MLB: The sweetest left handed swing according to Dan Haren
Retired pitcher Dan Haren took to Twitter saying Ken Griffey Jr. would come in second in the sweetest left-handed swing contest in MLB history.
When it comes to great Twitter material, retired pitcher Dan Haren has to be at the top of the list. He has gone to Twitter to poke fun at his pitching, his hitting, his base running, basically everything the guy did on the MLB field.
We think his latest shenanigans involve calling Matt Stairs the sweetest left-handed swing in baseball history.
Matt Stairs does have a pretty sweet hammer coming through the zone. His is more of a power stroke where Ken Griffey Jr., the man who usually heads up this list, has more of a graceful stroke. Griffey did come in a close second on Haren’s list.
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Haren may not have been convinced of Griffey’s swing based on the results of their head to head matchups. In the six times they faced one another, Griffey failed to reach base once. Stairs didn’t fend much better, going 1-13, though the one was a home run.
Stairs did have a long and fruitful career spanning 19 Major League seasons. All told he played for twelve different teams and hit 265-lifetime bombs. Griffey, on the other hand, played 22 years and hit 630 jacks. He leads the league four times, topping out with 56 in back-to-back seasons.
To this point, Haren’s best tweet had been when he reached out to the Washington Nationals to get removed from their season ticket call list. He tongue in cheek apologizes for the 2013 season with the Nats where he was 10-14 with a 4.67 ERA.
For what it is worth Haren was a good pitcher for his career if not a great pitcher for a three-year run when he made three straight All-Star appearances. He was as durable a pitcher there was in the game, making all his starts and avoiding injury for the better part of his 13 years in the league.
If Dan Haren does think Matt Stairs has the sweetest left-handed swing in the game, he may be in the minority.