Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Brand new, high-tech stats show that Giancarlo Stanton is having a great year; we must be hallucinating otherwise

Great news, Yank faithful: You're wrong again!

In your deluded, anti-science delirium, you may have somehow conjured up the brain worm notion that Giancarlo Stanton was entering the twilight of his Five-Day Deodorant pad career, with ever-shrinking performance levels showing up five seasons before his Yankee contract expires, in 2029 - assuming we're still here to see it.

Nope. 
Forget that Stanton is hitting .230 - (with on On Base Percentage of .283) - and that last year he hit .191, and the year before that, .211. Nope. Those are tired, old-line, horse-and-buggy stats, cooked up by Amish troublemakers on their chalk boards and Etch-A-Sketches, enroute to the next barn fire. 

Turns out that Giancarlo is actually leading the majors in ABS, (see table) - which is not a bowel syndrome, but a way of measuring BS (Bat Speed, of course) - with a whopping FSR of 98.0.

Let me repeat that, in case you feel your eyes are messing with you: 

He has a FSR of ninety-eight-point-oh!

What does this mean? Well, WTF? It goddamm means exactly what it goddamm says: Big G has a Fast Swing Rate of 98.0 percent, nearly 25 points ahead of first runner-up, Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies. That's one big-ass, instantaneous, lightning-bolt-to-the-nuts swing rate. MLB.com calls Stanton the KOBS - King Of Bat Speed, aka, the "King of BS." 

[It's no wonder that Stanton just hit the two hardest home runs of the 2024 season. On his 119.9 mph homer on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium, he had a swing speed of 83.7 mph. On his 118.8 mph homer the day before, he had a swing speed of 85.1 mph. The "Stantonian blast" couldn't exist without his unparalleled bat speed.

Fangraphs puts it this way.

That brings us to another metric that’s now available: fast-swing rate. That’s how frequently a player swings at 75 mph or more. You can think of it, roughly, as the hard-hit rate of swings. To hit a ball hard, you have to swing hard. A full 66.2% of Soto’s swings are hard, while 11% of Betts’ are. Giancarlo Stanton is the league leader here, at a whopping 98.4%. That’s a mathematical description of the phrase “he doesn’t get cheated.” Stanton really does have the most raw power in the league, and he shows it on pretty much every swing. As David Adler noted, Stanton is the hardest swinger in baseball, and he leaves the rest of the field in the dust.

So, stop whining about Stanton's occasional strikeout, here and there, a blip in the overall scheme of things. He might be the slowest runner to first base since Smokey Burgess, and the greatest GIDP threat since Andy Hassey's knees gave out. He's the GOAT of BS, the Swinging Blur of Midnight Blue. Don't blink, or you'll miss his movement. Hooray for the wonks. They've done it again. As for Giancarlo, do we dare to dream?   

12 comments:

  1. Stanton the greatest. Nobody better than Stanton. Stanton, we love Stanton. He is the man. Nobody better. Everybody else garbage. Stanton is the sun in the sky. Stanton rules the day. We are nothing without Stanton. All hail Stanton!

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  2. It is obvious an anti-Yankees PLOT of the Red Sox/Orioles/Mets/The Antichrist/Biden/Trump to NOT count the velocity of Stanton's swings as extra runs on the scoreboard.

    I'm sure Hal and Brian are working on this, behind the scenes.

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  3. And yet it’s not fast enough to catch up to a fastball. How strange

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  4. It’s a way of measuring BS, alright…

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  5. I can just see his plaque in Cooperstown..."His Fast Swing Rate of 98.4% during the 2024 season remains a record in the Statcast era. The exit velocity of his home runs, averaging over 117 mph, is considered an unreachable record often compared to Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak."

    We'll all be so proud.

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  6. Miss Balls Hard! Or something like that...

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  7. Pretty funny, Duque! Though actually, the Amish are banned from using chalkboards by their religious beliefs, and must only do calculations by rubbing cheese curds on rocks. True fact!

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  8. As for Stanton, this season is progressing pretty much as his last three seasons have.

    In 2021, his last half-decent year, he was up to .314 in May, and ended at .273. In 2022, Stanton was at .303 in late May—and finished at .211. Last season, he was hitting .289 in April...and plummeted to .191.

    This year he has never been above .254, and that figure is already dropping. I suspect he will end up below even his previous worst of .191. Unless, of course, he gets injured. Stanton does get injured a bit.

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  9. The Baseball Geeks have done it again. Is there a stat for all of the swing and misses that Big G takes at low outside pitches. Gary Sanchez, I am sure is second.

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  10. Well, swing the bat as hard as you can every time and you'll tend to miss the ball a LOT. At least that's how it seemed to work for me. Methinks that Stanton has a mental glitch going on...

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