Archive for The Worst of the Best

The Worst of the Best: The Week(s)’s Wildest Swings

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.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Worst of the Best: The Week(s)’s Wildest Pitches

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.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Swings

I still don’t really know what I’m supposed to do in these introductions, and I suspect it would be unprofessional to use this section to throw out links like this. I guess for the time being I might as well just repeat myself, since I’m at a loss and nobody reads these for the introductions anyway. Hey you guys! This is the second part of the fourth edition of The Worst Of The Best, and here’s last Friday’s wild-swings article. You’re going to see the five swings from the past week at the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone, as determined by PITCHf/x and me. Only included are full swings — not checked swings — and I’m also going to make a point of excluding swings on hit-and-runs, since those aren’t really up to the hitter. Maybe they’ll earn honorable mentions. I haven’t actually encountered one of those yet.

For the purpose of this series, I don’t care about funny-looking swings where the hitter loses his balance and falls down. So don’t look for those in the body, although you’re free to post them in the comments because they’re still hilarious and embarrassing. And as I noted earlier, don’t expect to see these posts next Friday, since I’ll be out of town and, more importantly, not at a computer. I’m going to go ahead and guess I couldn’t compose a post like this from a smartphone. That sounds like the terms of a prison sentence. The Friday after, we’ll be back in business, and now on this particular Friday, we’ll proceed with the list, in the usual descending order. I think this has been enough words.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Pitches

Let us begin with a few notes! First, hello, welcome to the first part of the fourth edition of The Worst Of The Best. Thank you for reading because without you I would be literally penniless unemployed. Second, this post has a lot of .gifs in it. All of the posts in this series have a lot of .gifs in them, and you have no right to complain about browser locking, because you should know what to expect by now. If your machine can’t handle .gifs, it’s not going to handle these posts, and you don’t complain about the river when you can’t float across in a measuring cup. Third, per usual, this is all PITCHf/x-derived, and we’re just examining the five pitches the furthest from the center of the strike zone. Here’s last week’s edition. Sometimes people like to ask why so-and-so’s pitch didn’t make the list. It’s because the pitch wasn’t bad enough. But to sate your curiosity, guys who just missed the top five include James McDonald, Cliff Lee, and Jaime Garcia. Over the course of a week, Cliff Lee threw baseball’s seventh-wildest pitch. All right.

And a final note: don’t look for these posts next Friday, because I’ll be away, attending none of your business. I figured it was probably for the best to give you guys a warning, and I haven’t yet decided if the Friday after that will review the previous week or the previous two weeks. I probably won’t make that decision until the morning of that Friday, because I don’t deal with things ahead of time. Now we should be all good to go, so let’s watch some really wild pitches, together. You can pretend we’re family.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Swings

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.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Pitches

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.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Swings

And now we’re to the second part of the second edition of The Worst Of The Best. In this part, as in the second part of the first edition of this series, I encountered a problem where I logged into MLB.tv too often in too narrow a window of time. What happens then is you get your account suspended! Very temporarily. So it is something of an inconvenience, hence the delay in getting this post up on the page. So be prepared if you’re ever going to load a bunch of different MLB.tv archive games all willy-nilly. Don’t load them from Gameday or from the scoreboard page; load them through the actual MLB.tv window itself. Having had this problem twice, it’s clear that the penalty after the first infraction wasn’t enough of a deterrent to teach me a lesson, but I won’t worry about my cognitive function until or unless it happens a third time.

Incidentally, when I did something like this last year, sometimes people would write in about really ugly swings, wondering why those didn’t show up on the list. Like, swings where the batter fell down, or something. Those are bad swings, but these are the swings at the wildest pitches, which is different and which is based on PITCHf/x instead of observation and judgment. Someone, probably, should keep track of all the swings where batters fall down. But because that information isn’t easily recovered on a computer, I’m not going to worry about it, myself. Here are wild swings at pitches way out of the zone. That’s all this is, and nothing more. Off to the top five, or the bottom five, depending on your perspective.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Pitches

Hello friends, and welcome to the first part of the second edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here is a link to the first part of the first edition, in case you don’t know what this is. So, read that, or just read on because it dawned on me I don’t know how I’m supposed to introduce these things each week. I don’t feel right just launching into the images and the commentary, but I also don’t know how I’m regularly supposed to start with something original and fresh. This sort of meta-commentary right here isn’t going to fly every time so I’m all but out of ideas. It’s April 12.

The idea: highlight the bad. The deeper idea: acknowledge the greatness by highlighting the bad. Everything is PITCHf/x derived, so I’m limited by PITCHf/x completeness and accuracy, but that sounds worse than it is because PITCHf/x is pretty damn complete and accurate. Every time I do something like this, someone leaves a comment to the effect of “I can’t believe [X] didn’t make it.” Believe it. Maybe, just maybe, PITCHf/x got things wrong. More probably, the example you’re thinking of just didn’t meet the qualifications. This is a top-five list. It can only have five things. Let’s look at and talk about those five things, now.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Swings

Hi everybody and welcome to the second part of the first part of a new recurring Friday series. The series began with the week’s wildest pitches, and now we move on to the wildest swings because batters need to be ridiculed for their humiliating failures too. So often, we celebrate these players for being extraordinarily talented, for regularly doing things of which we’re not even capable. Consider this your weekly reminder that ballplayers are humans and sometimes, if only for fleeting instants, humans suck. Consider this also your weekly reminder that, the overwhelming majority of the time, ballplayers are terrific.

As with the wildest pitches, identifying the wildest swings is done using PITCHf/x and basic math. I confirm everything by going to the video, and I’m not going to include checked swings, because I’m looking for full, ill-advised commitments. I’m probably also not going to include swings during hit-and-run attempts, since the hitter generally feels like he has to swing at everything so the decision is practically out of his hands. I don’t want swings attempted because the hitter feels like he has to swing. I want swings attempted because the hitter thought the swing would be productive. Each week, there will be featured a top-five list. Each week, starting RIGHT NOW.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Pitches

Hello friends, and welcome to the first Friday of the 2013 MLB regular season. On this Friday we will debut a new series, to run on every Friday hereafter. The name of the series is “The Worst of the Best”, and each Friday it’s going to involve two separate but related posts, chronicling the wildest pitches of the week that was, and the wildest swings of the week that was, where for our purposes the week that was spans from the previous Friday to Thursday. Or, in this case, from Sunday to Thursday. Each post will consist of a top five, complete with a bunch of images, so prepare your computers if you have really terrible old slow computers.

I’ve done something somewhat similar to this before. I came up with this name in a hurry and I’m not wedded to it, but the idea is that we’re observing the worst performances from some of the best players in the world. These are the moments at which the world’s greatest baseball players are the most like us. Maybe even worse than us! It’s all going to be PITCHf/x-derived, so this isn’t a subjective list, but we are left with the reality that every so often, PITCHf/x misses a pitch. Also PITCHf/x doesn’t keep track of intended pitch location, which could matter a little here. But we’re all just going to deal with that, because I said so and because none of us really has a choice. Now let’s just go ahead and get to the start of our first list. This is going to at least not be the opposite of fun.

Read the rest of this entry »