Tim Brown from Yahoo Sports wrote an article about Brian Wilson yesterday, and since the last thing I wrote about Brian Wilson got good traffic, now I’m going to write another article about Brian Wilson. Also, it’s the week before pitchers and catchers report and there’s no real news, so let’s talk about this instead.
I am being transparent in my motives for writing about this topic and I hope you respect me for it.
I have mined Tim Brown’s article for every even remotely interesting piece of new information. Here they are. Since you have already clicked on this article, maybe this content will persuade you to tell your friends to also click on this article. (You should also go read Tim Brown’s article, which is good, and I don’t want to cost him readers by quoting a bunch of it here.)
Brian Wilson intends to resume his pitching career as a knuckleballer.
A knuckleballer! Knuckleballers are extremely cool and the world needs more of them. Does the world need Brian Wilson, specifically, throwing a knuckleball? Maybe not. He has plenty of quirky affectations without the knuckleball. However, since the knuckleball is the ultimate quirky affectation that you can have on a pitching mound, maybe he’ll channel them all into that? We hope? Please?
Yes that Brian Wilson, now 34 years old, beardless
OH THANK GOD HERE’S A TWEET WITH PROOF TOO IT’S TRUE
No beard, no spin... pic.twitter.com/jduVacBBMA
— Tim Brown (@TBrownYahoo) February 8, 2017
I’ll just wait for him to start putting shoe polish directly on his chin. Shouldn’t be long.
Also, no time to talk about the hat. There’s too much to get to!
and having just gone a month eating nothing but guacamole
*deep, deep, eyes closed sigh*
“I can already see myself out there,” he said, “throwing up some waffles.”
That’s not a real term for anything but breakfast food.
He continued to throw while also taking on real estate projects in Los Angeles
WHY DID YOU REMIND ME ABOUT THAT
In San Francisco, he said, coaches had asked him to refrain from the knuckleball in deference to the health of catchers Mike Matheny, Bengie Molina and Buster Posey. The pitch can be savage on a catcher. Besides, Wilson was pushing triple digits with his fastball and his slider was borderline unhittable. A 74-mph knuckler seemed, to the Giants, unnecessary.
I think it would have been fun if he’d only broken it out when, like, Steve Holm was behind the plate.
For real though, there’s no way to know what the Giants actually thought about his knuckler at the time. It could be that they were looking to preserve the health of their catchers, like the article says. It could be that the main Giants catchers just didn’t have time to learn to catch a knuckleball, and it’s not like a closer can have a personal catcher. It could also be that the pitch wasn’t that good and they wanted him to focus on pitches that would reliably get outs. All we really know is what Tim Brown reports he says they told him, which is thirdhand information and subject to a lot of caveats.
He has thrown for at least two teams in the past couple weeks.
Technically, he didn’t say they were major league teams, you know. Could be the Long Island Ducks! And the other one could be the Padres!
“I may be 34, but I’m actually 26 biologically.”
This might seem weird, but words don’t have meanings anymore, so actually whatever.
A reliever for nearly all his professional career, when he was fastball-slider reliant, Wilson likely would focus on being a starter as a knuckleballer.
Oh man, can you imagine Brian Wilson with four days off out of every five? The dugout antics would be endless. Also, when do you think he’d put on his game face? Seems like he’d have a Vogelsongian attitude the day before, right? Maybe the day before that too? Mike Krukow likes to talk about how you could talk to Matt Morris for about a day and a half out of every five. Do you think that’s what he would be like? Or would he be all right on his bullpen day?
These are all very important questions and I absolutely do not need answers to any of them.
What would seem different about Wilson’s knuckler is that he throws it from several arm angles. Also, he grips it with the tips of his fingers, so does not bury his fingernails into the ball, and then does not push the ball as much as he throws it as he would a fastball.
This is all really fun information! I have no idea how it will translate to game situations in the majors, but I’m enjoying hearing about it now and dreaming about this new kind of knuckleball that he’s throwing. There aren’t a lot of things in baseball journalism more fun than descriptions of pitches that aren’t nearly as good as the hype. Remember the gyroball? This is basically the knuckleball version of the gyroball and I am 100% here for it. The knowledge that it will inevitably disappoint me in no way changes that.