The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Swings
Hey there, people I’ve almost certainly never met before in my life, and welcome to the second part of the eighth edition of The Worst Of The Best. This right here is a link to the second part of the seventh edition, from last Friday. Here’s a link to all of the posts in the series, if you want something organized. In the earlier post today, a probably attractive commenter asked why I even bother with these introductions, instead of just getting right to the list. There are a few reasons! One, these posts include HTML jumps, and we don’t want to have .gifs right on the FanGraphs front page. We actually do care about load times. Two, because I never like to repeat introductions, I’m curious to see how I’ll be starting these things in September. I’m experimenting on myself. And three, it’s convenient to have a little explanation of what’s going on in each post, just in case someone is new to the series. Sure, I could just post a link to an explanation, but I hate links. The Internet relies too heavily on links. It’s more reader-friendly to provide all the necessary details in the same place. I care about you. We care about you.
We’re going to talk about wild swings, or swings at pitches that weren’t close to being strikes. What you see below will be a top-five list of the wildest swings, from between May 24 – May 30. It’s based on PITCHf/x and there are screenshots and .gifs, albeit fewer images than in the wildest-pitches post. Eliminated are checked swings and swings on hit-and-runs, because I’m a scientist and these were scientific determinations. This week, I’m also providing for you a bonus! That’s one fewer bonus than last week, but one more bonus than you should rightfully expect. Cherish this. Off we go.