Good day, whoever you are, and welcome to the second part of The Worst Of The Best’s first ~half in review. Right here is a link to the section with all of the posts in this series, starting from the first, naturally. This is the day after the All-Star Game, meaning it’s a day without major-league baseball. Thursday, too, will be another day without major-league baseball, and a common complaint is that the break is too long and there just aren’t any sports to watch. For one thing, the players themselves probably don’t think the break is too long. Players with things like “families” and “desires for a little downtime before facing the hellish, unforgiving grind that is the season’s home stretch.” Also, just because there’s no live major-league baseball doesn’t mean you can’t watch some new major-league baseball. That’s what the MLB.tv archives are for! That’s not actually what the MLB.tv archives are for, but, if you feel like it, go back to some date and watch a game you didn’t pay attention to. As long as you don’t see the final score, the game’ll be full of surprises. It’ll be new baseball to you, just like how a lot of the .gifs below are probably new baseball to you. A day without baseball doesn’t have to be a day you don’t learn something about baseball.

Earlier, we checked out terrible pitches. Now it’s time to check out terrible swings, by which I mean full swings — not attempted checked swings — that didn’t take place in hit-and-run situations. I don’t think a batter should be laughed at so much if he almost thinks better of swinging. I don’t think a batter should be laughed at so much if the swing decision is taken out of his hands. The swings you’re going to see? These batters should be laughed at, albeit probably from a distance, without their knowledge. Coming up: five swings at the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone, as determined by PITCHf/x and me. We’re covering the whole season to date. Get ready to think about Vladimir Guerrero.

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Hey everybody — that’s you! — and welcome to the first part of The Worst Of The Best’s first ~half in review. This is a link to what The Worst Of The Best is, basically. It’s objectively incorrect to refer to what’s happened as the first half of the season, since every team in baseball has played at least 91 games and every team in baseball won’t play at least 182 games. But “first half” is the accepted terminology, and it’s the easiest way to grab your attention, and you know what I mean when I say “first half”, and technically we’re about halfway to the conclusion of the World Series. It’s been more than the first half of the regular season, but it’s been about exactly half of the complete, competitive season. Spring training can go ahead and get lost. I’ll care about spring training when spring training decides to provide for me more complete PITCHf/x information.

What you’re going to find below are five wild pitches, from between March 31 and July 14. They’re the five wildest pitches of that window of the season, as determined by distance from the center of the strike zone. Ordinarily, this is where I tell you it’s all based on PITCHf/x, but included below are two pitches that PITCHf/x didn’t even register. That’s how you know the pitches were terrible, or, PITCHf/x just had a glitch, which happens sometimes. Some pitches that just missed being included: Phillippe Aumont to Travis Snider on July 2, Ian Kennedy to Pablo Sandoval on April 29, and Cory Gearrin to Justin Ruggiano on July 3. Those pitches were 67.8 – 69.6 inches from the center of the strike zone. The pitches you’re going to see were worse. Sometimes everything just goes to hell for no reason other than that sometimes everything just goes to hell.

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Eric Stults didn’t represent the San Diego Padres in last night’s All-Star Game. He arguably deserved the honor, which is remarkable given where he’s come from. The 33-year-old left-hander was claimed off waivers last May after being released by the White Sox. Three years ago he was pitching for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

Stults had 8 career wins when he joined the Padres. Last year he doubled that total while logging a 2.40 ERA. So far this season, in 20 starts, he is 8-7 with a 3.40 ERA and 3.32 FIP. His 1.91 BB/9 is seventh-best among National League starters. He’s been the Padres best pitcher, and, surprisingly, one of the better lefties in the league.

More than a decade after being drafted by the Dodgers out of Bethel College, Stults has evolved into a poor man’s Randy Jones. In the mid-1970s, Jones won a Cy Young award and had a pair of 20-win seasons for the Padres. The southpaw did so with a fastball that could barely break a pane of glass. Stults is also similar to his skipper. Bud Black epitomized the term “crafty lefty” throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Stults talked about his evolution as a pitcher, including his ability to change speeds with the best of them, when the Padres visited Fenway Park earlier this month. Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball Players’ Association chief Michael Weiner held his annual All-Star Game press conference this morning. That is news in and of itself, in light of Weiner’s battle with brain cancer that has now sidelined him to a wheelchair. But even in his weakening condition, Weiner made news on the Biogenesis front.

Weiner: Biogenesis penalties aren’t mandated by MLB drug policy, the 50-100-life scale in agreement.

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) July 16, 2013

I followed up and Bill Shakin replied.

@hangingsliders Commissioner’s “just cause” discretion. — Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) July 16, 2013

Why is this big news? Because the plain language of the Joint Drug Policy says that a player who violates the policy by use or possession of a performance enhancing substance is subject to the same discipline as a player who tests positive. As I explained in the post MLB and Biogenesis: A Primer, Section 7.A of the Joint Drug Policy states:

A player who tests positive for a Performance Enhancing Substance, or otherwise violates the Program through the possession or use of a Performance Enhancing Substance, will be subject to the discipline set forth below. (emphasis mine) 1. First violation: 50-game suspension; 2. Second violation: 100-game suspension; 3. Third violation: Permanent suspension from Major League and Minor League Baseball.

Weiner, with Bill Shakin’s clarification, appeared to say that if the Biogenesis investigation turns up evidence of a player’s use or possession, the league would proceed under the “just cause” provisions of the Joint Drug Policy and the Collective Bargaining Agreement. I explained those provisions, as well, in the Primer post and further in last week’s post entitled “Is Selig Preparing To Use The Nuclear Option?” Essentially, the just cause provisions give the commissioner the power to discipline a player if he acts against the best interests of baseball.

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Much of the time, the pitcher who starts the All-Star Game is very deserving, and is very obvious. It may not be the most-deserving pitcher mind you, but the selection is generally someone good enough that the selection is not worth arguing. This year is such a year: Both Max Scherzer and Matt Harvey rank second in their respective league in WAR, and are close enough to the front runners (Felix Hernandez and Adam Wainwright) as to make the differences negligible. But that hasn’t always been the case. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at some of the starting pitchers who weren’t quite as deserving.

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Honorable Mentions
#50 to #46
#45 to #41

We move away from high salary, high risk players into a group of players on the opposite end of the spectrum. While the players below might not be seen as superstars yet, they all possess significant potential and have some very appealing contracts.

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If it seems like there’s always a lot of talk about all-time records in the earlier months of seasons, there’s a good reason why. With less and less of a season complete, the sample sizes are smaller and smaller, and over smaller sample sizes, one will observe greater statistical volatility. Basically, it’s easier to be on a record pace after a month or three than it is after five months or six. The trouble with on-pace statistics is that they fail to factor in regression, and regression is a part of our reality. Sometimes record paces are kept up, but most often they aren’t after a player starts to play more like his normal, non-record-setting self.

This season, we’re hearing about some records that might fall, and these days there’s a lot being written about Chris Davis‘ pursuit of the “legitimate” home-run record. But one of Davis’ teammates is also pursuing a long-standing record, as Manny Machado is approaching the single-season record for doubles. Earl Webb’s record isn’t as sexy as Roger Maris‘ was, and still is in some corners, but Machado’s pursuit has drawn attention to itself as Machado the player establishes himself as one of the game’s elite young talents.

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When Major League Baseball announced the 143 — or however many they ended up taking — players that had been picked to play in this summer’s All-Star Game last week, I noticed a few names that were missing. Not names that necessarily deserved to be there based on how they had performed so far this year, but names that you’d have expected to be easy picks before the season started. There are some pretty terrific players who weren’t selected to be part of this summer’s festivities.

The collection of names got me wondering whether it would be possible to build a roster of guys who didn’t get an invite to the All-Star Game that could compete with the AL and NL squads head to head. In other words, if I assembled a line-up from the leftovers after MLB was done selecting its All-Stars, could I field a team that was just as good?

So, I shot Dan Szymborski a note and asked if I assembled a line-up of players, would he use his rest-of-season ZIPS projections to simulate match-ups between my squad of outsiders and both All-Star squads. He said he would, so now I just had to figure out if there were enough pieces left to build a roster that could compete after MLB skimmed off the top.

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People customarily like to think of the All-Star break as separating the first half from the second half. The season right now is well past halfway over, with the Red Sox having played 97 games, and the Mets having played 91. Last year’s Reds finished 97-65, and no one would say they finished .500. But the terminology isn’t really important, and what the All-Star break really provides is an opportunity to look back on everything that’s happened, without much new stuff simultaneously happening. One of the things that’s happened is the season’s most clutch hit, objectively determined by Win Probability Added. Below, said hit is explored.

We know there exists a hit of maximum clutchness. It’s a home run, a grand slam, with the bases loaded and two outs while trailing by three in the bottom of the ninth, or beyond. If you want to get really detailed, it would be hit in an 0-and-2 count, and the best hit ever would be this hit in Game 7 of the World Series. We haven’t seen such a grand slam yet in 2013 — they’re rare! — but we have seen one somewhat comparable hit, one hit that has a good lead in the WPA leaderboards. It took place all the way back on May 11.

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Honorable Mentions
#50 to #46

We continue on with the 2013 Trade Value list, starting out with a pretty safe bet for short term value, then moving on to four high risk/high reward players who could either be franchise building blocks or reminders of the unpredictability of developing talent. At this part of the list, there are trade-offs to be made, and each of these players comes with some flaws, but enough value to demand a serious haul in order to even make their current teams consider parting ways with this kind of talent.
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