Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Bayoris t1_ixh0o6h wrote

If baseball was a pure test of strength then women would not be able to compete. 100%. But it isn’t. Baseball pitchers rely on unpredictability. If you can throw a sinker or a knuckleball or a curveball then you don’t need a fastball.

1

merlin401 t1_ixujoid wrote

I did say in another comment that maybe the one chance there is is for a woman to make it as a specialized pitcher known exclusively for a trick pitch (of which a knuckleball would be a good example). Sinker is not (which is essentially a fastball btw) and curve is not because traditional breaking pitches rely heavily on a complimentary fastball to set them up. Fastballs are essential to keeping people from sitting on the predictable motion of your breaking pitches and keeping people off balance. Knuckleballs are distinct because they have no predictable motion. But knuckleballs are super hard to throw: look how many men can master them, almost none.

Also pitchers are in a different way the worst example to pick. Pitchers have the highest rate of injury and catastrophic injury of any position in all of sports due to how much stress every pitchers puts on their elbow and shoulder. Knuckleballs may look easy on the body, but throwing pitches from 60 feet away on an elevated mound is hard and these pitches are included (they only look easy since we are used to seeing pitchers throw 90+ which virtually no one you or I know could even accomplish on flat ground, man or especially woman!

1