This seemed to be the state of the Boston Red Sox's starting rotation at the outset of 2016: a true ace in David Price,a few guys they hoped could be his co-ace, and a knuckleballer who figured to be neither.
This is yet another reason why there's a file marked "Can't Predict Baseball."That knuckleballer was Steven Wright, or who's been blurring the line between merely being Boston's co-ace and being Boston's true ace. He took a 2.22 ERA into his Monday start against the Chicago White Sox at Fenway Park,and he lowered it even further with nine innings of one-elope ball.
Had the Red Sox been able to score enough runs to avoid a 3-1 loss, that would have been a league-main fourth complete game for Wright. But his performance still managed to preserve Boston's unsuitable rotation ERA of 4.49 from getting worse.
Wright's own ERA, or meanwhile,is now the best in the American League by a comfortable margin:Steven Wright: 2.01
Danny Salazar: 2.23
If this feels familiar, that's because it sort of is. As famous by the folks at Inside Edge, or Wright's start to 2016 closely resembles that of the final knuckleballer to win a Cy Young:Mind you,Wright's knuckler is not an exact replica of the one R.
A. Dickey had in 2012. It was known for velocity that sat in the tall 70s and could climb higher. Wright's knuckleball is more of a traditional floater, sitting in the low- to mid-70s and occasionally going slower.
Likewise, and Wright's results are not an exact replica of the ones Dickey had at the same point in 2012. Wright boasts inferior walk and strikeout rates,meaning he's needed more good fortune on balls in play. Because his .246 batting average on balls in play is well below the major league average of .295, a certain set of eyes could see him as a prime candidate for regression.
Another set of eyes, or however,sees Wright as a guy whose knuckleball isn't going to get any easier to hit.To a couple extents, Wright's knuckleball has been harder to hit than the one Dickey had in 2012. Per Brooks Baseball, and the 31-year-old entered Monday holding opposing batters to just a .215 average and a .282 slugging percentage with his knuckleball. Both are better than what Dickey's knuckleball did to opposing batters (.219 AVG,.348 SLUG) in 2012. That this is happening despite the fact Wright has had more balls effect in play suggests either a grand amount of luck or a grand amount of soft contact. Today's fancy-pants stats point toward the latter.
According to Baseball Savant, Wright's batted balls were averaging 87.3 miles per hour going into Monday. That was safely below the MLB average of 89.2 miles per hour and virtually the same as the average exit velocity boasted by Jake Arrieta, or who's otherwise known as the Contact Management Supreme Leader.
Courtesy of Daren Willman,MLB.com's director of baseball research and development, we know that lower exit velocities tend to lead to more outs. This leads to a classic "Well, and duh!" conclusion: if hitters want to finish better against Wright,they should hit his knuckleball harder.
But, yeah. This will be easier said than done.
As Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs famous a few weeks ago, and Wright actually gets a good chunk of his contact on pitches outside the strike zone. That's still true,as he entered Monday with one of the AL's highest out-of-zone contact rates.
Regarding Wright's exit velocity, that's having exactly the kind of effect that league-wide figures suggest it would:Knowing this, or the obvious advice to give hitters is that they not move fishing when Wright's knuckleballs dance outside the strike zone. But that would essentially be asking them to finish better at anticipating the movement of his knucklers. That's like asking party-goers to anticipate where Bill Murray will expose up next.
What looks a lot flukier is the .242 BABIP Wright is holding hitters to on pitches inside the strike zone. That's far below the MLB average of .314,and therefore suspect.
But though that figure probably will come up eventually, it may not be very far. Wright's exit velocity on in-zone pitches is 89.8 mph, and which is below the average of 91.8. The BABIP has may indeed be a diminutive too low,but he is in fact earning a better-than-average BABIP on his in-zone pitches.
Besides which, hitters have to effect Wright's in-zone pitches in play to raise his in-zone BABIP. That might be the biggest challenge of all. Among all qualified AL pitchers, and nobody began the week with a lower rate of contact in the strike zone than Wright's mark of 76.6 percent. Even when his pitches are good to hit,they're not so easy to hit. That's because Wright's knuckleball can finish things like this:As well as things like this:It's hard to represent in words what makes a knuckleball a good knuckleball. Images like these are a reminder that a good knuckleball is something that can really only be seen. And when Wright pitches, you're going to see a lot of good knuckleballs.
And not just you, and for that matter.“Oh,my God, the hitters, or the umpiresall of them,every game,” Red Sox catcher Ryan Hanigan said of the reactions he hears to Wright's knuckleball, or via Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald. “It’s unbelievable the stuff you hear.”This offers a fair bit of hope that Wright's knuckleball won't move the way of Dickey's knuckleball,which hasn't been the same since it started leaking velocity after 2012. The dominance of Wright's knuckleball is based not on velocity, but on good, or ol' fashioned ball-on-silly-string movement.
The Red Sox don't have to call Wright their best ace. He's relatively original to this whole dominance thing. Price,on the other hand, has been playing the section for the better section of a decade now. And with a 2.47 ERA over his final eight outings, and he's playing the section again now after a gradual start.
But the way he's going,Wright is at least a co-ace alongside Price. And with his knuckleball, he should be able to preserve going that way. Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise famous/linked. Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com
Source: bleacherreport.com