A long, long time ago, back when the internet was good, statheads were convinced that baseball statistics were the window into understanding baseball. They were inventing new stats, new combinations of already available numbers, hoping to see a refraction of a reflection of a glimmer of true baseball understanding.Some of those stats remain with us today, and they continue to be illuminating. However, we’re in a post-stat era, where writers, executives and nerds alike can dismiss the numbers that don’t make sense to them. This is possible because of all the biometric data now available. You can point at a slugging percentage and call it a liar because you know how hard the batter is actually hitting the ball, if you’re so inclined.This revolution is so much easier to describe compared to the statistical revolution. It uses metrics like “miles per hour” and talks about how fast baseballs spin or travel. Exit velocity and spin rate are intuitive; wRC+ and WAR are not.All of this is to introduce some new metrics from MLB.com/Baseball Savant that make that same kind of sense. Instead of just counting how often players swing and miss, it’s telling us how much the batters are missing by. It’s also telling us how often batters are getting off their A-swing on a pitcher’s individual pitches, using terms like “lined up,” “centered” and “on time” that are exactly what they sound like.It’s another treasure trove of nerd numbers to help explain the 2026 San Francisco Giants. Considering how confusing the team has been, we’ll take anything we can get. Here’s how opponents’ swings have looked against the Giants’ pitchers compared to the rest of the league.Erik Miller’s slider makes batters extremely uncomfortableThe gold standard for these metrics is Mason Miller, who throws his fastball up to 105 mph, which causes batters to miss his sliders by almost a literal foot. The average miss distance on Miller’s slider is 10.7 inches, which is absurd. Hitters take a flawed swing 37 percent of the time against him, which is far more than any other pitcher right now. The leaderboard behind him looks like you’d expect, with high-leverage relievers and their speciality pitches. Then you get to Erik Miller’s slider. Batters don’t often get good swings off against it, inducing flawed swings 26 percent of the time and batters’ best swings just 4 percent of the time, which is the best rate in baseball for any pitch. It’s literally the best pitch in baseball by this metric.Erik Miller has arguably the best pitch in baseball, but his command has prevented him from being a truly effective reliever. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)Miller is also, at the moment, not a very good reliever. The Giants might disagree, considering how often he’s placed into high-leverage situations, but he has the fatal flaw of not being able to command or control the ball as well as he wants. He walks far too many batters (7.9 BB/9 as of this writing, 6.0 BB/9 last season), completely undoing what he does well, which is miss bats and keep the ball in the ballpark. Fix that, and the Giants have an elite bullpen arm.“Just get to the moons of Saturn, then build a tiny home there,” is a similarly simple course of action with a teensy tiny flaw in the logic, but it’s easier to have the stuff and search for command than vice versa. Randy Johnson’s career turned around when Nolan Ryan gave him a little advice; Roy Halladay’s career took off after Mariano Rivera sprinkled cutter dust on him. Lesser pitchers have improved their command with reps and direction.