Photo by Ed Delany, MMN
Knuckleballs are a fickle thing. They’re maddening to throw, almost impossible to teach, and more than a century after it was introduced to Major League Baseball, it still remains one of the biggest mysteries in baseball. When they’re on, nothing’s stopping them. It tumbles towards the strike zone and moves in whatever way Mother Nature deems it so. It travels towards the zone and then as soon as the batter is about to make contact with it, it falls out of its projected path. When it traverses like that, a knuckleballer feels almost invincible.
And yet, very few actually master the pitch. When it’s not tumbling and dancing, which happens more often than not, it stays up in the strike zone, inviting opposing hitters to tee off of it, which often leads to disastrous results. It’s like an All-Star mashup, the hits start coming and don’t stop coming.
Knuckleballer Mickey Jannis has fallen on both ends of that spectrum this year. In his first start of the year with the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, he hurled seven shutout innings, permitting only two hits. That start gave him another opportunity to crack the Mets’ Triple-A starting staff, a rotation that he wasn’t able to succeed in in 2018.
His start at Syracuse couldn’t have gone much worse. Jannis lasted 3.1 innings, leaving the mound and eventually the Syracuse Mets’ roster with 14 runs on his ledger.
With his horror show almost two weeks in the past, Jannis had something to prove on Saturday. And he did just that.
With a sellout crowd of 7,536 fans packing Arm & Hammer Park, Jannis retired the side in the order in the first inning. The knuckler was dancing and was already causing problems for Patrick Mazeika, Binghamton’s backstop.
Even though he gave up an unearned run in the second inning, some unlucky BABIP luck came into play. Chris Gittens snuck a seeing-eye single into center field and after a passed ball moved him forward 90 feet, Mandy Alvarez drove in the first run of the game with a well-struck double into left field.
Even though Jannis may have felt nervous after allowing his 15th run over his last five frames, the grizzled 31-year-old didn’t show it. After a walk, he proceeded to retire minor-league veteran Mat Lipka on a foul-out and induced a 1-4-3 double play off the bat of Jorge Saez to end the inning.
The following inning, Mazeika homered over the right-field wall to tie up the game. There are times where players go on a hot streak. If the player gets really hot, he’ll find himself becoming an offensive juggernaut for a period of games, a.l.a Yoenis Cespedes in the second half of the 2015 season. There are also times that players become the embodiment of Babe Ruth. Mazeika finds himself as the latter of those three options. Mazeika’s second-inning blast was his fifth home run in his last seven games and 16th RBI of the week.
Meanwhile, after the Mets tied up the game, Jannis turned it up a notch. Over his last four innings, he only permitted three baserunners. He was very efficient with his pitches, with only 61 pitches through five innings and ended his night throwing 95 pitches over seven innings.
Even though he was throwing the ball well, he was receiving the Jacob deGrom treatment. Despite six innings of one-run ball, the Rumble Ponies only supported him with one run and three hits.
That changed in the seventh inning when Braxton Lee led off the frame by popping up to shortstop Hoy Jun Park. Park lost it in the lights and the ball dropped in into shallow left field. Lee chugged into second base with the easiest double of his life.
Mazeika, playing the hero yet again, made Trenton pay for the misplay as he laced an RBI double in the right-field corner two pitches later. Even though his 15-game hitting streak was snapped Friday night, he still recorded his 17th RBI of the week. To put that into perspective, Mazeika has the same amount of RBIs this week than Travis d’Arnaud, Keon Broxton, Tomas Nido, and J.D. Davis has combined this season.
Right fielder Kevin Kaczmarski, who was given an assignment to Binghamton after spending the last several seasons in the upper levels of the Mets’ minor-league system, dunked an RBI double into left field to extend the Ponies’ lead.
Armed with the lead, Jannis marched to the mound and closed his night the same way he began it, with a perfect 1-2-3 inning. Throughout the night, Jannis befuddled Trenton’s hitters with his knuckler, inducing eight swinging strikes and five strikeouts. He consistently threw it in the 74-76 mph range while touching as high as 81 mph and as low as 68 mph. While he used his fastball often when he was behind in counts, he turned to his knuckler as his primary pitch.
After seven innings, five hits, and one unearned run on his ledger, Rumble Ponies skipper, Kevin Boles, opted to pull Jannis in favor of the newest reliever on the team, Ryley Gillam.
Gilliam, the Mets’ 2018 fifth rounder, had already racked up 15 K’s in only eight innings since being promoted to Double-A on April 26th. He retired the first two hitters with ease, but the undersized righty found himself in a pickle after allowing a walk and a double in quick succession.
With no one warming up in the bullpen and Trenton’s cleanup hitter, Chris Gittens, representing the go-ahead run, pitching coach Jonathan Hurst visited the mound to calm the feisty Gilliam. The fast-tempoed righty worked Gittens to a full-count before freezing him with a nasty back-door curveball.
After taking 20 pitches to pitch himself in-and-out of a jam, I expected Boles to turn to one of his more established options, like Ryder Ryan or Austin McGeorge, to close out the game. However, the skipper rolled with Gilliam. While fireworks were scheduled postgame, Boles was hoping for no fireworks mid-game.
Even though his velocity was a tick lower than normal in the ninth, Gilliam still got the job done. While he did allow the tying run to come to the plate, Gilliam got Saez to bounce into a force-out to record his first Double-A save.
Ever since he was drafted by the Mets, Gilliam’s been dubbed as a reliever who could move fast through the Mets’ system. He showed why Saturday night, showcasing mid-90s heat and a nasty hook. His curveball showed 1-7 slant and the fastball had a lot of late life to it. While the command was iffy at times, I fully expect him to make his Major-League debut within the next calendar year.
After an 0-for-3 showing on Friday night, MMO’s No.1 ranked Andres Gimenez was back in the Rumble Pony lineup Saturday night. The 20-year-old doesn’t look quite ready for the big-league club yet, but he’s slowly looking more comfortable with Binghamton.
After starting his night off 0-for-3, Gimenez drew a walk with two outs in the eighth inning and, solely with his speed, tried to tack on an additional insurance run. With a 1-0 count on Dario Pizzano, Gimenez went to steal second base and was called safe on a close play, much to the chagrin of the Thunder fans. Three pitches later, he tried to execute a hit-and-run play with Pizzano, but the Brooklyn native fouled the pitch straight back.
Game Notes
Two of the Ponies’ most productive hitters, Will Toffey and Sam Haggerty, were given the night off.
With the season still in its infancy, quite a few storylines emerged from this game. It’ll be interesting to see if Jannis has finally turned a corner with his knuckler. With the Mets’ upper-level starting pitch depth lacking, the journeyman has gotten himself to the point that a promotion to the Mets, which have reaped the benefits from a knuckleballer in years past, is not out of the question.
It’ll also be interesting to track Gimenez’s development. Since he’s only 20-years-old, he has plenty of time to come into his own. If he can tap into any more power, his path to the Majors could be expedited.
With their win Saturday night, the Rumble Ponies sit only 0.5 games behind the Thunder for first place in the Eastern League.
