There a number of ways in which Daren Willman’s Baseball Savant site could be utilized but isn’t being utilized by the present author — largely because the main constraint with regards to that site isn’t its lack of possibilities, but rather the author’s lack of imagination.

Spending the last hour-plus within the sexy confines of that site hasn’t changed matters that considerably; however, it has compelled the author to produce the three GIFs below.

For what follows, what I’ve done is to identify both the fastest and slowest secondary pitches from the past week (i.e. since last Friday) which induced swinging strikes — where “secondary pitch” is defined, for the purposes of this exercise, as any pitch not classified as a four-seam, two-seam, or cut fastball by PITCHf/x.

Here, first, is the slowest secondary pitch of the week, an 0-0 curveball thrown at 62.2 mph by Paul Maholm to Charlie Culberson last Saturday that was actually classified as an eephus:

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Because it’s impossible to watch every game — and sometimes even just one game — on any given day, it’s equally impossible to make a judgment as to which single pitch might have been that same day’s most transcendent one to have witnessed. And yet, one notes, such information might be the very thing to make this miserable life a slightly less miserable life.

With a view to addressing this suddenly urgent matter — and also with the assistance of this site’s Highly Reputable and Totally Real Think Tank — the author has endeavored to develop a methodology by which to identify at least one of each day’s most transcendent pitches in a more or less objective fashion.

Said methodology follows, with almost nothing in the way of explanation, but no less wisdom for that reason.

1. Utilizing Baseball Savant’s PITCHf/x utility, search for every pitch from the previous day that (a) wasn’t a four-seam fastball, (b) was thrown with two strikes, and which proceeded to (c) produce either a swinging or called strike (and therefore a strikeout). (Click here for an example of this exact search for April 30).

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The world in which we live would be a decidedly less habitable one had certain great ideas not been pursued. Like the one Jonas Salk had for a polio vaccine, for example. Or the one Socrates had before that in terms of establishing the whole Western intellectual tradition.

Other ideas, had they been ignored entirely, would never have been missed.

Inserting footage of Jace Peterson’s first major-league hit into the music video for MC Hammer’s 1990 hit single U Can’t Touch This belongs firmly to the latter category.

San Diego shortstop prospect Jace Peterson, the object of no little attention within these electronic pages, has today been promoted to the majors to replace the injured Chase Headley there.

This object of the current post, which has required minimal effort, has been to embed the video above of Peterson making a catch two years ago and which the author only found by chance earlier today while scouring Twitter for mentions mostly of his own name.

It’s perhaps fair, insofar as he died of pneumonia years before self-appointed “Gardener of Human Happiness” Joseph Stalin began his reign of terror over the USSR, it’s perhaps fair to say that it was Stalin who resembled very popular and successful ballplayer King Kelly. Even more appropriate is to use the remainder of this entirely brief post to make note of some compelling other truths about Kelly as stolen from his SABR biography.

Truths such as:

• Referring to his father’s death, Kelly wrote that he (i.e. his father) “passed over to the great silent majority,” i.e. a conspicuously praiseworthy euphemism.
• A teenaged and orphaned Kelly found employment at a real 19th century coal factory, where his job literally was to “carry a bucket of coal.”
• Upon being dropped to the floor from a stretcher during the illness that would kill him days later, Kelly apparently announced, “This is my last slide.”

Kelly image from August 11, 1907, edition of the San Francisco Call.

The Cubs fan in his natural setting.

Since the establishment of this weblog by Kool Keith and Oscar Wilde at a Golden Corral in 1971, it is has been the editorial objective — above all others — to provide such work as to assist the reader along his horrible, forlorn journey from day to night.

In the tradition of that singular effort, the author presents the following translation — largely for the benefit of Chicago Cubs fans, who continue to finds themselves on intimate terms with misery — of very dead French poet Charles Baudelaire’s Envirez-Vous, or Be Drunk.

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It was the author’s intention, originally, to utilize a combination of Brooks Baseball’s very useful PITCHf/x game-log information and also MLB.TV to the end of reproducing in these pages the most transcendent of Corey Kluber’s pitches from his complete-game, 11-strikeout performance on Thursday (box).

Notably, however, that same dumb author’s body is currently located about 15 miles from the Spanish border in the Pyrenees. Beautiful, is one word it would make sense to use. Lacking in the highest-speed of internet, is another collection of words that are relevant in such a case.

In the place of that hypothetical GIF is the more real one embedded here — namely, of the only actual footage available to the author in this instance. Disappointment, is the thing that’s very clearly abounding.

The author and his wife are currently visiting a home that is populated by, among other sorts of people, a young girl who has invested heavily in coloring books of princesses. This is entirely acceptable for other families; however, at such a time as Carson Cistulli reproduces — an act which admittedly would necessitate a sort of intimacy which my wife attempts to avoid at all costs — his children will have at their disposal only educational sorts of coloring books. Like one depicting great fights from baseball history, for example — samples of which hypothetical coloring book one can find below. (Click, embiggen.)

Coco Crisp and James Shields:

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On the one hand, a thing that exists in the world is this PITCHf/x chart from Colby Lewis’s player profile at FanGraphs:

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While certain among us appear to extract quite a bit in the way of pleasure from it, I have personally never been the sort who enjoys merely browsing at a bookshop, the pastime doing little else but to cultivate within me a sort of mental exhaustion and corresponding grudge with the species for having carried on at such terrible length.

One advantage to age — although one hardly substantial enough to compensate for the many terrors it will ultimately exact upon my person — is that it has taught me to develop a strategy for such times as I am compelled (typically by my ever-loving wife) to visit a bookseller.

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