A sword, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is a "weapon ... with a long blade for cutting or thrusting that is often used as a symbol of honor or authority." A sword, as defined by Rob "Pitching Ninja" Friedman and quantified by Statcast, is "when a pitcher fools a hitter so badly that he forces a non-competitive swing, one where a batter either regrets his choice or can't stop himself from taking a hack that looks so ugly it ends up going viral on social media."
By Statcast's standards, the swing Houston Astros second baseman José Altuve made against a Shohei Ohtani sweeper Tuesday night, on a 1-2 count with two outs in the fifth inning, would not qualify as a sword. It was simply too high quality: a good swing with pace, that only happened to be at a ball far, far off the plate. But if Altuve felt any good about the swing at its beginning, he regretted it by the end, when a likely chorus of thoughts such as "No, no, no, no, NO" and "Ah, shit" had failed to stop him from following all the way through.
Here are some facts about this pitch, and its subsequent swing. The sweeper crossed the plate with a horizontal value of 3.23 feet, or approximately three feet and three inches. Home plate is 17 inches wide, and Statcast sets the center of the plate at zero, 8.5 inches from either edge. This means that when Ohtani's pitch crossed the plate, it, well, didn't: It was about 2.52 feet, or two feet and six inches, off the plate entirely. So far this year, 94 pitches have been thrown with a horizontal value of greater than or equal to 3.0 feet. (Somehow, 11 of these have been thrown by Seattle Mariners pitcher Emerson Hancock, who is the leader by some margin.) Only one of those pitches resulted in a swing: the one Altuve flapped at.
In order to find a similarly poor swing on a pitch by a right-handed pitcher that wound up as far out of the zone as the one above, we must go back to 2022, when Bobby Witt Jr. took a chop at a Lou Trivino sweeper that crossed the plate, or at least the plane of the plate, at 3.50 feet. At the very least, Witt tried to check his swing. In fact, going back to when pitch tracking began in 2008, only 12 swinging strikes have been recorded on pitches thrown with a horizontal value greater than or equal to 3.0 feet, at least one of which is a glitch of some kind. (It is a bit more difficult to confirm whether some of the others are glitches, as Baseball Savant does not automatically link video of the pitch.) The most egregious for which we have video is Brett Gardner, who also happens to be right handed, swinging at a change-up that nearly landed behind him, though that was perhaps an unfair accusation, as Gardner was primarily engaging in evasive action. Altuve can at least take comfort in the fact that his is the least egregious in this category.
What Altuve cannot take comfort in is his height. José Abreu took a bad chop. Miguel Rojas took an ugly swing. Kris Bryant suffered at the hands of Odrisamer Despaigne. But Abreu is 6-foot-3, Rojas is 5-foot-10, and Bryant is 6-foot-5. Despite taking a swing at a closer pitch than his fellow right-handed batters who suffered similar indignities at the hands of their right-handed brethren, Altuve's swing looks and feels the worst because he is short.
This isn't fair! When 6-foot-5 Kris Bryant does it, it is an unfortunately unchecked swing. When 5-foot-6 José Altuve does it, it looks like he is swinging at pitch roughly a José Altuve distance anyway. The swing has the Pitching Ninja himself asking such questions as, "Could Altuve have hit Ohtani's sweeper, if he used himself as a bat?" (Mathematical answer: Yes, easily, though it's worth watching the video for visual proof.) It is also, per Sarah Langs's Birthday Index, Altuve's birthday today. We should be allowed to offer some grace to the birthday boy, even if he has provided everyone a pretty funny video.
Here's one last angle of the swing:
