Free Friday: Going to the Dogs

Lots of fun stuff today in Free Friday…

Worst Strike Calls Since 2018

I’m going to introduce a new JoeBlogs feature called: “Fun Things You Can Do with Statcast!”*

*If anyone plans on making this into a T-shirt, please remember to include the exclamation point at the end… like Yahoo!

Today’s Fun Thing You Can Do With Statcast!—the 10 worst strike calls since 2018.

Honorable mention: Ryan McKenna to Sandy Leon

Date: May 26, 2023

Umpire: Jordan Baker

I’m going to include this one for entertainment purposes, but generally speaking, we’re not talking about terrible strike calls when there’s a position player lobbing the ball to the plate. I’m sure umpires don’t like dealing with that. Even so, this call is pretty egregious.

No. 10: Matt Harvey to Francisco Lindor

Date: Sept. 1, 2020

Umpire: Jordan Baker

I’m going to give Baker the benefit of the doubt on this one; he might have been saying that Lindor—who was attempting to bunt on the play—was swinging. It’s listed on Baseball Savant as a called strike, as you can see, which, I mean, if this is really a called strike, it might be the worst of them all. But the calm reaction from Lindor and, particularly, Royals announcer Ryan Lefebvre, tells me that everybody kind of assumed this was called a swing.

No. 9: Hyun Jim Ryu to Monte Harrison

Date: Aug. 11, 2020

Umpire: James Roye

This was during COVID, so there’s nobody there to boo Roye for calling this a strike, even though it’s WAY up in the zone. To be honest, it’s hard to tell from the video that the pitch was called a strike; Roye doesn’t act like he called it a strike. But apparently, he did.

No. 8: Jon Lester to Tom Murphy

Date: Sept. 3, 2019

Umpire: Mike Estabrook

The thing I love about this call is that it’s a breaking ball that NEVER BROKE BACK INTO THE ZONE. You will sometimes see umpires call outside breaking pitches strikes because by the time the ball hits the catcher’s glove, it looks like a strike. This one never did, not even at the end. Check out the priceless closeup of Murphy’s face after the pitch.

No. 7: Drew Pomerantz to Adam Jones

Date: July 24, 2018

Umpire: Brian O’Nora

And if you think the Lester call on a breaking pitch was bad, how about this big ol’ Pomerantz curveball that never even came close. Unfortunately, the camera didn’t give us a good closeup of Adam Jones after the pitch.

No. 6: David Peterson to Luke Malle

Date: May 9, 2023

Umpire: Bruce Dreckman

The Mets catcher here, rookie Francisco Alvarez, displays the elite framing skills that makes umpiring so tough. As you can see, he’s set up inside before the pitch. When Peterson badly misses the target outside, he does not move his body. He simply flicks his glove out there and quickly brings it back in to make a pitch well off the plate look like a strike. Dreckman instantly obliges. Malle sort of shrugs; what can a batter do?

No. 5: Devin Smeltzer striking out Eric Haase

Date: May 31, 2022

Umpire: Hunter Wendelstedt

Obviously, blown strike-three calls carry a different resonance, and this was a beauty—more often than not, low-strike calls don’t look as egregious as, say, strike calls way outside. But this one is special.

No. 4: Trevor Richards to Giancarlo Stanton

Date: Sept. 28, 2021

Umpire: Brian Knight

The announcer “Ooh” after this way-inside-pitch was called a strike tells the tale.

No. 3: Steven Brault to Salvador Perez

Date: Sept. 11, 2020

Umpire: Ed Hickox

This one is confusing. Hickox very clearly and emphatically calls it a strike, even though it’s obviously way outside. Was he saying that Perez swung? It didn’t look like Perez swung. The announcer didn’t think Perez swung (in fact, the announcer thought the pitch was called a ball). Weird stuff happened during COVID.

No. 2: J.P. France striking out Wyatt Langford

Date: April 12, 2024

Umpire: Angel Hernandez

When taken in context, this is the worst one… because it followed two other terrible strike calls. This is the pitch that inspired this whole idea, and I felt sure it would be No. 1. But I actually think there was a worse one. By the way, check out Langford’s reaction. No complaint. Apparently, as a rookie, he did not feel empowered to complain. Instead, he just walked back to the dugout with this, “Oh, so THAT is Angel Hernandez” look on his face.

No. 1: Buck Farmer to Trey Mancini

Date: July 31, 2021

Umpire: Ramon de Jesus

This call didn’t carry anywhere near the weight of the Angel Hernandez call. It was a pretty meaningless pitch—an 0-0 count, bottom of the eighth inning, Orioles leading the Tigers 5-1. And I think that’s what I love most about it. This is just an exaggerated version of the sort of mind-numbingly bad calls that we see every day in baseball. It should be said: We don’t see a lot of them. There might only be one or two in a game. Some games don’t have any blatantly obvious bad ball-strike calls. Umpires are mostly pretty incredible at what they do.

But calls like this feel common enough that we just accept them.

This is not actually a common strike call. By the numbers—and by the eye test, too—this is the biggest missed strike call since 2018. And yet it feels oddly familiar, doesn’t it? MLB will eventually have no choice but to clean all this up.

Happy Friday! Our Friday posts are free so everyone can enjoy them. Just a reminder that Joe Blogs is a reader-supported newsletter, and I’d love and appreciate your support.

Mock Draft Report Card

Obviously, I wasn’t expecting a lot of accuracy in my NFL Mock Draft 1.0 because: (1) I don’t know much at all about the draft; (2) I wasn’t going to even try to guess at trades, and it was clear that there were going to be a number of trades.

That said, I’d have to say that, overall, I actually did pretty well.

Bullseyes: 6

I can’t take a whole lot of credit for getting the top four picks right; pretty much everybody knew that those were going to be the top four picks. But I did nail that the Raiders would take Georgia’s playmaking tight end Brock Bowers and I also predicted that the Cardinals would take Missouri’s versatile defensive lineman Darius Robinson.

First-round success rate: 29 players out of 32.

Hey, I’ll totally take that. What’s that, a 91% success rate? For the most part—and this just speaks to how much draft information is readily available—I (and everybody else) was able to predict team needs, even when I didn’t get the exact player right.

For example, we all knew the Vikings were going to try to nab one of the top quarterbacks, and, sure enough, they traded up a spot to get J.J. McCarthy. We knew the Broncos were going to take the best quarterback on the board; I had them taking Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., but he was gone, so they took Oregon’s Bo Nix. We all knew the Chiefs were going after a playmaking wide receiver; I had them staying put and taking Adonai Mitchell, but they actually traded up to get the fastest combine player ever, Xavier Worthy. And so on.

And speaking of quarterbacks, as Brilliant Reader Matt points out, I had all six of them going in the first 12 picks, which a lot of others did not.

What I missed

• I was a bit surprised that the Falcons took Michael Penix Jr. when they just signed Kirk Cousins to that big four-year deal. Didn’t see that coming. Apparently neither did Cousins.

• I thought cornerbacks Cooper Dejean and Kool-Aid McKinstry would both go in the first round. Interesting to me that teams seemed a lot less interested in defense in this draft—the first 14 players selected were all offensive players, and, in all, 23 of the 32 players selected were on offense.

• Green Bay taking Arizona offensive lineman Jordan Morgan was a surprise. I didn’t see him in many first-round projections. I was not surprised by the Rams selecting Florida State’s Jared Verse, even though he was not in my first round; I just though teams would prioritize cornerbacks over edge rushers.

• I misread the draft board in the original version; I thought the Panthers took Florida’s sure-handed slot receiver Ricky Pearsall, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I see now that it was actually the 49ers who took him, which does make a lot more sense—he seems to fit an already high-powered offense. The Panthers took South Carolina speedster Xavier Legette, which actually does fit what I expected.

Hey, if you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends!

The Mike Trout Update

Mike Trout: 10 home runs
California Angels: 10 wins

Brilliant Reader Skinny Pete mentioned the other day that the closest a player has come in recent years to matching his home run total to the team’s win total was Sammy Sosa in 1999, when he hit 63 home runs and the Cubs won 67 games.

Seeing this inspired me to go back to look at some of those wackadoodle home run numbers of 1999. Some stuff that caught my eye:

• Greg Vaughn hit 355 home runs in his career. Does that seem possible to you? He’s top-100 all-time in home runs; Greg Vaughn hit more home runs over his career than Dick Allen, George Foster, Dave Parker and Hank Greenberg.

• Should Carlos Delgado have gotten more Hall of Fame consideration? I know we’ve broached this subject a time or two before now, but looking back, sheesh. In his 13 prime seasons, Delgado hit .282/.386/.552 with 457 home runs. He did not do much of anything before or after that, true, but there have not been that many hitters who were that productive for 13 seasons.

• Shawn Green in 1999 hit 45 doubles, 42 homers, stole 20 bases… and did not hit even one triple all season long. He’s the only player in baseball history to put anything resembling that bizarro combination together. Craig Biggio had a weird 1999 season, too; he had 56 doubles and 28 stolen bases without a triple.

• Do you remember that Jose Canseco hit 34 home runs in 1999? I don’t know why, but in my memory, I had Canseco leaving the scene years earlier. No, he hit 28 homers for Boston in 1996, 23 homers for Oakland in 1997, 46 homers for Toronto in 1998 (!) and those 34 for Tampa Bay in 1999. Had it not been for the strike and some injuries, Canseco definitely would have hit 500 home runs in his career.

OK, back to Mike Trout, because there’s something else we need to track:

Mike Trout: 10 home runs
Mike Trout: 13 RBIs

For your information:

Fewest RBIs, 30 to 34 homers: Curtis Granderson, Jedd Gyorko, Cedric Mullins, Kyle Schwarber—30 home runs, 59 RBIs

Fewest RBIs, 35 to 39 homers: Joc Pederson—36 home runs, 74 RBIs

Fewest RBIs, 40 to 44 homers: Joey Gallo—41 home runs, 80 RBIs; Mike Trout, 40 home runs, 80 RBIs

Fewest RBIs, 45 to 49 homers: Barry Bonds—45 home runs, 90 RBIs

Nobody has ever hit 50 home runs and not gotten to 100 RBIs.

Nobody Cares, But …

I don’t play fantasy sports. I’m not opposed to them morally or anything like that; I just don’t get much enjoyment out of them, and I would just rather be doing other stuff. But, last year, Jeff Garlin asked me to join his Dick Ellsworth Fantasy League, and I love Jeff, so I joined, and I did OK, and it was fine.

What I did not expect—because, you know, I’m not always the sharpest tool in the shed—was that Jeff would have the league again this year. So I’m back in the league and, well, here are your current standings:

It probably won’t take you too long to figure out that I’m Kuiper’s Klubbers.

I won’t bore you with all the things that have gone wrong for the Klubbers; you can probably guess at some—my top pitchers were Spencer Strider and Walker Buehler, and my exciting young star was Matt McLain—but I only bring this up to say that I look at my team and think: I don’t think this team is bad at all? I mean, I’ve got Bryce Harper and Corey Seager and Mike Trout and Will Smith and Dylan Cease and Edwin Diaz, and I’ve got Jackson Holliday and Paul Skenes on the way, and I just don’t think my team is that bad.

And then I think: Wait, is this just how owners of truly horrendous ball clubs see their teams?

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day Are Coming

The good folks at Porchlight Books are offering a special deal—you can order a signed copy of WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL for 30% off the regular price. There are only 500 available (I know this for a fact, because I just signed 500 bookplates).

Dogland Is Upon Us

I’ve mentioned this a couple times here, but my buddy Tommy Tomlinson wonderful new book, Dogland: Passion, Glory and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show is now available.

Westley is a fan.

JoeBlogs Week in Review

Monday: Looking Back, and Forward.

Tuesday: Brilliant Reader Questions!

Wednesday: A Sick-Day Checkup.

Thursday: My NFL Mock Draft!