What is a Knuckleball (KN)?

A knuckleball is gripped with the fingertips or knuckles to kill spin (under 500 rpm). Air turbulence around the seams causes erratic, unpredictable break.

Velocity sits 60–75 mph — slow enough that catchers risk passed balls, sometimes warranting a personal catcher. Recent torchbearers: R.A. Dickey (2012 Cy Young) and Tim Wakefield.

Pros: minimal arm stress, often allowing long careers. Cons: notoriously hard to master and low repeatability. There's no real coaching pipeline; the pitch is passed down individually.

Modern MLB has almost no full-time knuckleballers. Japanese pitchers haven't really used it as a primary; Hisashi Iwakuma's varied splitter shapes are the closest cousin. Statcast tags it KN.

→ Related: Splitter / Spin Rate / Pitch classification