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Carson Cistulli’s infatuation with specific pitches and Jeff Sullivan’s desire to highlight the bizarre and hilarious have led to some great GIFs on FanGraphs over the last few years. But, today, I think we all have to acknowledge that the art form of the GIF has been perfected. Or, at least, has hit a new high. Because this is simply incredible.

A commenter on Lone Star Ball created this image, showing the difference in movement on Yu Darvish’s pitches, and I can’t stop watching this. Mesmerizing is probably the best word I can use.

Thanks to Drew Sheppard — the guy has a webcomic, by the way, which deserves a plug just because of how great this GIF is for making this — for originally posting it to Lone Star Ball. I hope this inspires Drew (or others) to make more of these, though it might be that the Darvish one will never be topped. This feels like the Mona Lisa of GIFs.

Also, good luck to opposing hitters trying to hit Yu Darvish.

Earlier, we took a look at the young season’s most impeded home run so far, which is the home run that faced the most opposition from the game conditions at the time. All necessary data was recovered from the ESPN Home Run Tracker, which is among my most favorite of Internet resources. If we look at one extreme, then, it follows that we should look also at the other extreme, or else the matter will feel incomplete, and this is a website devoted to completeness. And so we now turn our attention to the home run that has gotten the biggest boost from the game conditions. Home runs like this are probably more interesting than home runs that remain home runs despite strong winds and cold conditions, because these might be identified as “lucky”.

In terms of impeded home runs, we had one dinger at -20 feet, and another dinger at -17 feet. So it was a close race, and the error bars probably overlap. Here, in terms of aided home runs, we have one dinger at +64 feet, and another dinger at +43 feet. That’s a much bigger difference, but there might still be some error-bar overlap, for reasons we’ll get into. Let’s look at the home run in question!

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In the first game of a Tuesday doubleheader in Colorado, the Braves and Rockies played in a temperature that was measured at 23 degrees at first pitch. It’s hardly impossible to imagine temperatures that low — in some places temperatures are that low all of the time — but it’s hard to imagine playing baseball, and specifically hitting a baseball, when it’s below freezing out. Nevertheless, the Braves and Rockies played, and the Braves emerged victorious, having slammed a trio of dingers. That got my mental gears whirring.

Take an ordinary fly ball. At room temperature, it would have a given distance. In hotter conditions, it would fly farther. In colder conditions, it would fly less far. So I found it impressive that the Braves hit three home runs when it was around 23 degrees, and my initial thought was that the cold canceled out the effect of the altitude. From there, I started messing around on the ESPN Home Run Tracker, and I looked beyond Tuesday’s first game in Colorado. I started looking for the 2013 home run that has lost the most distance due to non-standard conditions.

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Back in November, Jack Moore wrote about the return of the stolen base as a valuable offensive weapon. As offensive levels have decreased in MLB over the last few years, the value of taking an additional base has gone up, and the cost associated with giving up an out has gone down, so we’ve seen teams running more often now than they did back when runs were plentiful.

It’s a perfectly logical construct. As hitting is more frequent, running becomes less necessary. When hitting suffers, teams try to find runs other ways to score, and one of the primary ways a team can create additional runs is through efficient base stealing. Base stealing is essentially a substitute good for power, and so SB rates follow a fairly predictable pattern of rising and falling depending on the offensive environment.

Except, that predictable pattern has gone off the rails so far in 2013.

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Earlier this month I wrote about whether we should be concerned with when we see pitchers throwing slower in April, particularly with regards to CC Sabathia.

If we are trying to predict whether the pitcher has truly lost some zip on their fastball, the answer is somewhat. Pitchers who are down at least 1 mph compared to April of the previous year will go on to finish the season down at least 1 mph about 38% of the time. Essentially, they are over four times as likely to be truly losing velocity compared to those that are not down in April. However, the signal gains in strength as the season goes on. So, if a pitcher is down at least 1 mph in July compared to July of the previous year their likelihood of being down at season’s end jumps to 14 times more than pitchers that are not down in July.

But does being down in April predict an injury? This is something I had not yet investigated. Given the increased discussion about April velocity declines I thought I should take a quick look.

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Colby Rasmus is amazing. Still just 26, and an elite-level talent, Rasmus is presently slugging .536. He’s a center fielder who clubs like a DH, and his slugging percentage is beating those of Albert Pujols and Anthony Rizzo. Rasmus owns a 135 wRC+, which was Joe Morgan’s career wRC+. It’s a better wRC+ than those being posted by Carlos Beltran, Andrew McCutchen, and Michael Morse. Rasmus is finally coming into his own, and he’s looking like the superstar the Blue Jays have wanted him to become.

Colby Rasmus is a nightmare. For every seven plate appearances, he’s struck out three times, whiffing more often than batters have whiffed against Max Scherzer. His on-base percentage is being supported by a lofty BABIP, and Rasmus has swung through the ball with nearly half of his swings. With nearly half of his swings! Rasmus’ approach has shown no signs of improvement, and it looks like he’s going to continue to be exploitable for as long as he’s a part of the game.

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You like factoids, so go ahead and choose your factoid. Shin-Soo Choo has already been hit by nine pitches. Shin-Soo Choo’s hit-by-pitch total is more than twice as high as that of the current runner-up. Shin-Soo Choo has accounted for 5.2% of the league’s hit-by-pitches while accounting for 0.4% of the league’s plate appearances. No non-Reds team in baseball has been hit by more pitches than Shin-Soo Choo this season. Shin-Soo Choo has reached base more often by hit-by-pitches than Jason Heyward has reached base by hits. Shin-Soo Choo already has the second-worst UZR in baseball, ahead only of a guy with the yips. Whoops, I don’t know how that got in there. The point is this: Shin-Soo Choo has been hit a lot, already. There is a variety of ways in which this point can be illustrated.

It’s not a total negative, or even that much of a partial negative, because Choo is leading off for the Reds and leadoff hitters are supposed to get on base. When you get hit by a pitch, you are entitled to a base! Through three weeks or so, Choo has made fewer outs than non-outs, and this is a guy in the Reds lineup who isn’t Joey Votto. As long as Choo can get hit and not get hurt, it’ll be an overall positive, and Choo hasn’t gotten hurt to date.

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Transcript after the jump.

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And we’re to the second part of our third edition of The Worst Of The Best. As earlier, this has been delayed on account of current events, which have been making it difficult to concentrate. As earlier, I’ll acknowledge that not everybody wants to be reading about baseball right now, and this is simply out there for those who do. As earlier, I’ll note that I have no sympathy for people whose browsers lock up, because you ought to know by now that these posts feature a ton of .gifs and images. And as earlier, I’ll detail what you’re about to look at! This is a top five of the wildest swings of the past week, or the full swings at the wildest pitches. Checked swings don’t count as wild swings, for my purposes, and really awkward swings where the hitter falls down don’t count as wild swings, either. It’s all PITCHf/x-derived, so if you want to blame something for something, blame technology. Just don’t expect it to respond.

Maybe you saw a swing over the past week that you thought was really bad. Maybe you think that swing should’ve made the top five, even though it didn’t! Instead of assuming PITCHf/x got something wrong, assume that you got something wrong. It’s true, sometimes PITCHf/x has glitches, and sometimes PITCHf/x misses pitches. However, far more often, you misjudge something you see with your eyes. Your eyes are pretty great, considering how things would be without them. But relative to the PITCHf/x cameras, your eyes are feet. By which I mean they’re things that can’t see. The list is going to start now. This, by the way, is a link to last week’s edition.

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Considering current events, let’s acknowledge something up front: I am not composing this with my full, undivided attention, and you probably are not reading this with your full, undivided attention. That’s just fine, and maybe because of the latter, you won’t be aware of the former. But I wanted to open with an excuse, and it’s weird enough to be thinking and writing about baseball right now, or even this week. Some of you certainly won’t be in the mood to read about sports, although I suppose those who don’t care wouldn’t be looking at FanGraphs right now in the first place. Here is baseball content on a Friday. Read it or do not, and I’m okay with your decision.

If you’re still here, and if you’re still interested, this is the first part of the third edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s a link to last week’s version of this, in order to bring you up to speed. Top five wildest pitches, relative to the center of the zone, derived via PITCHf/x. It’s not relative to intended location because we have no way of reliably measuring that. Yes, that would be better, in theory. No, that is not doable, in reality. Please do not complain about these .gifs locking up your browsers because you should understand by now that these posts have .gifs in them. All of the posts in this series will have at least five .gifs in them. You should know whether or not your browser sucks at .gifs. You do not get my sympathy. To be honest nobody ever gets my sympathy just because they have a frozen Internet window. This seems like enough of an introduction, so let’s advance to the more meaty bits.

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