Last week we talked about Alfredo Simon throwing an eephus pitch. Or maybe it wasn’t an eephus pitch. Some people have some pretty specific ideas of what makes an eephus an eephus and others are content to simply call any super slow non-knuckleball pitch an eephus.
What we were missing in that conversation was context. And thankfully Jonah Keri provides a hefty dose of eephus context today, going through the history of the pitch and other similarly slow balls. They’re pitches which have largely disappeared given today’s high velocity throwers and fear of having one zig when it should’ve zagged, putting you on SportsCenter as a result of some strong guy hitting it 500 feet.
Good reading.
