You might not be able to tell, but I'm currently trapped in a rabbit hole of PITCHfx data. Have been for a few days. It's what led to that post about the worst swings. All I want to do is look up things and then find them in video and make .gifs of them if they're interesting. It's all I've been able to think about. It's hard to think about anything else, because compared to PITCHfx data, nothing else matters. In baseball. Other things do matter in regular life, like eruptions and eruption warning systems.
This is a post of .gifs, inspired by research into PITCHfx data. I can't help it. Maybe it will be the last one for a while. It probably will not, since, again, rabbit hole. It's not like spring training's going to get interesting for a few weeks anyway, and you should know that I said "interesting" out loud all sarcastic-like. I said it so sarcastically that I heard a sarcasm detector explode down the street. I live in a neighborhood of scientists.
These .gifs show bad pitches that Ichiro turned into hits. Each of these pitches shows up in the data as being more than two feet away from the center of the strike zone. Hold your hands out in front of your face. Estimate two feet between them. That's a big distance. Especially if you're a bad visual estimator. Two feet is a long way away from the center of the strike zone.
On the one hand, these are .gifs of Bad Ichiro. On the other hand, these are .gifs of Regular Ichiro, doing something that few other players can do. More importantly, these are .gifs of baseball, and they're .gifs in which the Mariners aren't doing horrible things, so I consider this a step up from Friday.
To the singles! And keep an eye out for Yuniesky Betancourt, without whom one of these .gifs would not have been made.
In preparing these .gifs, I was reminded that Ian Snell and Sean White were Mariners as recently as 2010. A year ago, Ian Snell retired, and then unretired. He signed a minor league contract with the Dodgers on May 25. He allowed 11 home runs in 22 innings in triple-A before he was suspended by the team for the rest of the season. Ian Snell is 30 years old.
10 recs | 36 comments
I will remember this post as:
“This post is about
IchiroIan Snell”Or
“Ian Snell, right? That could have turned out waaayy differently”
tsunamijesus - February 13, 2012
Ian Snell only was an adequate starter right before mlb.com started archiving his footage
so mlb will always paint Ian Snell as a shitty pitcher; but he actually had a really promising start to his career (at least by Pirates standards). Like Brian Giles, the only mlb.com video will be of them sucking. People will see their earlier stats and be confused.
tsunamijesus - February 13, 2012
Aww Sherrill.
ThundaPC - February 13, 2012
That last .gif is what happens when you leave a pitch up in the zone.
Ichiro is so dangerous.
adamhwong - February 13, 2012
I think the strike zone ends way before you get to the shoulders.
BigR - February 13, 2012
yep
gunsbound - February 14, 2012
Yuni almost tore somebody's ACL right there.
Zewerr - February 13, 2012
Scott Podsednik has no idea how close his mlb career came to ending that day.
All four more months of it.
C Dubya - February 13, 2012
He probably figured
once was enough.
xmet - February 14, 2012
I like #2, where it appears the catcher is, in fact, attempting to catch Ichiro.
msb - February 13, 2012
In 1 and 6, the leftfielders are playing him at normal depth.
It seemed like they were playing him much shallower last year and taking away a lot of those doinks to short left.
Big Jared - February 13, 2012
In the first one, the left fielder is just standing there for a long time.
It looks like even Ibanez could have gotten to that one. I guess he thought the SS was going to get it. The SS almost runs out to where the LF started out.
And that pitch, wow! It was up in Ichiro’s eyes, and he didn’t even start to swing until the ball was almost in the catcher’s glove!
Paul AB - February 14, 2012
Oh, wait.
That first one is the Yuni one, isn’t it?
That explains why the LF’er was in no hurry to run in on the ball.
Paul AB - February 14, 2012
What do you suppose is going through his mind on these pitches?
“Oh hey, pitch way out of the strike zone. They’ll never expect me to swing at that pitch.”
Bubbles. - February 13, 2012
Well, I doubt he thinks in English
Matthew - February 13, 2012
Fixed
“やあああ、ストライクゾーンから抜け出す方法を売り込む。彼らは私がそのピッチでスイングを期待することは決してないだろう”
bigtrain21 - February 13, 2012 via Android app
.
CapSea - February 13, 2012
"I know exactly where this pitch is going, so I'm going to hit it."
lemonverbena - February 14, 2012
So, i randomly met one of the Mariners team chaplins today...
I dunno if this is common knowledge or not but he told me that the reason why ichiro bats left handed (or one of the reasons) is that Ichiro feels your dominate hand should be the one that leads the bat to the ball. It makes sense to me in a funny way. i can see how someone would be able to be more exact in how they move a bat when the dominate hand is leading. I think it reduces power however. (not that i’m a good hitter in any way)
I was excited to hear this little story and wanted to share iton LL in a relevant post. Thank you Jeff for writing possibly the most relevant of relevant posts for me to share that today!
Robert Praetor - February 13, 2012
When they talk about a righty batting lefty in cricket
They talk about them getting better control/coordination/contact and typically less power.
Seems like that in practice to me, since I’m one of those, although I can bat right handed (not that switch hitting really exists in cricket) and I find when I try batting righty I can hit the ball that much harder but it’s more difficult for me to make good contact.
Aussie Mariner - February 13, 2012
Interesting
datboyeddiep - February 14, 2012
This is the same theory / result for golf swings as well.
LonelyintheBleachers - February 14, 2012
"Not that switch-hitting really exists in cricket"
Ahem
Eyeball Kid - February 14, 2012
I figured that was going to be David Warner.
So that’s two. I don’t think you can count the reverse sweep, or Miandad’s reverse pull shot, either.
But that’s why I said it doesn’t “really” exist, it’s not common.
Aussie Mariner - February 15, 2012
This is the same reason Canadian kids are taught to play hockey with their dominant hand at the top of the stick.
As a result, the majority of hockey sticks sold in Canada are left-handed sticks.
Llewdor - February 14, 2012
Phil Mickelson is a right hander
And plays leftie. I am a right hander and can’t hit the ball left handed. It’s counter intuitive to me but hey, whatever.
Edanger6 - February 14, 2012
I actually don't know which way i should swing a golf club.
Left and right handed swings both feel completely fluid and natural to me, and the results don’t vary in an obvious way. I don’t really play golf though so it doesn’t really matter.
Aussie Mariner - February 15, 2012
He's one quick little bugger.
joof - February 13, 2012
I think he cheated time and space in #3
lemonverbena - February 14, 2012
More pitch f/x + gif posts, please.
JonBBT - February 13, 2012
This looks like me playing softball:
“He threw the pitch, might as well swing!”
It also looked like his speed is what turned a lot of those into hits.
extavernmouse - February 13, 2012
His speed in the third one is crazy!
As I watched the ball dribble to the shortstop I thought, Oooh, close play!" The shortstop makes a nice pic and a quick throw, but Ichiro is already there by a mile! Wow!
Ride the Apocalypse - February 14, 2012
And it happened at Tropicana Field.
TURF playing surface.
harkening - February 14, 2012
On three of them the count was 0-2.
And all the other ones he had two strikes on him (except the last one where I can’t see the count).
Don’t know if that’s significant, probably not, but I found it interesting anyway. Those 0-2 pitches I’m sure were just the pitcher trying to waste a pitch to see if he can get Ichiro to make himself look silly. Whoops. It really makes me hope for a bounce back year for Ichiro. I want to see more of classic Ichiro like this.
Mothy - February 14, 2012
I love watching the catchers prepare to catch each pitch.
In most cases, the ball is so far outside of the strike zone that they’re focusing on doing what they need to do to keep the ball from getting past them. Ichiro actually swinging at the ball, let alone making contact and taking off towards first, seems to be the last thing they expect.
Nadingo - February 14, 2012
He seems genuinely surprised to have made contact on a few of those.
Dustin G - February 14, 2012
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