The weather—artificial or real—comes up frequently, too. Most knucklers agree that wind in the face is good (anything to add resistance and turbulence), while wind blowing from behind spells doom. Heat and humidity are welcome, unless you’re pitching in a dome; for whatever reason, the consensus seems to be that central air-conditioning can work wonders. Boston’s Doug Mirabelli, who catches Wakefield exclusively (knucklers often get their own personal backstops), has observed that the SkyDome in Toronto causes an extra hiccup per pitch. And in the Astrodome in the seventies, conspiracy theorists will swear, the temperature was always suspiciously cool—the A.C. set to full blast—on days when Joe Niekro was starting for the home team.

(If you read all the way to the end, Dickey makes something of a surprise appearance.)

If you’re really interested in the physics, there’s a pretty thorough explanation here.

Phightin’ Phils: hincandenza — hotter air is less dense. PV = nRT.

Oh man, how embarassing (I hope my high school chemistry teacher isn’t reading this game thread!). I think I was confusing pressure with density; now that you mention ol’ PV = nRT, it’s all coming back to me.

Which makes sense- as the temperature increases the volume isn’t limited so that same quantity of air will expand, making it less dense on the playing field- this leads to longer fly balls, and probably less break on pitches. Which does fit the data with Wakefield; in higher temperatures, the air is less dense, and thus a pitcher relying on breaking stuff- in particular the knuckleball- will be adversely affected. There will be less air to buffet the ball, it will be ‘flatter’, and be teed off on more. Those climate controlled stadiums ensure that his knuckler is more consistent throughout the game, while the lack of real wind or varying temperature means that he’ll have greater control in throwing strikes with the knuckler.

Which brings us to Dickey; ESPN Page 2 had this interesting article a few weeks ago, where Jim Caple tried to catch a Dickey knuckleball. Dickey throws a harder knuckler than Wakefield; at the risk of embarassing myself a second time, wouldn’t it make sense that the higher the temperature, the less the knuckler knuckles- unless you add velocity? So Wakefield sticking to that 65mph knuckler has a flatter pitch in hot weather, but Dickey’s faster knuckler is perfect.

JJ is not 2007 JJ. That’s why trading him at the deadline would have been a good move.

so why would someone want him if he is not 2007 JJ?