Hey there, Internet users, and welcome to the second part of the 11th edition of The Worst Of The Best. This is the second part of the tenth edition, from last Friday, which you might have already read. If you haven’t already read it, maybe go ahead and keep it that way because I can never predict when I’m going to have to start recycling jokes and other material. Every single week I start conducting my research and I worry that I’m not going to have anything to say. Every single week so far, words have produced themselves, but I don’t know how it happens so I can’t just take it for granted. As I type this, I’m nervous. I’m nervous about whatever is going to happen down below. What if it sucks?

This is where we look at bad swings, which basically means this is where we look at two-strike swings at breaking balls in the dirt. Exceptions are special, but they’re also rare, which is what makes them exceptions. I am looking forward to showing you something about a particular matchup, but I won’t spoil the surprise in the introduction. You should also know that I’m writing this in an aggravated mood, because a bunch of the swings I looked at on video wound up being checked swings and I exclude those and that drives me crazy because it’s lost time. Stop going halfsies, hitters. You make my Fridays worse. The window examined: June 14 through June 20. Let’s look at some fools.

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Hey there, whoever you are, and welcome to the first part of the 11th edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here — right here — is a link to the first part of the tenth edition, from last Friday. Meanwhile, this is a link to the section containing every post in this series. For a few minutes I debated with myself whether to write “11th” or “eleventh,” and I settled upon the former, as evidenced conclusively above. Please do not interpret this paragraph as an indication of the paragraphs to come. I promise that things will pick up, if only because there are stills and .gifs below that interrupt the words that I type. It’s the words that are the hard part for me and the relatively unpleasant part for you.

Here we talk about wild pitches in the form of a top-five list, showing the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. The data window analyzed is from June 14 through June 20, of this year. Yes, the load times; yes, I get it; yes, I don’t care. In the event that candidate pitches are missing, that’s PITCHf/x’s fault, not mine, so feel free to yell at PITCHf/x. Here are some pitches that just missed the top five: Jeremy Affeldt to Logan Forsythe on June 18, Yovani Gallardo to Trevor Crowe on June 20, and R.A. Dickey to David Murphy on June 15. The list below is presented in descending order because the other way would be stupid.

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According to Buster Olney, the Chicago Cubs are open for business. They’re a rebuilding franchise with no real playoff aspirations and a bunch of interesting veterans who are free agent eligible at the end of the year, so it makes sense for them to make some present-for-future trades. The focus is likely going to be on their pitching, as Matt Garza and Scott Feldman will be two of the more common names you’ll hear talked about over the next month or so. However, there’s another Cub for sale that might be one of the more interesting players on the market: Nate Schierholtz.

Schierholtz has long been a bit of a favorite of mine, as he specializes in the skillset that I think is most often overlooked at the big league level. He’s basically a tweener, a guy with good corner outfield defense who probably can’t handle center field but doesn’t have the kind of power teams have historically associated with RF and LF. He’s been around for a while, and now 29-years-old, he has only hit 33 home runs in nearly 1,600 plate appearances, and he has a career slugging percentage of .426. That kind of moderate power profile generally gets overlooked when teams are looking for corner outfielders, even if the rest of the skillset makes the overall package pretty useful.

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Heading into last season, Devin Mesoraco was a consensus top-15 prospect, and it was thought that he would see significant time behind the dish with the Reds. After all, they had traded their other top catching prospect — Yasmani Grandal — away in the Mat Latos trade in order to supposedly clear the way for him. But instead, Mesoraco spent most of the season sitting on the bench, and things haven’t been much different this year. In doing so, Cincinnati and manager Dusty Baker may have squandered one of the rarest assets in baseball.

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Last year, Mike Trout was 20-years-old, and he did things that no other 20-year-old in history had ever accomplished. He’s the only 20-year-old in baseball history to post a +10 WAR season, and it wasn’t just driven by his positive fielding numbers, as his 166 wRC+ was the best hitting performance any 20-year-old has ever posted. It was an historic season in many ways, but it was also the kind of season that didn’t look repeatable.

His BABIP was .383, and both his fielding and baserunning numbers were among the best in the game, but all of those variables are heavily influenced by speed, and speed peaks very early. During his run last year, I repeatedly noted that I thought Trout would probably settle in as more of a +6 to +7 WAR player, because his defense and baserunning would regress faster than his offense would improve.

And, really, his BABIP, his defense, and his baserunning have regressed somewhat. Trout’s UZR is just +0.5 despite spending about half of his games in left field, his BABIP is down to .357, and he’s only stolen 16 bases this year after swiping 49 last season. Trout noticeably bulked up over the off-season, and he doesn’t appear to be quite as fast as he was last year. He’s still a burner, but he’s probably not in the fastest player in baseball conversation anymore. So, in that sense, my expectations for Trout regressing have been vindicated.

Except, you know, his wRC+ has fallen from 166 last year all the way down to 163 this year. The BABIP correction has essentially been canceled out by an improvement in his contact rate, so he’s just not striking out as often as he was last year and the increase in balls in play has allowed him to maintain his offensive levels from last season. And, while his stolen base totals are down, he’s still taking a ton of extra bases, which shows up in his league leading +3.3 UBR, the part of our baserunning calculation that measures value from advancing my means other than stealing a base. Trout had a +5.0 UBR last year, so he’s actually on pace to get more value from his non-steal baserunning this season than he did in 2012.

Last year, Trout was the best 20-year-old in baseball history. This year, his performance is going to give him a shot at being the best 21-year-old in baseball history.

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Right now, Gregor Blanco is on his way to his second above-average year as a key (if underrated) component in a championship outfield — “a dream come true” as he puts it. Just two years ago, though, he didn’t get a single major league plate appearance and found himself in Venezuela without a job. There was a moment, though, that sparked the change. A single decision, about a single body part, and Blanco found himself on the road to where he is now.

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A number of factors dictate pitch selection. Scouting reports and reads play a role — as do game situations, counts and repertoires. Some pitchers are more predictable than others — often to their detriment — but once the starter has delivered his first pitch in a game, it becomes a chess match.

The game’s first pitch isn’t unpredictable. According to Jeff Zimmerman’s research, 95.6% of all first pitches thrown in 2012 and 2013 have been fastballs. Of those pitches, 51.1% have been taken for strike, 35.9% have been taken for a ball and 13.1% have been swung at.

Overall, hitters have seen a fastball 63.5% of the time. Of all pitches thrown, 36% have been taken for a ball, 17.9% have been taken for a strike and 46.1% have been swung at.

A.J. Pierzynski probably doesn’t know all of those numbers, but having spent over 1,600 big-league games behind the plate, he has a pretty good idea of how the pitch-selection chess match works. The Texas Rangers catcher weighed in on the subject earlier this month at Fenway Park. Read the rest of this entry »

The most exciting play in baseball, within context, is presumably the walk-off grand slam with two outs and a three-run deficit. Within context, I imagine it’s almost a perfect correlation between play excitement and Win Probability Added. This is why WPA works as both a baseball statistic and emotion statistic. Any immediate reversal of deficit to victory is going to be outstanding. From the other side, perhaps a game-ending and game-preserving strikeout or double play. Context leads to leverage, which leads to excitement, which leads to viewing satisfaction.

The most exciting play in baseball, removed from context, is up for debate. Some people say triples; some more adventurous, aggressive people say inside-the-park home runs. Some people say steals of home. Some people say other things. What a lot of these have in common is maximum hustle, or maximum effort. People respond well to players putting everything they have into a play, because then you’re watching world-class athletes at their most athletic. That’s one of the points of all this.

As it happens, there was particular hustle on display on Wednesday. And hustle from two of baseball’s premier emerging stars, in Mike Trout and Yasiel Puig. On the road in Yankee Stadium, Puig gathered for himself a hustle double. At home in Anaheim, Trout managed a hustle double of his own. To have two hustle doubles on the same day by different half-player/half-phenomenon entities — the two can’t not be compared. So, below, they’ll be compared, somewhat or mostly arbitrarily.

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This is my second article in an occasional series in which I will look at the way that a single franchise has filled a single position over the course of time: stars and stopgaps, free agents and trades, hot prospects and positional conversions. Last time, I examined Atlanta Braves centerfielders. This week, I will look at another up-the-middle position for another National League team, as I take a look at the way that the New York Mets have filled their keystone, second base.

The difference between the two teams is stark. The Braves filled center field with brilliant draftees like Dale Murphy and Andruw Jones and a succession of mostly successful trades, but the Mets’ second base has been a 30-year revolving door. Here’s how it looks:
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As we sneak up on July, we’re at a point where the buyers are starting to contact the sellers. As White Sox GM Rick Hahn said to MLB.com:

“Given the way we’ve played thus far, it’s not a real surprise we’ve had some phone calls — more of the vulture-type phone calls, the type that traditionally we’re more accustomed to making,” Hahn said. “But that’s part of the hole that we’ve dug for ourselves, that teams are going to look at us as potential sellers when the deadline comes, and they’re starting to lay a little bit of that ground work now.”

While the addition of a second wild card incentivizes bubble teams to hang onto their players a bit longer to see if they can make a second half run, there are eight organizations that shouldn’t have any false aspirations about how the rest of their 2013 season is going to go: The Astros, Marlins, Mets, Cubs, White Sox, Mariners, Twins, and Brewers. Minnesota has the best record of the group at 32-36, but they know they’re in full scale rebuild mode, and they shouldn’t diverge from the path-to-the-future that they began by trading away veterans for prospects over the winter. The other seven teams all have winning percentages below .440, and even if they had some pre-season optimism about their own club, they need to admit that it’s not happening this year.

Our rest of season forecasts have each team finishing with 75 wins or less, and given the 90+ wins it will likely take to secure a wild card spot, it’s time to face the music and start prioritizing 2014 wins. While the other 22 teams retain some chance of playoff glory, these are the eight franchises that should be putting their players on the market as we head into July. However, that list of sellers presents a problem for the teams looking to buy, especially teams who are hunting for a rotation upgrade: these eight clubs don’t really have good pitching to trade.

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