Know your Rays: Swinging at the fastball (Monday)

A very fun game.

By Ian Malinowski@dog_whelk Feb 10, 2014, 12:37pm EST

This is the start of a new daily feature. Every day at noon (yes, I know it's already after noon), there will be a mystery chart, graph, or chart. In the comments, your job is to identify who is being represented. The entire week will focus on the same theme, but with a different answer each day. The following Monday, I'll reveal the answers to each day's question, and tally up the winner for the week.

This week will be about swinging at fastballs. Some hitters go up there looking for a fastball and are sure to swing when they get one. Others are more selective. These charts, from Jeff Zimmerman's Baseball Heat Maps, show how often a Rays player swung at a fastball in different locations of the strike zone. It's including all pitches classified by MLBAAM as FA, FF, and FT from 2007 through the present, and comparing the player to league average.

Green means that the player swung at a pitch in that location about the same as the league as a whole did. Blue and purple means that the player swung less often at a pitch in that location. Yellow and red means he swung more often.

Mystery Ray vs. left-handed pitchers: