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Myles Straw Ventures Into Foul Territory

1 year ago 127

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© Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

Did you watch the Guardians and the Rays in their Wild Card Series? It was extremely fun, especially if you hate runs. Everyone got out so much! Both teams had a better WHIP than Justin Verlander. The Guardians batted .171. The Rays batted .115. Together they batted .143. That’s Robbie Ray’s career batting average. Robbie Ray is famously not a hitter.

While Cleveland and Tampa Bay pushed the boundaries of modern science searching for new and innovative ways to not get on base, I noticed that one player seemed to take his failures a bit harder than the rest. See if you can spot it as well. Turn your sound all the way up, especially if you’re at the office. If you’re at an elementary school or a place of worship, see if there’s a public address system you can plug into:

Did you catch that? Myles Straw, center fielder for the Cleveland Guardians, ever so softly screaming the F-word at the top of his lungs? If you missed it, don’t worry. Straw was gracious enough to give the millions of baseball fans tuning two more opportunities to catch it:

If you start searching Baseball Savant for clips of Straw’s regular season play, you’ll discover that, yeah, this is a thing:

Digging through all of Straw’s swings and misses, all of his failed bunt attempts, all of his popups, squibbers, and weakly hit fly balls, provides the answer to a simple question: Exactly how often does Myles Straw scream the F-word?

This investigation focuses on the big stuff: Myles Straw screaming at the top of his lungs, renouncing the baseball gods after they’ve deemed him an unworthy supplicant. However, Straw contains multitudes. Sometimes he says it quietly, just for himself, as if exploring the subtleties of the word:

Sometimes, instead of expressing his fury verbally, he communicates his feelings through the universal baseball language of throwing stuff:

On occasion, he channels his rage into a smoldering glare, pouring oceans of unfathomable wrath into the act of staring murderously at a pitcher who, well, kind of seems so busy celebrating that he’s forgotten Straw even existed:

Sometimes Straw hops like a bunny after a pitch. Sometimes he shakes his head in disagreement and mutters, as if saying, “I told you so,” to whichever genius came up with the bright idea that he should swing. Straw’s got plenty of moves. His versatility shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, he just posted 13 Outs Above Average on the season. The guy’s got range.

You might think that most of Straw’s bad language comes after swings and misses, but that’s not the case:

Why Does Myles Straw Say Those Awful Things?

Pitch Result Curses Percentage
Swinging Third Strikes 2 25%
Popups 1 12.5%
Fly Balls 5 62.5%

As it turns out, Straw is most prolifically profane following weak fly outs like this one:

Straw doesn’t seem to mind much when he swings and misses at a bad pitch, even if it results in a strikeout. Here he is chasing a pitch that’s well out of the zone against Chicago’s Matt Foster:

If anything, chasing an ugly pitch tends to leave Straw in a philosophical state of mind. He usually shakes his head as if marveling at the inscrutability of the rising fastball and the rest of life’s great mysteries, and then rejoins his friends in the dugout.

What really bothers him is not executing on a pitch that he should hit. In fact, of the 11 F-words that he shouted this season, 10 came on pitches in the zone.

There were five times when it appeared that Straw might have shouted something, but the camera angle and noise from the crowd or announcer made it hard to tell. One time he yelled, “Damn it!” Once he emitted a wordless cry. After another popup, Straw very definitely shouted words, but they were unintelligible. If you have any guess as to what he’s saying here, by all means please submit your theories:

Without a doubt, the greatest swear came on April 23 against the Yankees. It was the 14th game of the season for the Guardians, and Cal Quantrill and Nestor Cortes were engaged in a pitching duel. With the score still scoreless, Straw led off the top of the fourth and worked a full count:

Watching so many clips in a row brings all of the little things to the foreground. On a typical swing-and-miss, Straw exhales dramatically as he regains his balance, his lips in a tight circle. He looks a bit like someone whose cheeks are already way too full of birthday cake trying to blow out the candles on a second birthday cake:

Myles Straw exhales after swinging and missing.

(Also, the birthday boy is holding a bat because he presumably just busted open a piñata. All in all, it seems like a fun party.)

Straw often finishes high on swings and misses, with his bat in his left hand, arm stretched out behind him. That is to say, he finishes a big whiff the same way Nolan Arenado finishes a home run:

Side by side pictures of Straw and Arenado finishing their swings.

Watching Straw this way, cutting out all of his successes and focusing on his absolute worst outcomes, tends to emphasize his equanimity under adverse circumstances. Sure he’s not exactly a shrinking violet, but the vast majority of the time, he takes failure in stride. We should all be so balanced.

What’s all the more amazing is that while Straw was cursing a blue streak over the weekend, he was actually playing really well. He was one of the only hitters on either team who wasn’t failing. Like any true star, when the stakes were the highest, he took things to the next level both at the plate and in the swear jar:

When Does Myles Straw Say Those Awful Things?

Time Frame Per Pitch Per PA Per Out
Regular Season 1.2% 37.5% 60.0%
Wild Card Series 0.3% 12.0% 1.9%

Among players who had at least four plate appearances, Straw was the second best hitter in the entire series, behind teammate Oscar Gonzalez. Straw’s wRC+ in the series was an even 100, up 36 points from his regular season mark. With his elite defense and speed, a league-average bat makes Straw a real weapon. The real takeaway is that Straw needs to start playing every game like it’s the postseason, F-bombs and all.

So tonight when you tune into the ALDS, make sure you turn the sound up.

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