Shane Baz’s favorite pitch is one he has never thrown in a game: A knuckleball

TORONTO — When Shane Baz was 13, he received a prudent piece of advice, even if it wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear.

To that point, this budding star had deceived his Little League competition with a knuckleball. He wanted to be like Tim Wakefield, the longtime major league starter who made hitters look foolish, and his father went along with it because he figured a knuckleball was safer on young Baz’s arm than a slider or curveball.

Then someone, maybe a coach — it’s hard to remember all these years later — diverted Baz from the knuckleballer path.

“Hey, if you want to actually be a pitcher, you should probably learn other stuff,” that voice said, still ringing in the Orioles right-hander’s ears.

Baz let the knuckleball go from his arsenal. But it never left his heart.

“I love it,” Baz said. “I was a big Wakefield fan, and R.A. Dickey, really.”

So even now, as Baz works through major league lineups with a knuckle curve and a fastball as his primary weapons, he will pull that knuckleball out of his back pocket on rare occasions. Never during a game — not yet, at least — but when he’s playing catch with teammates and during the occasional midweek bullpen session.

Only one out of every three he throws is any good, Baz said. It’s supposed to rotate only once or twice on the way to the plate, maybe less. And when Baz sees it flutter and dance, hardly rotating as it heads to his catcher, the 13-year-old’s dream is alive.

“I’m going to throw it in a game. It’s just a matter of when, which I kind of brainstorm sometimes,” Baz said. “I will throw it. It’s going to come. I can’t say when, obviously, but it’ll probably be to someone that — I’ll just leave it at that.”

Someone he knows?

“No, it would probably be to a superstar,” Baz continued. “But I am going to throw it, for sure. It’s just, I need to find time to actually work on it. I’m working on all my other stuff 99% of the time. Probably more, closer to 100% of my time. Every once in a while I’ll pull it out. If I can find some time to actually take a couple days to work on it, I will throw it.”

Orioles pitching coach Drew French might have something to say about that. Baz said he doesn’t let his knuckleball fascination leak into preparation for games. He’s diligent in his work, and he knows, if he seriously asked French about the knuckleball, the answer would be something to the effect of, “Be quiet and throw your actual pitches.”

Baz’s actual pitches are, of course, very good. And his knuckleball, when he does throw it in bullpen sessions, is hit and miss.

“Mine move up and glove side, so it almost looks like a left-handed fastball, I would say,” Baz said. “It moves opposite of all my other stuff, which is all up and arm side or down and glove side or down and arm side. It usually floats up, glove side. Every once in a while it’ll kind of just dance around. As long as it’s not spinning, it can be effective, I think.”

Even when bullpen catcher Ben Carhart knows what’s coming, catching Baz’s knuckleball isn’t a fun task. Watching highlights from Wakefield and Dickey shows how it’s not just the hitter who is guessing where the pitch will end up. The catcher is just as lost sometimes.

In a sense, though, the knuckleball has fallen out of fashion — not that it was ever that widespread an offering. This season, only three pitchers have thrown a knuckleball in the majors: Matt Waldron (110), Jose Trevino (26) and Jake Rogers (1).

Baz said the downturn in knuckleball usage is threefold.

One reason is technological. With the lack of spin, pitch tracking machines such as Hawk-Eye have trouble deliberating the metrics of a knuckleball. Unlike a slider or another high-spin offering, which can be studied in bullpens and determined outside of competition whether they’ll play well in a game, he wouldn’t know how his knuckleball would fare unless he used it.

The second reason is that most knuckleballers don’t have the high-level secondary offerings to pivot to should the knuckler be ineffective that day.

“And it’s such a hard pitch to master because I think your delivery has a lot to do with it,” Baz said. “It kind of alters your delivery. If you watch Dickey and Wakefield, their chest was almost facing home plate, and it was just a pickup and go. As opposed to guys now who are generally trying to generate as much power as possible. There’s usually a big rotation. It’s hard to make sure your hand is under and behind the ball.”

When Baz throws his knuckleball, his grip is similar to that of the knuckle curve. The difference in grip on the curveball variety is that only one finger is tucked, compared to both his index and middle fingers being tucked at the knuckle.

The release is different, too. He rotates his hand, with the back of his hand facing third base, when releasing his curveball. When Baz throws his knuckleball, he keeps his wrist cocked up and stiff, thinking more of generating backspin — “because if I think about trying to make it not [spin], it usually just tumbles. If I’m thinking, really backspin it, it usually has the least amount of spin.”

In Baz’s first start at Fenway Park following Wakefield’s 2023 death, he considered honoring the longtime Boston Red Sox pitcher by throwing a knuckleball for his first pitch. But Baz canned that idea when he considered the risk of it going awry and hurting his team’s chances to win the game.

But someday, before Baz is done playing, he wants to pull that pitch out.

On his behalf, this reporter asked French, the pitching coach, when he might let Baz throw a knuckleball in a game. French laughed.

“He threw three of them in his bullpen yesterday,” French said. “They all went way high, way high, way left. So it’s got to be 75 [mph], and he’s got to be able to throw it for a strike. That’s the answer.”

That’s not a no. The knuckleball dream, perhaps, is alive.