Archive for Daily Graphings

Hello friends, and welcome to the second part of the fifth edition of The Worst Of The Best. Apparently this is how I start these things now. The last edition of this was posted on April 26, and here’s a link to that, in case you want to know what you’re in for, before you’re actually in for it. The idea is to do these on a weekly basis, but there were no posts that went up last Friday. Why was that? None of your business! But to make up for the hiatus, this post will cover the last two weeks of baseball action, as was the case with the earlier post chronicling the wildest pitches.

So we’re looking at the top five wildest swings from April 26 through May 9, and by “wildest swings” I mean the swings at pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. This always takes a lot more time to research than the wildest pitches post, because I have to exclude checked swings for this, and checked swings go in the PITCHf/x e-books as regular swings. Dear PITCHf/x: you might consider taking note of checked swings, versus full swings? Partial checked swings, versus checked swings that were still ruled strikes? It wouldn’t help many people, but it wouldn’t help no one. Anyway, here’s a post, with .gifs. I hope you like it, because that’s the whole point.

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Hello everybody, and, after a one-week hiatus, welcome to the first part of the fifth edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here is the first part of the fourth edition, from April 26. When we left off, I noted that I’d be out of town on the following Friday, and that I hadn’t yet decided whether the next edition of this would cover one week or two weeks. I decided this morning to go with two weeks, so that we don’t miss anything extraordinary from the time I was away. While that means we don’t get to fully explore the one week that just was, this way we’re sure to cover the most extreme pitches and, later, swings, and I care more about chronicling the most extreme than the not-quite-most extreme. That is a horribly-written sentence, but maybe 10% of this post’s audience are reading these introductory words.

So, the window considered: April 26 through May 9. We’re looking at the top five wildest pitches, as determined by distance from the center of the strike zone (at the front of the plate). It’s all based on the spectacular and imperfect PITCHf/x system, and if this is your first visit, prepare for .gifs, for so many .gifs. Personally I’m of the opinion that the Internet is presently experiencing .gif over-saturation, and there’s going to need to be an adjustment, but I don’t know any other way to present this material. If you’re wondering about pitches that just missed the cutoff, Zach McAllister came in sixth with a pitch thrown to Josh Donaldson on May 7. Phillippe Aumont came in seventh with a pitch thrown to Hunter Pence on May 8. But fret not: this isn’t the last you’ve heard of Phillippe Aumont, today. Onward and…upward? Downward? Onward.

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Last night, the Mets won 3-2 over the Pirates on three runs deserving the “manufactured” classification. Every run required a baserunner to take an extra base. John Buck scored on a sacrifice fly in the third inning after he went first-to-third on a single. Andrew Brown scored from first on a double in the seventh inning, and Marlon Byrd scored the game-winner on a relatively shallow single to center field by Mike Baxter.

Don’t be surprised. The Mets now lead MLB in runs added from baserunning at 5.6, just over the Red Sox at 5.4, and they’ve done it despite stealing just 13 bases, 24th in the league. How? They don’t make outs, and they take nearly every base possible when the ball is put in play.

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How far can a player go on base running alone? Probably not too far. Speed as a tool is obviously quite valuable, especially at an elite level, as it feeds both into the ability to provide value on the bases and in the field. Strictly in terms of offense, though, how good can a player be with a terrible bat and good base-running skills? Just for fun, here are five recent individual seasons with the biggest differential between base-running value and batting value.

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Ninety-nine — a number rarely seen once, let alone multiple times from the same pitcher. In his last start, Mauricio Cabrera touched 99 mph enough for teammates charting in the stands to chuckle and shake their heads in disbelief.

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Scott Kazmir’s return to Major League Baseball has been pretty well documented at this point. After bottoming out by pitching in independent ball, Kazmir’s velocity started to pick back up this winter, and the Indians brought him to spring training on a non-roster invite. The velocities continued to impress and he pitched extremely well in Arizona, and with the Indians in need of useful starting pitching, they gave him a spot in their rotation, but then a strained ribcage forced him to begin the season on the DL. In his first start of the year, he gave up six runs in 3.1 innings, beating back some of the spring optimism about whether or not Kazmir could ever get back to what he used to be.

In the two starts after his debut, he was better, but neither the Royals nor the Twins are offensive juggernauts. There were encouraging signs, as his velocity was picking up and he was getting strikeouts again, but he hadn’t really put it all together yet. Until yesterday.

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Truth be told, I don’t know all that much about Chris Cornell. Were I in charge of a massive Chris Cornell museum, I’d constantly be thinking to myself, “I don’t know how this happened.” But I know a few years ago, Cornell went solo and released an album that was a complete departure from his previous music. It sold, but people didn’t really like it that much, and before long Cornell was back to being Cornell again. Soundgarden released “King Animal” in 2012 and the solo album is just this weird thing that people remember. Maybe Cornell had to try it, just to see.

A little under a month ago, Dave Cameron wrote an article here titled “Adam Dunn’s Failed Experiment.” Dunn, of course, is one of the first guys you think of when you’re playing three-true-outcome free association, as he built a solid career upon dingers, walks, and strikeouts. Dunn was always a patient sort, but he got off to a miserable start in 2013, and that was accompanied by a curious uptick in aggressiveness. Cameron highlighted a quote showing that Dunn was going to be more aggressive on purpose. Dunn was pretty good in 2012, all things considered, and no one would’ve predicted him to try to change things up at 33, but he made a change and the early results were deplorable.

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Two of the great players of the aughts are on their last legs. Two days ago, apropos of Roy Halladay’s shoulder surgery, Eno Sarris asked, “Is Roy Halladay Done Done?” and a month ago, Paul Swydan asked a similar question about Todd Helton. It’s a shame to see two of the greats — or at least two of the Very Goods — look like shadows of their former selves. So it may be worth reliving the good times by taking a look at what the scouts thought of them two decades ago.
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I’ve often wondered what would happen if a group of umpires came together to make a call that was so obviously wrong, so over-the-top blatantly inaccurate as to be completely nonsensical. Like, what if a pitcher threw a pitch, and the batter grounded out, and the umpires signaled for an automatic double? Obviously, the defensive team’s manager would get ejected, and a bunch of other guys would probably get ejected too, but, then what? If the umpires all agree that the batter doubled, who steps in to prevent the double? Does the defensive team leave the field in protest? Are they then given a forfeit? Does the commissioner get involved? The commissioner would have to get involved. But this is a thought experiment — of course, something like this would never happen.

But, you know. There are bad calls every day. Some of them are dreadful. Inexplicably dreadful. And now we have one that even followed a video review. You already know all this by now, but Wednesday night in Cleveland, in a high-leverage spot, the umpiring team did something nonsensical, and shortly thereafter the A’s were handed another loss. At least, Oakland should’ve played a bottom of the ninth. They didn’t, and won’t.

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You’ve probably heard that MLB umpire Angel Hernandez is in the news again, because he’s awful at his job and does embarrassing things to the sport on a too regular basis. You may also know that Hernandez has something of a reputation for drawing attention to himself, and is annually rated as one of the worst umpires by Major League players.

What you might not know, and what I didn’t know until I saw Joe Posnanski retweet something from Buffalo News writer Mike Harrington, is that Hernandez’s reputation for brutal calls and a total lack of professionalism goes back over 20 years. Harrington linked to this article written in 1991 by Bob DiCesare, covering Hernandez’s performance in a Triple-A game between the Buffalo Bisons and Iowa Cubs. The piece is brutal in its honesty, and rings true even today.

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