

[brotherblues]

Originally Posted by fredbeene

So how can we set this up for historical sims?
is each classic knuckleballer already handled?
how does it handle for players who developed it later in their career?
does say charlie hough start out as normal pitcher and ALWAYS turn to a knuckleballer later in career no matter what year you start a sim?

I've never done historical so I can't comment on any of that.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Solonor

Additionally, it looks like when a pitcher has a knuckleball, they either do not have any type of Fastball (including Sinker, Splitter and Cutter), or their fastball is the dominant pitch, and they can't throw the knuckler for crap.

That sounds about right to me. Knuckleballers tend to throw the knuckler almost exclusively. If they go to another pitch, it's usually another kind of breaking ball or off-speed pitch. That may be because lots of knuckleballers throw that pitch due to the fact that they can't throw a fastball after developing arm problems. Guys like Jim Bouton and RA Dickey switched to the knuckler when they couldn't throw fastballs any more. In fact, OOTP is, in my experience, unrealistic by not having more pitchers develop a knuckleball later in their careers.

[hfield007]

Of the 69 major leaguers listed by Rob Neyer's exhaustive historical list (plus steven wright) of knucklers whose best pitch was the knuckle and used the pitch for a good chunk of their career and pitched more than a few games this is a decade by decade debut breakdown:

1900s - 3
1910s - 3
1920s - 6
1930s - 10
1940s - 13
1950s - 16
1960s - 7
1970s - 2
1980s - 1
1990s - 4
2000s - 3
2010s - 1


looking at the past 5 decades i think ootp does decent with the amount it introduces lol. but i mean a slider for it would be kinda cool.

[Vanden]

Interesting article https://www.baltimorebaseball.com/20...knuckleballer/

https://m.facebook.com/mlb/videos/127338809316217/

[Leo_The_Lip]

Interesting article in today" Richmond Times-Dispatch about a local HS pitcher who not only switch pitches successfully, but has 4 pitches form either side--including a knuckleball with either hand.

Let's see OOTP generate one of these!

[Leo_The_Lip]

This looks like it is NOT behind a pay wall:

https://richmond.com/sports/high-sch...47e889237.html

[TomVeal]

That's fascinating, but it's taken the Real Life game engine 150 years to generate Zack Easton, so one can't blame OOTP too much for lagging behind.

[OutS|der]

There should be settings under player creation modifiers that set how often players are created with each pitch, we should be able to edit this as needed to create more/less players with say a Screwball. These should be imported each year in historical and be close to real stats.

If I wanted a league where in 5 years the Knuckleball was the dominate pitch for everyone I should be able to do that without having to personally edit each and every player

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

That sounds about right to me. Knuckleballers tend to throw the knuckler almost exclusively. If they go to another pitch, it's usually another kind of breaking ball or off-speed pitch. That may be because lots of knuckleballers throw that pitch due to the fact that they can't throw a fastball after developing arm problems. Guys like Jim Bouton and RA Dickey switched to the knuckler when they couldn't throw fastballs any more. In fact, OOTP is, in my experience, unrealistic by not having more pitchers develop a knuckleball later in their careers.

That first part just isn't true. A knuckleballer tends to throw the dancer like 80% of the time or more and their other pitch is usually a "fastball" although it's a fastball thrown flat footed and with a similar delivery to the knuckleball and so it rarely tops out at more than 80 mph. That's why the game often makes those guys throw a straight change, and I think adding in the knuckle curve is just a way to a. get around the severe deltas the game adds to 2 pitch pitchers who attempt to start, and b. kind of sort of emulate knuckleballers who mix a tighter, straighter ball with one that really dances around.

The thing about the knuckler is that it's very, very hard to control. The last thing you want as a pitcher who primarily throws that is to have another pitch in your arsenal that you can only vaguely direct at the plate, much less one that by its nature (the curve or even a circle change) requires you to tip the pitch because you cant make it look like the knuckler coming out of your hand.

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[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

There should be settings under player creation modifiers that set how often players are created with each pitch, we should be able to edit this as needed to create more/less players with say a Screwball. These should be imported each year in historical and be close to real stats.

If I wanted a league where in 5 years the Knuckleball was the dominate pitch for everyone I should be able to do that without having to personally edit each and every player

This would be fun... but man oh man there are already a ton of settings already. I consider myself pretty adept at navigating them but even I tend to forget a setting or two when I'm putting stuff together and I can only imagine what a brand new player thinks when they look at this.

To that earlier question about historical players and pitch types... I think that's curated either by beta testers or by whoever created the DB. I kind of doubt Charlie Hough appears as a normal 4 seamer-curve-changeup guy and then transitions into throwing the dancer as his career progresses because he's generally regarded as a knuckleballer and frankly that's a lot of work I imagine someone at OOTP would have talked up at some point.

Also while I'm addressing multiple things in the same post, I'd love to have illegal pitches included in the game like the spitter or the Emery ball or whatever you want to call the "sticky stuff" ball everyone in the majors is throwing right now.

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[darkcloud4579]

This thread is going to make me try this out in one of my independent leagues at least with one team in Commish mode, because i've long been convinced the game does a really bad job of modeling knuckleballers (they shouldn't have a fastball, for instance) and I'd be curious how a league of them would perform over a period of time.

[Pelican]

One alternative would be to allow a pitcher to learn a knuckler mid-career (or more likely late-career), after losing his speed or hurting his arm, a la Jim Bouton.