Hey there everybody, and welcome to what you’re doing now. If you’re reading this, this is what you are doing. This is not what you were doing before — I don’t know what you were doing before. This is not what you will be doing soon — I don’t know what you will be doing soon. There is, literally, a world of options. But what you’re doing now? It’s this. Maybe you intended it this way. Maybe you just wound up here, somewhat unconsciously, because you’re distracting yourself from work or you’re distracting yourself from boredom. Do you know how many things you do a day you don’t think about? Of course you don’t. You don’t think about them. But there are a lot. Quite a lot, for some. Reading this today might be one of them. Or if you’re here on purpose, thanks! You are sweet.

It’s time to look at five wild swings, from between August 23 and September 5. As a reminder, I was away last Friday; as another reminder, I’ll be away next Friday, so the following edition of this will also cover two weeks. What did we get from the last two weeks? Some wild swings, and some regular swings that don’t get talked about here. And lots of pitches that weren’t swung at, even a little bit. Here, five awful swings at breaking balls out of the strike zone. A couple checked swings I excluded: Wilkin Ramirez vs. Danny Duffy, and Evan Longoria vs. Ivan Nova. I’m pleased with what we’re left with. I still wish I could write about someone swinging at a pitch at his eyes, but those don’t really come up under this methodology. And that seldom happens. I’ll probably have to dedicate a post specifically to that in November. For now, not that! For now, this! Also, here’s the series archive. Links are important on the Internet.

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Hey there, readers of the written word, and welcome to the first part of this edition of The Worst Of The Best, a FanGraphs Friday series that could be best described as “almost weekly”. It is most definitely weekly in intent, but it is most definitely not weekly in execution, as evidenced by last Friday, or next Friday, or many of July’s Fridays. It is weekly enough that, when a Friday is missed, I hear about it. It is aweekly enough that, when a Friday is missed, I don’t hear about it much. While I’m here — recently I was reading an article about Chris Archer, and about how he tries to use his relative fame to spread positive messages to people who need to hear them. I, too, have a platform, right here, so as long as I have your attention, let’s all stop giving other people flat tires. Let’s stop doing that thing where we step on the backs of other peoples’ shoes or sandals. You think you’re being funny, but flat tires are received even worse than tickling, and tickling is never a good idea. Let’s also all stop tickling. Stop being monsters.

In this post, we examine wild pitches, and instead of covering the most recent one week, we’re going to cover the most recent two weeks, the window being August 23 through September 5. Here’s a link to the whole series archive. This is a top five of pitches far away from the center of the strike zone, because that’s our best approximation of location intent, and it’s based on PITCHf/x so I’m going to miss anything where PITCHf/x glitched. Someday, PITCHf/x won’t glitch anymore. Someday, we’ll have an agreed-upon way to write out “PITCHf/x”. That day is not today. Three pitches that just missed: Scott Rice to Andy Dirks on August 25, Tyler Thornburg to Clint Barmes on September 2, and A.J. Burnett to Brandon Crawford on August 25. If you’d like write-ups for those pitches, might I suggest you write them yourself? I’m not some kind of writer-monkey. Now, here, let me write, for you.

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The Pirates have already locked up their first non-losing season since 1992. Any day now, they’re going to win one more game and guarantee an actual winning season. This would probably be a bigger deal if the Pirates were worse. If it came down to the season’s last weekend, there would be a lot of chatter about the Pirates officially snapping a humiliating two-decade streak. Instead there isn’t any suspense, and observers are dreaming bigger. 90 wins. Division. World Series. Long-term sustainable success. It feels beneath this year’s Pirates to celebrate an 81st or 82nd win, and indeed, these Pirates have little in common with a lot of editions of the Pirates from the recent past.

But, 20 years of losing. Of losing all the damned time. One shouldn’t lose sight of how incredible that is, and one shouldn’t deny that even a little winning’s a relief. How have the Pirates, at last, managed to turn things around? Don’t go pointing fingers at the run production — the Pirates rank tenth in the league in runs per game. The story, as should be familiar by now, is run prevention. In runs allowed per game, the Pirates are second, behind only the Braves. Just three years ago, they were dead last. It’s interesting that the Pirates haven’t been allowing many runs, and it’s interesting how they’ve managed to accomplish that.

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For baseball professionals and amateurs across the globe, the dream is to reach the major leagues, and every single year, there are dreams fulfilled that belong to players I’ve never heard of before. Like most baseball writers, I know something about most players, but there are a lot of players, and I have only so many brains. Some months ago I didn’t know a thing about Scott Rice. Scott Rice is the major-league leader in appearances, for pitchers. Usually, the players I don’t know are relievers, but every so often they’re utility infielders or versatile outfielders. Generally, they tend to be relatively unremarkable. I’m supposed to know the guys with big talent. Generally, I don’t expect the players I don’t know to go on to rank among the league’s best at something.

It took me a little while to recognize the name “Juan Lagares.” I’d never heard of Lagares when he started getting playing time with the Mets, and I was left unimpressed by a glance at his statistical track record. But, at the plate, Lagares has gotten better, and at the plate isn’t where Lagares is at his most interesting. See, Lagares has been his most remarkable defensively. Just Wednesday, he robbed the Braves of at least one run with a diving catch at a sinking liner. And while Lagares has demonstrated his ability to move around the outfield, range hasn’t even been his strength. His range has been good, but his arm has been outstanding. Juan Lagares’ arm has put him on a leaderboard.

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“I didn’t send him out there to paint,” Dusty Baker would say. “It was no secret.”

One of the things about strategic maneuvers in baseball is that they’re usually evident ahead of time. There aren’t many equivalents to, say, a corner blitz. If a manager goes to the bullpen, the other team sees the new reliever first, and can get ready to hit him. If a defense shifts for a hitter, the hitter can observe the shifted positioning, and think about how he wants to adjust. If a manager inserts a pinch-runner, the other team can figure that runner might be running. There’s little sense in a pinch-runner otherwise. Much about baseball can be surprising. The same cannot be said for much of baseball strategy.

Billy Hamilton made his major-league debut Tuesday night, in a scoreless game between the Reds and the Cardinals. He made it not as a starter, but as a runner, having recently come up as a September promotion. Hamilton ran for Ryan Ludwick with none out in the bottom of the seventh, and it didn’t matter that the opposition had Yadier Molina behind the plate. I mean, it did — of course it mattered — but Molina’s presence wasn’t going to stop Hamilton from trying to do what he was going to try to do. Everybody understood why Hamilton was in the game. He wasn’t out there to paint.

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There were a variety of reactions when news broke that the Houston Astros would be moving from the National League Central to the American League West in time for the 2013 regular season. Most generally, a lot of people were pleased Major League Baseball would finally achieve league and divisional balance after years of being weird. Many other people worried about the potential consequences of regular interleague play. Astros fans were annoyed, since their team would have to make a big change from decades of franchise history. Fans of other teams in the AL West licked their chops, since — at least in the short-term — the Astros were supposed to be terrible. And fans of other American League teams in the were annoyed, like Astros fans, since the league shift and unbalanced schedule would give the West an advantage. The presence of the Astros in the West stood to give that division a leg up in the race for wild cards.

Sometimes, the projections are way off. This year’s Washington Nationals were supposed to be a potential juggernaut, and right now they’re fighting to remain a .500 team. But sometimes the projections are right on. This year’s Astros have been dreadful, even more so as they’ve trimmed salary and reduced payroll. By FIP, Astros pitchers have collectively been a little below replacement-level. As a team, the team has a lower WAR than Marlon Byrd. The Astros have been more or less as bad as people thought, so, to what extent have they actually influenced the American League playoff race? Have they played a meaningful part?

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A few things to know, that you already knew: (1) FanGraphs isn’t very busy on the weekends. (2) Much of the content on FanGraphs is planned and scheduled ahead of time. (3) We’re coming off a holiday weekend during which an awful lot of people got away to do some traveling or relaxing. (4) Baseball, this past weekend, was as active as ever. Put it all together and, here on FanGraphs, one could argue baseball has lately been under-covered. Things have happened that didn’t get words to them.

Things like trades on or before August 31, which is an important deadline for purposes having to do with postseason roster eligibility. Last Friday and Saturday, there were five trades swung in major-league baseball, none of which were written up on the site. This is an attempt to make up for that, by addressing them all at once. “Better late than never,” is an expression that applies, to a point. Below, find all five moves, each with its own subjectively appropriate classification. Five moves for five contenders. What have they done to themselves?

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Every so often, I get the sense people under-appreciate the importance of pitching ahead in the count. These phases are usually followed by other phases in which I conclude I’m simultaneously over-appreciating it, and then I return to baseball normalcy, but right now I’m in one of them first phases. And whenever I’m here, it’s weird. From a very impressionably young age, we’re told how important it is to throw strike one. We know, when we think about it, that it’s much better to be ahead than behind, as a pitcher. But it doesn’t come up that much in conversation or analysis. People talk about proxies, but then almost everything is a proxy for pitching ahead in the count. When you’re pitching ahead, you’re pitching in control.

Obviously, it makes a difference with regard to walks and strikeouts. More strikes mean more strikeouts, more balls mean more walks. But it also makes a difference with regard to quality of contact. Just looking at this year’s league-wide splits, pitchers have allowed a .303 BABIP when behind in the count, with a .198 isolated slugging. Meanwhile, they’ve allowed a .287 BABIP when ahead in the count, with a .092 isolated slugging. On contact, when behind in the count, pitchers have allowed 4.7% home runs. On contact, when ahead in the count, they’ve allowed 2.5% home runs. Yeah, there’s some selection bias — better pitchers pitch ahead in the count more often — but that doesn’t explain the gaps. Common sense explains the gaps, mostly.

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As I’m writing this on Wednesday night, the Reds are clobbering the Cardinals, 9-0. All those runs, incidentally, were charged to Adam Wainwright, which means both Wainwright and Felix Hernandez imploded on the same day. Joey Votto, so far tonight, has batted three times against St. Louis. He’s drawn three walks, as Votto is wont to do. He walked with two on in the first inning, and later scored a run. He walked with one on in the second inning, and soon thereafter scored a run. He walked again in the fourth, but the bases were empty — and that’s not what this is going to be about.

If you haven’t read the arguments, you’ve probably at least heard about them. Votto has been a polarizing player for the Reds, because he’s drawn a ton of walks in run-scoring situations. With runners in scoring position, he’s walked more than a quarter of the time. The end result is that Votto has an underwhelming RBI total, and he’s supposed to be in the lineup to produce runs. In theory, run-producers are supposed to swing the bat. Run-producers like Brandon Phillips. One’s instinct is to think this is absurd — and it is pretty silly — but we might as well dig in for a few minutes. Are people warranted to be frustrated by Joey Votto’s patient approach?

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