Two Kooky Pitchers

The Yankees and Red Sox are rivals in many ways—traditional and league rivals for years, they now regularly battle for free agents, as they might do with Indians trade bait C.C. Sabathia. And now both teams have some pretty crazy pitchers in their minor league systems, both of whom have a good shot at making the bigs in the next few years.

Boston’s entry is a little less unconventional, if only because they already have Tim Wakefield, baseball’s most successful full-time knuckleballer. R.A. Dickey of Seattle is the only other guy to throw it regularly (he’s got a 1-3, 3.97/1.55 ERA/WHIP this year, with 17-22, 5.70/1/57 career line), while guys like Mike Mussina use a modified knuckle-curve.

But Wakefield has succeeded with it since 1992, with a career line of 172-151, 4.33/1.36, respectable but not sparkling numbers. Since he’s 41 and his productivity has been steadily declining—he hasn’t seen the good side of 4.00 ERA since ’02, and has cracked 200 IP only twice since then. When Wakefield goes, the thought has long been, so will this magical pitch.

Like the knuckler itself, we can say: not so fast. The Sox have a flutterballer coming up its minor-league ranks, Charlie Zink, currently throwing for AAA Pawtucket, with a 8-2 record and 2.18 ERA, with 50 Ks against 25 BBs. Given the problems Boston has had with its pitching of late—Schilling is done for the season, Dice-K lasted only one inning in his return from the DL, and others struggling—we may see Zink this season.

Zink didn’t throw the knuckleballer professionally until 2002, after Luis Tiant helped him at the Savanna College of Art and Design baseball team (yes, they have one). When he first achieved success—one might say he painted some masterpieces—Zink got a big head and decided he didn’t need to work out. After all, how much muscle does it take to throw a ball forty to sixty miles an hour?

A lot, it turns out. After being drafted by Boston, he showed the pitch to his new pitching coach, who encouraged him to use it. In 2003, he became Boston’s minor league pitcher of the year, and decided he didn’t really need any strength to throw the ball. He lost the next season to tendinitis, and has become more serious about throwing baseball’s goofiest pitch.

Although Boston’s got plenty of good arms ready to go at the major-league level, we can only hope that Zink gets the call sooner rather than later, so that he can gain some of the knuckler knowledge that Wakefield learned from Charlie Hough, the last guy to throw the exotic pitch full-time. It’s considered such a “feel” pitch that pitchers need to learn a sort of Zen-like calm on the mound, as throwing it harder will only make it move less. We hope Zink can learn from the master and give us all a reason to watch this exceptionally strange pitch in action.

Even stranger is the guy the Yankees have at their Class-A affiliate Staten Island Yankees. Pat Venditte’s father worked at an early age with him to teach him to throw with both arms, and now Venditte is trying to become the first big-leaguer to be an ambidextrous pitcher. He made his pro debut Thursday night, in a game that marked a couple of firsts.

The only major league pitcher to ever throw from both sides of the rubber was Greg Harris, but he threw righty for his entire career, only to throw lefty to two batters in the twilight of his career. Venditte, on the other hand, can throw lefty-righty regularly, even switching in between batters, which led to some consternation when he faced a switch-hitter in his debut.

With Ralph Hendriquez on the right side of the plate, Venditte switched his glove to his other hand—he has a special two-web, six-finger model made by Mizuno, which has made this custom model for him since he was a little kid—and prepared to throw lefty. At which point Hendriquez switched, and Venditte switched back to righty. Hendriquez changed back, and the two went back and forth like this until the umpires and managers had to put their heads together and make a ruling.

There’s no clear guidelines in the rulebook, only that batters and pitchers may only change once during an at-bat, not who should pick his side first. They decided on Thursday that the batter should declare first, giving the edge to Venditte, who struck out Hendriquez on four pitches. “It’s been a long time since he’d come into the game as a switch hitter and faced a righty as a righty,” Venditte says.

The advantage is clearly with the pitcher in this situation, since switch-hitters never see a ball that breaks away from them, and can pick up the ball that much quicker. Imagine having a pitcher who could not only confound switch-hitting studs like Lance Berkman and Chipper Jones, but could easily throw a complete game with the same arm-fatigue associated with half that many innings.

As with switch-hitters, who are usually slightly better in some aspects from one side of the plate as the other, Venditte is better as a righty, since he’s got a fastball that touches 90, ten miles an hour faster than he can with his left arm. But he’s got a great lefty slider and, as we know from pitchers like Zink and Wakefield, velocity isn’t everything.

While Zink is close to the bigs, Venditte is still in single-A ball, and likely two seasons or more from making the Yankee squad. But both of these guys give us something new to look forward to in one of the biggest rivalries in baseball.