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January 25, 2013

Pebble Hunting

The Wildest Outings of 2012

by Sam Miller

Continuing with The Month In Pitchers Not Throwing Strikes, we're moving on to what will likely be the final installment: the wildest outings of the year. This one is simple enough, looking at the pitchers who threw the most pitches in an outing in order to get (x) strikes. There will be stories told, tangents taken, distractions followed, connections made, charts displayed, and perhaps a GIF or so.

Wildest outing of the year: zero strikes. 
There were 15 pitchers this year who entered a game, exited a game, and threw no strikes in between. Three merely issued intentional walks; an additional nine unintentionally walked their lone assignment; and two—Tanner Scheppers and Randy Choate—hit the first batter they faced on the first pitch they threw and were promptly removed. Maybe you think those two, Scheppers and Choate, should be the winners in this category, but that's not how we're doing it, so Jamey Wright wins, instead. Wright threw eight pitches, all balls.

It came in Wright's second appearance of the season, in the Dodgers' third game of the season, and it was particularly brutal because Wright entered the game with the bases loaded. But when you imagine a helplessly wild pitcher, you don't really imagine a chart as orderly as this: 

(One pitch is missing, counters.)

Wright was pitching for a double play, missed by small margins, maybe got squeezed a little, and just kept doing it. You could argue he should have changed his approach around the sixth ball or so, but Jamey Wright's best weapon is his sinker, and when it's working, looks a lot like six of those pitches.