The way Major League Baseball has trended in recent years with pitchers throwing harder and with more movement than ever before, it’s almost unfathomable for a knuckleball pitcher to break onto a big-league club.
But 33-year-old Orioles prospect Mickey Jannis might get his chance in the near future.
Jannis has spent his entire baseball career in the minors, but he’s finally back in Triple-A and putting up impressive numbers with the Norfolk Tides — a 2.75 ERA in 19.1 innings.
He’s doing all that with an absolutely ridiculous knuckleball. We’re constantly hearing about pitchers and spin rate. Well, Jannis is all about minimizing spin rate to essentially nothing.
Just look at how knuckleball appears in an Edgertronic video:
Mickey Jannis's Knuckeball on an Edgertronic camera.🦋🦋
Courtesy of @MickeyJannis pic.twitter.com/eqmuV0cAWr
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 15, 2021
That poor, poor catcher.
These cameras can capture 2,252 frames per second at high-def resolutions, which seems super cool. It’s especially cool when a knuckleball is involved. It almost doesn’t look real.
I hope Jannis gets his shot in the majors soon because baseball needs more videos like this.
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