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Welcome to the Three Best Pitches Thrown This Week. There are many more than three pitches featured here. They also extend beyond this week, in one case to a time that predates many of your favorite things: The Wire​,​ and all varieties of Skittles, and every dog currently alive. You might consider this a flaw, but we consider it bonus material, and no refunds will be given. Enjoy the Three Best Pitches Thrown This Week.

3. Francisco Liriano, slider to Jeff Francoeur

I'm not going to quit watching baseball over it, but as far as dumb rules in baseball go, the uncaught third strike has to be up there, right? Maybe the dumbest? The point of pitching is to get outs; the most reliable way to get an out is via strikeout; and the best way to get a strikeout is to get the batter to swing at a pitch he can't possibly hit hard. So here we see Francisco Liriano throw perhaps a perfect pitch to Jeff Francoeur, and beat Francoeur so badly that… the rules allow Francoeur to go to first base. Why, that makes no sense at all. Does a running back who jukes a defensive player have to stop if the defensive player loses his balance and falls to the ground? Is a basketball player's three-point shot declared void if the shooter is too far behind the line? If a hockey player does a thing that something about the other guy's thing, does the thing get unhockeyed? No! Of course not! And yet, here we are, watching Jeff Francoeur run to first. Does anybody in baseball pump his arms while running more than Jeff Francoeur?

(Note: According to the Dickson Baseball Dictionary, "the rationale … comes from the principle that the defense has to make a proper fielding play to record an out." Except for all the exceptions, the many, many exceptions, such as: infield fly is called, foul bunt with two strikes, batted ball strikes a runner, fan interferes with a fly ball, batter runs into his own batted ball while out of the batter's box, batter steps out of batter's box while swinging, batter obstructs catcher's throw on a stolen base attempt, runner leaves the baseline, batter swings at a two-strike pitch that hits him, fielder intentionally drops a line drive or fly ball in the infield, runner collides with fielder attempting to field a ball, or batter has too much pine tar on his bat. Geez, the rule is just so arbitrary! You could put any stupid obstacle in front of any player during any routine play and call it colorful, but why? Why do that? Stupid, stupid rule, which doesn't actually lessen my enjoyment of baseball at all.)

Anyway, to be honest, I'm not even sure that Liriano's pitch to Francoeur was all that good. It's one thing to waste a pitch, and it's one thing to try to get Francoeur to chase, but even Liriano had to be like, "whoops, sorry, didn't mean to throw it so far in front of hahaha you swung." But it's the third-best pitch this week because we're grouping it with the rest of his punch-out sliders that inning:

Four strikeouts in the inning. Liriano threw eight sliders in the inning, and one of the eight was in the strike zone. The Royals swung at all eight: three fouls, five whiffs. It was just a very good inning for Francisco Liriano's slider. "He's probably going to have a good second act as a closer," R.J. Anderson said after I showed him this inning.

2. Ernesto Frieri, fastball to Josh Hamilton

I wasn't sure which Ernesto Frieri pitch belonged here, because just about every Ernesto Frieri two-strike pitch looks exactly the same: high fastball, 94 mph, arm-side tail, swing and miss. And his two-seamer looks basically like his four-seamer. On 0-2 counts, for instance:

There's just not much to it, but he has struck out 30 of the 57 batters he has faced as an Angel, and batters are whiffing on well over half of his fastballs, and that's Josh Hamilton getting absolutely smoked with the bases loaded in a one-run game on Frieri's 32nd pitch of the night. Hamilton whiffed on three fastballs in a row to end the game. Okay, very good pitch.

More importantly, that was Frieri's fourth save, and the second one that ended in a strikeout. So we can repeat the Kenley Jansen exercise to see how Frieri's save celebration has moved up the Jeff Sullivan Closer Celebration spectrum. In his first save, Frieri was so quiet:

It's an adorable little hop, a kiss of the ball, an acknowledgement of creator and/or deceased relative. Now go back up and watch our first Frieri GIF a couple times. Watch it closely. When he struck out Hamilton on the second-best pitch of this week, Frieri had moved on to showstopper.

Josh Hamilton: Whoooof
Ernestro Frieri: BY THE POWER OF ERNIE FRIERI I COMMAND YOU
Ernesto Frieri: SHAKE, HEAVEN! SHAKE, HELL! SHAKE, ALL WHO HATH BEEN BORN OF WOMAN!
Ernesto Frieri: /clenches fists, rectum
Earth: Whoawhoawhoa I'm totally shaking
Ernesto Frieri: /impregnates Hera
War Between The Gods: /is on

We are slowly zeroing in on how long it takes for a new closer to believe he is a closer. It is not greater than four saves.

1. Bob Gibson, slider (?) against Bill Freehan, Oct. 2, 1968
I have a friend who runs marathons. He's really fast. He's really fast, but he's not an Olympian, and he doesn't win the Boston Marathon or anything like that. Just a guy who is fast. He told me his marathon time once, and I looked it up, and I figured out that it would have been the world record marathon time as recently as 1960. In 50 years, the greatest marathoner in the world became just a guy I know who is fast. So it's hard to know what to make of things like Bob Gibson. Was he just good for his time, or would you be impressed if you saw him pitching today? Are you impressed by this?

This is from the time that Gibson struck out 17 in a World Series game. I love this camera angle. Modern broadcasts show pitches from behind home plate now and then, but I guess it's never quite this close, and it's never from this angle. This is an entirely new angle, and it gives us a beautiful look at the break. I sent this to a friend, whose immediate reaction was: "The umpire called that a strike?" The pitch is so sexy that he didn't even notice the batter swing.

Kevin Goldstein showed this pitch to an NL scout. "It's a 70, maybe an 80. It's a terrific pitch with filthy late break," the scout said. Is it a slider? Gibson threw two different sliders, and describes one as "my hardest one and it would just break abruptly and mostly downward," which seems to fit the picture. Goldstein says it's not a slider, but he's not sure what it is. Ian Miller wonders if it's got spit on it, but no spitball is listed in the Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers. I saw a very poorly sourced message board comment that called it a curve, and quoted the batter as saying "it went behind me, and then across the plate."

Bill Freehan, the batter, had a 145 OPS+ that year. He struck out in his first five official at-bats against Gibson that World Series, and later in the series he walked over to Gibson during batting practice and gave him his bat as a gift. "He hasn't hit the thing yet. It's his."

I've watched this pitch at least 300 times.

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KBarth
6/08
Well, Sam, you ask a good question: "Was he just good for his time, or would you be impressed if you saw him pitching today?"

Pretty much all of the deserving HoF guys could amaze and stupify us today. I saw Mickey Mantle in his last season and he was still hitting balls about a mile. Marichal, Koufax, and Gibson - total studs. Henry Aaron in his prime would probably drive Verlander nuts just like he did to Koufax.

There's a reason Bob Gibson is revered as an all-time great. I'd love to see in-their-prime Ichiro or Barry Bonds in the box against him. He was one tough guy to face.

Yeah, I'd be impressed.
bobbygrace
6/08
The scout on Bob Gibson's pitch: "It's a 70, maybe an 80." *Maybe* an 80? I suppose I wouldn't know, but it's hard for me to imagine a nastier-looking pitch.

You know what would be cool? An article that showed GIFs of pitches on the 20-80 scale, with accompanying descriptions explaining why they rate the way they do.
SaberTJ
6/08
There would be very few pitches available on the 20 end of the scale because those pitchers would cease throwing it.
bobbygrace
6/08
Good point! For the 20 end of the scale, the GIF could be a random ceremonial first pitch.
gweedoh565
6/08
Bronson Arroyo's 2011 fastball?
Vriez10
6/08
That last pitch has to be photoshopped.
jmanig
6/08
I'm sorry, but if you just struck out Josh Hamilton on three pitches with the bases loaded and the game on the line, you have a right to celebrate.

But what the heck was that "groundshaking" thing? Did the cameraman stumble or something?
gjhardy
6/08
Great feature, Sam. Very amusing and informative.
bensonq
6/08
Great stuff once again Sam. Not sure if you came across this, but apparently Frieri's nickname is "Big Ern," named after the Bill Murray character in Kingpin, a favorite movie of his. (source- http://angels.ocregister.com/2012/06/03/why-they-call-him-big-ern/121540/)
If true, Frieri has HOF save celebration potential as he gets his sea legs. Witness his role model:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxXJbjHttMc
gilgamesh
6/08
I'm sure it's an illusion of the camera angle, but the point at which the pitch starts to break, it looks like ball stops for a nanosecond and then does its downleft break. But for an instant it hovers there, Wile-esque...
KJOKBASEBALL
6/08
I think that was Gibson's 'soft' slider. His 'hard' slider generally had less break on it, while the soft slider was more like a curveball.

Or maybe that day his hard slider was breaking as much as his soft one usuallly does, which is why he struck out 17 guys.


sgrcuts
6/08
I absolutely LOVE this feature. Please do not ever stop doing this.
benharris
6/08
I'm guessing fireworks going off in celebration of the victory.
Lespaul1
6/09
Witness the nastiness of Bob Gibson. I love how as he finishes the pitch he falls toward the dugout in anticipation of the punch out!

Seeing this camera angle more often in modern telecasts would give an idea of how it appears to the batter.
radarbinder
6/09
Arguably the best World Series pitcher ever, even better than Sandy Koufax = Bob Gibson. Love that shot!

You should go see Chris Sale pitch. His slider is so filthy when he is on that batters are simply guessing at where it will go. I've seen him throw pitches that break more than the width of the plate! Stay healthy, Chris Sale!
markpadden
6/10
Totally agree with your complaint about the need to catch strike three. Similarly (in my mind), why are runners apparently allowed to skip touching a base as long as the opponent doesn't "appeal" by throwing to the skipped base after the fact? I think a pretty simple rule change would be if a runner touches a base out of order (third after missing second, e.g.), he would be called out immediately.
NL2003
6/11
Actually, if a hockey player does a thing that something about the other guy's thing, the thing DOES get unhockeyed. Don't you know anything about hockey?