Seattle Sports Insider

What is a Screwball?

the key is in the eye action

Posted by

11/5/16

Editor's Warning: there are no Mariners references in the following post. It's about baseball only. Sadly enough for people like me [hold the punch lines!] who don't even watch the World Series, but happily enough for purists.

........

There was a joke circumstance, or a Trump-sized twist of fate, or an unconscionable sense of self-importance operating on Saturday. First, Dr. D considered writing in to Bill James and asking him what a screwball is. Nowadays. In scout-speak. Whether there is any such thing as a Fernando Valenzuela any more, or whether maybe Fernando was simply throwing a hard, late-breaking "fadeaway" changeup. TJM, a vet LA-area writier could speak to this ... provided he's still speaking to Dr. D after this election year at all, that is.

Second, as Dr. D contemplated the meaning of screwballs and the number 46, he randomly opened up a tape of the AFL All-Stars game and ... there was Fernando Valenzuela on the mound, right handed.

Brent Honeywell, said the 'casters, throws a screwball. They even explained this in SSI-like detail. They said it was the same (two-plane) flight as Tom Glavine's bloop curve, thrown with the right hand. Honeywell would start the game.

And, bam, Honeywell cracked off a David Wells curve, breaking 1B-to-3B, with the right hand. You can see two of the pitches on this video -- if you're wondering where Fernando went. The first and last pitches. Check out that last pitch!

The lead-in photo shows Fernando using the same grip that Honeywell used. Honeywell's index finger is slightly more to the side of the ball, but yeah. So, the secret has been hacked. Please smuggle this grip to Arquimedes Caminero, somebody.

.........

That's pretty much what Detect-O-Vision was hoping a "gyroball" would be, back when the Mariners were chasing Daisuke Matsuzaka. Also, Honeywell throws a minimum of five different offspeed pitches. Also also, Honeywell throws up to 94 MPH with good location. SSI's new top winter priority: begging Dipoto to deal Paxton, O'Neill and Clevenger* for Brent Honeywell.

We're sure that Honeywell will be up with the Rays shortly ... and promptly throw a bunch of frustrating, 3-and-2 foul ball laden "five and dive" losses in his first couple of years. Like most of the other (ex-)Rays starters.

Enjoy,

Jeff

Blog:

Aiki Mechanics

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Brent Honeywell

Comments

Still Talkin'

. . . at least through tomorrow. After that, all bets are off.

Fernando definitely threw a true screwball. I recall James and Neyer saying the screwball was replaced by the circle change which has very similar movement and is easier to throw. There was also a general notion that throwing the scroogie, or fadeaway as Christy Mathewson called it, was hard on the arm. Mathewson said he only threw the pitch a handful of times during a game cuz it hurt so much,

There is no actual data that I could find supporting the idea of screwball induced injury. At least any more so than pitching generally. But this impression might have been fostered by the peculiar and apparently permanennt twist of the arms of Sixties era screwballers Luis Arroyo, Bud Daley and the like. Their pitching arms when not in use did not hang straight down but were turned so that the palm of their hands faced to the rear.

In any event, there are more than enough handside break pitches available now without resorting to something that is harder to throw. EG, if you were in 1928 and watched Felix's change you would be absolutely certain it was a screwball. I would bet, too, that there will be a huge increase in moving two-seamers in the MLB in the next few years after everybody got to watch Kluder in the Series.

Back to Felix for a sec: He semeed to lose control of his two-seamer this year. It always broke a ton but he didn't seem to get calls on it this year. He needs to tame it back to Kluber territory.

Agree and Disagree

Regarding Felix, I agree that Felix had control issues with his 2 seamer, and that led to Felix getting less called strikes on it. Further, I agree that Felix needs to figure out a way to control the 2 seamer better, and possibly have a tame version of the 2 seamer.

Where I disagree is that Felix now must become a pitcher - like Kluber, Maddox, Moyer, and even this Honeywell... Felix needs to develop nuances in his pitches, and use them to help set up hitters. For the past couple years we have seen Felix get into battles with players where the batter gets 8, 10 and even 12 pitches into the at bat... you hardly ever saw Maddox, Moyer or other pitchers get into that because they would have pitches that broke just a little bit more or that were just different enough to get a ball in play weakly hit.

It is time for Felix to really adjust to the league... and thus be able to dominate again.

Felix, for all his greatness

Felix, for all his greatness, tends to settle into very predictable patterns. We all remember the "all FB in the first inning" thang when he was young but he still does it. Divish had some quotes from Astros hitters - they noted that Felix throws everything at the knees and that his changeup almost always drops out of the strike zone. So their strategy was easy - focus on the bottom half of the strike zone and don't swing at anything bendy.

We did see him start to throw his FB up in the zone in his final starts, so it's not like the M's don't know what people are doing. I love the guy as much as any Mariner player ever but Felix is just so stubborn that I'm not convinced that he's going to be willing to change.

"But this impression might

"But this impression might have been fostered by the peculiar and apparently permanennt twist of the arms of Sixties era screwballers Luis Arroyo, Bud Daley and the like. Their pitching arms when not in use did not hang straight down but were turned so that the palm of their hands faced to the rear."

My mid- and late- 1960's Dodgers had a great reliever named Jim Brewer who threw the screwball a lot. Vin Scully used to comment on the phenomenon you refer to, how this pitch had a permanent effect on how his arm "hung."

One of the amazing things about Fernando Valenzuela was the sheer number of screwballs he threw both in individual games and in his career. The guy would routinely throw more than 130 pitches in a start, and it wasn't uncommon for him to go over 150. IIRC he once threw over 170 pitches. A good percentage of his pitches were screwballs. And he threw this way for ten straight years AFTER having done the same in the Mexican League prior to MLB (how many years he did so, and the difference between his stated age and his actual age were the subject of intense rumor and speculation).