Hey there, deliberate or accidental viewers of FanGraphs, and welcome to the second part of probably the year’s last edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s Monday’s post, on the season’s wildest pitches. Here’s a full series archive. Some people have asked whether I’ll do an edition of this for the playoffs, and to be honest I haven’t decided yet. I mean, it’s baseball, important and trackable baseball, but reviewing the season also brings a certain finality and playoff stuff isn’t going to measure up. “We’ll see,” is the point. For now, if this is the last edition, I want to thank you guys for following along. I know these posts are long, and I know they can take a long time to load. I know they don’t quite feel FanGraphs-front-page appropriate, once you get past the PITCHf/x bits. I know these are a lot more silly and a lot less analytical. Thank you for accepting them, thank you for not complaining about them, and thank you for allowing me this occasional slide into the ridiculous. Baseball is pretty serious business, and we treat it as such, but even funeral homes have casual Fridays. I mean, probably, but I’m not going to call one.

What we’re going to do in this post is review the five wildest swings of the 2013 regular season, by which I mean the swings at pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone as determined by PITCHf/x and squaring and adding numbers. Excluded are checked swings, because at least those demonstrate an awareness, if sadly delayed. I only wanted to capture guys who went all-in. Also excluded, in theory, are swings during hit-and-runs, but I didn’t encounter one of those. I did encounter Andrew Romine throwing an attempted bunt at a wild pitch-out with a runner sprinting home from third. The bunt missed, the catcher missed, and the runner scored standing up. You won’t see that below, but you also don’t need to — how you imagine it is at least as satisfying as seeing it for yourself. Maybe more, and who am I to stomp on your imagination? Joe Saunders was pitching, incidentally. Remember Joe Saunders?

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Hey there, baseball fans or people at least aware of baseball fans, and welcome to the first part of probably the year’s last edition of The Worst Of The Best. Beginning this Wednesday night, we’ll have the World Series, and this year’s World Series might well feature baseball’s two best teams in the Red Sox and Cardinals. A lot of good baseball allowed these players to become what they are today, and a lot of good baseball allowed these teams to get to where they are today. It’s arguably the right matchup, even if it isn’t necessarily the most compelling matchup. In honor of quality baseball, then, I thought I’d seize this opportunity to reflect on really bad pitches and swings. This is the post where we look at the bad pitches. Here’s a link to the full series archive.

What you’re going to see below are the five wildest pitches from the 2013 regular season, as determined, in three instances, by PITCHf/x and elementary math. In the other two instances, they were determined by visual observation, by me. The idea is to capture pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone, and you’re going to run across a lot of .gifs and screenshots, in case you’re worried about locking up your computer made of balsa wood. It’s been like this all season. There’s no sense in complaining today. I promise we’re almost through.

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Hey guys, and welcome to a post to which you don’t need to be welcomed. This isn’t property or a residence — no one resides here. This is a post, weighing literally nothing, figuratively little, with no doors and no walls. I’m not inside of it, allowing you in. I’m not even greeting you, as you’re reading this — my words are, but my words are old, having been written in advance of this post being published. So, hey guys, and here’s a post. Did you know that these introductions have become the trickiest part of composing this series? Maybe you can tell. Neat thing about wild swings and wild pitches is that they provide a jumping-off point. You can look for things to write about in the video or the numbers. A completely open introduction? The hell am I supposed to say? I don’t have many strong opinions about things, and this isn’t the place to talk about potential Breaking Bad spoilers. Although that gives me an idea, so check back next week. I’m just kidding, I’m not going to do what I thought of, so you’ll never know what I thought of. Thank goodness, this paragraph is finished.

This is the part where we talk about wild swings and share many laughs because the swings were ugly and irresponsible. Our window of observation this time around goes from September 6 through September 19, and as always, I’ve elected to exclude checked swings and the nearly-always-hypothetical wild swings on hit-and-runs. Authors of excluded checked swings for this edition: Marc Krauss, Brian Bogusevic, Junior Lake, and whoever Chris Rusin is. I’ll warn you that one of the wild swings below was attempted by a pitcher. But to compensate for that, this post also features among the neatest of chance quirks, so, keep your eyes peeled for what I will make a point of bringing to your attention. Get ready for fun! Or get ready to browse the series archive. Now get ready for fun!

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Hey there everybody, and welcome to the first part of this edition of this. Here’s a link to all of the previous editions. Understand that part of me feels guilty right now. This is my full-time job — my full-time job is serving as a content creator on the Internet. It’s a pretty good job, the sort of thing a lot of people out there are currently fighting for. But there are a lot of content creators on the Internet, full-time and part-time and unpaid. The only way to remain relevant on the Internet as a creator is to keep creating. So, there’s a lot of content, and a lot of it seems like it could be interesting, and a lot of that turns out to actually be interesting. So there’s a lot to consume — too much to consume, infinite content to consume — and it’s easy to get lost. Hours can disappear and you can snap out of it and realize you’re reading an article about Super Dave Osborne. The Internet is dangerous, because information is appealing, and it’s easy to click. If you can control yourself, kudos; if you have trouble, I apologize for contributing to the Internet’s volume. Many of you are reading this instead of doing what you’re supposed to be doing, and you might not even realize it, and that makes me feel bad. Not bad enough to stop doing my job, because Greek yogurt isn’t going to buy itself, but know that I know your struggle. This weekend let’s all go to the woods.

Uh so here come some wild pitches, covering the window from September 6 through September 19. Once again, this covers two weeks instead of one, because last Friday I was out of town and FanGraphs stays where my computer is. Don’t know what happens next week. Could cover a week. Could cover the second half. Could cover the whole season. There are surprises in store. Meanwhile, this week, few surprises, except for all of the surprises to come. You know the deal: top five pitches furthest from the center of the PITCHf/x strike zone. Pitches just missing: Ivan Nova to Mike Carp on September 15, Madison Bumgarner to A.J. Pollock on September 8, and Stephen Fife to Angel Pagan on September 14. Those pitchers are fortunate to have escaped mocking commentary. They did not, however, escape mention. Now for some mocking commentary.

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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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Hey there everybody, and welcome to the second part of this edition of the series I wish I didn’t schedule for Fridays, when working Americans are supposed to be able to mentally check out in the early afternoon. I remember, at my old biotech, when Friday rolled around, the workday was basically over by lunch time. Now, not only do I work a full Friday — by the time this post goes up, much of the audience has already mentally and/or physically begun the weekend. One thing I could do is just not work on these things very hard, but I think I’m at the point at which I’m addicted to writing underneath images. I don’t know what I’m going to do in November. Tremble a lot, probably. Here’s a link to the series archive, to change the subject.

Wild swings are what we have, at breaking balls intended to hopefully generate wild swings. This edition comes with five wild swings and a bonus non-swing that still makes it into the post for reasons you might or might not be able to guess. Basically everything is something you might or might not be able to guess. That covers just about all the options. Today’s research excluded a bunch of check-swing strikes, from players like Matt Wieters, Ryan Zimmerman, Mike Moustakas, and Chris Davis. Players very much like them. Players so much like them, in fact, they are them. We’ll get going now to the five wild swings and the bonus. The sooner we all start, the sooner we’re all done.

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Hey there everybody, and welcome to the first part of another edition of The Worst Of The Best. You’ll see in the headline it’s written as “The Worst of the Best” — with fewer capital letters — in accordance with our editorial policies, but I like capital letters because they make me feel important, so the first sentence of this post is my own form of stubborn protest. Now, this is obviously a departure from the news of the day. Yesterday, Ryan Braun released a statement of apology, and everywhere today you can find somebody’s hot takes. The consensus: the apology was a good step, but not enough. Not enough to make up for cheating and lying and accusatory behavior. A written, prepared apology was not enough to make up for that. That is the thesis of just about every article on the matter I’ve seen. So, yeah, I’m glad this is a departure from the news of the day, because the news of the day is stupid.

In this departure, we look at the wildest pitches thrown between August 16 and August 22. Here’s an archive of the whole series, if you feel like throwing your day away or destroying your processor. It’s PITCHf/x and simple math and identifying locations furthest from the center of the strike zone. Some pitches just missing our top five: Andy Pettitte to David Ortiz on August 16, Taylor Jordan to Freddie Freeman on August 16, and Rubby De La Rosa to Robinson Cano on August 18. The pitches that didn’t miss our top five are the top five, presented below. I should warn you: this is a particularly confusing week. I had some trouble with this, and Nationals and Braves fans can probably guess why. The rest of you will just have to wait, a few seconds.

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Hey there everybody, and welcome to whatever jokes I have left about the same swings at the same pitches we’ve been looking at for months. For the jokes I’ve already used, here’s a link to the whole Worst Of The Best series archive. With the wildest pitches, at least there tends to be a little variety. I don’t know precisely what to expect every week. With the wildest swings, almost invariably we end up with five swings at two-strike breaking balls in the dirt. That’s just the way it is, and of course all those swings are ill-advised, but part of the fun is supposed to be the surprise, and here we don’t really get many surprises. I don’t know what to do about that and it’s too late in 2013 to just up and change the methodology. On one hand, maybe it’s interesting to keep re-visiting the same stuff and seeing what ideas there might be. What’s still fresh and original after four and a half months? On the other hand, this is getting increasingly difficult to write about. Which, presumably, means it’s getting increasingly difficult to read. I am sorry. I am sorry. I’ll have to figure some stuff out before 2014.

So, yeah, here come five stupid terrible swings at pitches low that weren’t fastballs. They’re all from between August 9 – August 15, and they’re the swings at the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. I had to exclude a checked swing by A.J. Ellis that would’ve ranked No. 1. Also, DJ LeMahieu was called for a strike on a checked swing at a pitch-out during an attempted hit-and-run. That hits my exclusion double whammy, so you’re not going to see it, but I’m just happy to finally have encountered a busted hit-and-run. Now they’re not just theoretically excluded. Also the runner was safe. Padres!

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Hey there, nerds, and welcome to another blog post about baseball. I have to assume you have virtually limitless options. You have elected to read about baseball instead of something more conventionally important, like finance or international politics. You’re not learning a new language, unless you’re trying to learn English, in which case I can recommend way better tutorials. Is this education, is this betterment, or is this fun? If this is just for fun, is it necessary? Have you improved yourself enough today to justify this use of your minutes? Couldn’t you be a much more well-rounded person? On the other hand, people bond over sports, and there’s nothing more important than interpersonal interaction and communication. What would we be without our bonds? What would so many of our bonds be without sports? Maybe this really is important, dammit, and here’s a whole archive of this series. Whatever, read everything. Maybe it really is the most important thing you can do from your desk.

We’re going to look at the last week’s wildest pitches, as the headline has already told you. It’s a PITCHf/x-based top five, from the August 9 – August 15 window. A few pitches that just missed the cut: Bryan Morris to Daniel Descalso on August 15, Bruce Rondon to Avisail Garcia on August 13, and Chris Rusin to Joey Votto on August 14. (Votto didn’t swing.) Additionally included below is a bonus, something that doesn’t qualify for the list but something that deserves to be presented. It is one of my favorite .gifs of the season. I’ll explain when I get there. I’m just about to get there! I’m getting there right now!

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