It was a feel-good story that's beginning to wear out its welcome. When Tim Wakefield took the mound on July 24, he needed just one victory to secure 200 career wins, a well-deserved milestone for the league's oldest player and most tenured thrower of the knuckleball. But that was then. Wakefield has since gone seven consecutive starts without a win, with chance No. 8 coming on Tuesday. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the longest its taken any pitcher to get to 200 wins was Al Orth, who needed nine tries in 1907.
The price of the knuckler
Wakefield might not get to a ninth try if he can't get it done on Tuesday. With the Red Sox suddenly battling for their playoff lives, the 45-year-old pitcher has to produce if he wants to stay in the rotation.
Wakefield, who owes his entire career to the knuckleball, is a historical figure even if he ends his career stuck on 199. Not only was he the most relevant knuckleball-thrower of the past quarter-century, and not only was he a member of the only two Red Sox teams to win a championship in the past 90 years, he holds two distinctive almost-records for a pitcher -- and both are direct results of the knuckleball.
On April 27, 1993, as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Wakefield threw 172 pitches in 10 innings of work. While that isn't even close to the all-time single game mark, (Leon Cadore threw 345 pitches in a 26-inning game in 1920. And now Steven Strasburg has a 60-pitch limit. Boy times have changed...) it's the most any pitcher has thrown since 1990, and will likely never be topped now that the pitch count is more influential than ever. Wakefield was able to throw that many pitches since the knuckleball isn't fast at all, and isn't nearly as taxing on a pitcher's arm as other pitches. It's one of the main reasons Wakefield is still pitching in the big leagues at 45 years old and 19 years in the league.
Wakefield’s other distinction comes with a minor asterisk. According to Major League Baseball’s stats page, Wakefield holds the distinction of allowing more stolen bases in his career than any other pitcher in history. While this is probably the case, the fact I haven’t seen this tidbit circulated at all on other sites gives me pause, as well as the fact that stolen bases allowed isn’t a stat with a great deal of longevity to it. (It isn’t even kept track of at Baseball Reference.)
Nonetheless, I'm willing to take MLB.com at face value, not only because it is the official site of Major League Baseball (doi!), but because it makes complete sense if it is true. The knuckleball may be difficult to hit, but it's so slow and so easy to run off of that the batters who do get on base almost always get to second or third when Wakefield's on the mound. He allowed nine alone in a 2009 game against the Texas Rangers.
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