The Knuckler and Thin Air

Reader Fusionmouse asked the following;

"How well does the knuckleball dance in Coors field?"

This seems to be one of the questions of the day. The general belief appears to be that the knuckleball won't work in Coors Field.

I have no way of knowing that but there are two pieces of information I find worth sharing.

First is the performance of knuckleballer Steve Sparks in Denver. While Wake hasn't pitched in Coors Field (he made two starts at Mile High in 1993) we can find that Sparks was absolutely hammered in Coors Field though it's only 7 2/3 innings. In that time he had five strikeouts and four walks. I would expect those totals to be abnormally low if the ball was staying straight. These totals are not so far out of the realm of normalcy that I would read much into this.

In other words, small sample size, don't get too appalled by this.

The second is Sparks' performance at Chase Field in Arizona. As pointed out in today's Baseball Prospectus Phoenix has a similar atmospheric set up to Denver (high altitude, dry air). In 57 2/3 innings Sparks actually had a better ERA in Phoenix than he did overall. It is worth noting that he had about 15% fewer K+BB in Phoenix than he did overall. If you subscribe to my theory that a non-moving knuckler will reduce K+BB this is a point suggesting that there may be something to the idea of the knuckleball not being effective in thinner air.

I don't think that the Red Sox should be trying to force Tim Wakefield into this series. I think that Beckett, Schilling and Matsuzaka are all clearly better pitchers than he is and therefore they should be the ones pitching twice. If the Sox management team is concerned about Wakefield's magic pitch not working due to the atmosphere I believe they should simply leave him off the roster and give his start to Jon Lester.