Classic baseball sayings, given a statistical edge. Pick your favorite piece of hardball vocabulary.
🌽 Can of Corn
An easy, routine fly ball drifting lazily toward an outfielder for an effortless catch.
The phrase comes from old-time grocery stores, where clerks would use a stick to nudge
a canned good off a high shelf and catch it on the way down. These batters are handing
outfielders the baseball equivalent of a grocery run.
Fly balls caught (field_out / sac_fly) with launch angle ≥ 28°, exit velocity ≤ 92 mph,
and distance 80–340 ft. Minimum 10 qualifying batted balls to appear.
Rate = cans ÷ all caught fly balls.
Loading leaderboard…
🧡 Let Them Hang Around
When a team had no business winning — but kept grinding, waiting for the opponent
to squander a lead they built and couldn't protect. The winning team needed every
inch of rope the other side voluntarily handed them.
Qualifies per game when: the losing team led ≥ 40% of all half-innings played,
and left ≥ 8 runners on base while holding the advantage.
Hang Score = lead% × 0.6 + normalized LOB × 0.4.
First load may take a moment — game data is cached after the first fetch.
Loading leaderboard…
💥 Bloop & Blast
When a garbage hit — a flare, a bloop single, a weak pop that somehow finds grass —
sets the table, and the very next batter answers with a home run.
Baseball's dumbest combo, and somehow the most fun.
Consecutive at-bats in the same game half-inning where batter N singles or doubles
with exit velocity < 85 mph (the bloop), then batter N+1 immediately homers (the blast).
Ranked by team sequence count.
Loading leaderboard…
😬 One Strike Away
Ones that stick with you: the pitching team gets to a 2-strike count with
2 outs and no runs across, only to watch the inning unravel and runs
score anyway. Measured by how often each team has been on the wrong end of that moment.
Counts distinct half-innings where the pitching team reached a 2-strike, 2-out
count (0-2, 1-2, 2-2, or 3-2) with no runs allowed in that inning yet,
but still surrendered at least one run before the third out.
Runs = total runs allowed after the first such pitch in each qualifying half-inning.
Ranked by close calls (innings), then runs surrendered. The number in red is a subset
showing the number of innings that got to one strike away with the bases empty before
things got away.
Loading leaderboard…
👻 Ghostbusters
The relief pitcher who shows up in extras and sends the ghost packing.
A Ghostbuster appearance is an extra-inning half-inning where the pitcher
inherited the automatic runner at second base and left them stranded.
Counts each extra-inning half-inning (10th or later) where a runner was
confirmed on second at the start and the pitching team surrendered zero runs.
Each distinct pitcher who appeared in a qualifying half-inning earns one credit.
Split into Home (pitching at home park) and Away appearances.