Dylan Cease is still a member of the White Sox, which makes it relevant to a White Sox blog that he led the league in a new Statcast category.
Swords, the term coined by the Pitching Ninja for hopeless half-swings on typically nasty pitches, can now be quantified thanks to Statcast's bat-tracking technology. Thanks to his slider, Cease led all pitchers with 55 swords induced, three better than runner-up Spencer Strider.
You can see complications of Cease's swords throughout Rob Friedman's interview with Cease:
It's not necessarily a predictive stat -- good pitchers can succeed without them and good hitters can rack them up -- but the accompanying article from Mike Petriello does a good job of explaining why it's a fun one, particularly with how they defined the aesthetics of a sword with data:
How is a sword defined? It’s basically trying to put parameters on a feeling, trying to put borders around what is at its core just: Wow, did that batter look terrible there. (Or: Wow, did that pitcher throw such a nasty pitch that he made the batter look terrible there, as so much of Friedman’s work is pitching-positive.) That, then, is exactly what we did, with MLB data scientist Clay Nunnally leading the charge based on feedback from Friedman and others. In order to be a sword, a swing must:
- Be a swinging strike (no fouls)
- Cross the front face of home plate
- Be an “incomplete swing,” defined as a swing where the head of the bat crosses a line set at 5 inches ahead of the front of the plate but does not return back through it
- Have bat speed that is in the 10th percentile or lower for that player, to make clear that the swing was not fully unleashed, and no more than 20 mph in the final tracked frames, to avoid “full swings”
As for use cases, I can see it being a way to check whether a particularly pitch is as/more/less nasty as it used to be, or whether a hitter gets fooled a little too often. We just may not be able to use it on Cease going forward, because while the trade market has been quiet, ESPN's Jeff Passan says that he hears Cease is still likely to be traded:
Cease, who comes with two years of team control, is still likely to move, sources said. Chicago's suitors certainly have winnowed -- the Cincinnati Reds, a team on Cease early, fortified itself through free agency -- and there's an argument to be made that the White Sox can rebuild his value after a disappointing 2023 season and collect even more in a 2024 trade deadline deal than they can today.
Hey, who wouldn't want to acquire the league leader in swords?
In the meantime, the White Sox picked up another member of the 2019 Royals, although at least Brett Phillips will be reporting to spring training on a minor-league contract.
Spare Parts
For those who are interested in going curling with Sox Machine at Windy City Curling in Villa Park on Feb. 3, here's a reminder with event registration information. For those who have already signed up, here's an update that Jacob Pomrenke, a fellow curler and one of the nation's leading experts on the Black Sox Scandal, will be joining us.
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