fix(statcast): recognize Savant's miss_distance column (#408)

[cfarese]

Pull Request

Table of Contents generated with DocToc

• Pull Request
  • Summary
  • Type of Change
  • Related Issues
  • Background & Context
  • Changes Made
  • Submission Checklist
  • Testing
  • Screenshots / Output
  • Reviewer Checklist
  • Additional Notes

Summary

statcast_search() now returns Baseball Savant's miss_distance column (the bat-tracking swing-and-miss distance) and stops silently mislabeling the columns that follow it.

Type of Change

• feat -- New feature (new endpoint wrapper, new exported function)
• fix -- Bug fix (non-breaking change that fixes an issue)
• docs -- Documentation only (roxygen, README, vignettes, NEWS)
• test -- Adding or updating tests
• refactor -- Code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
• chore -- Tooling, build, or maintenance change
• perf -- Performance improvement

Related Issues

Closes #408

Background & Context

Source: Baseball Savant (statcast_search() / scrape_statcast_savant*()).

The earlier hardening (#337/#354/#371/#390) fixed the Can't assign 118 names to a 119-column data.table crash by assigning the canonical column names positionally and letting any extra columns pass through. That logic only self-heals when Savant appends a column at the end. Savant instead inserted miss_distance mid-frame at position 93, between swing_length and estimated_slg_using_speedangle. So the positional rename labeled column 93 (real miss_distance data) as estimated_slg_using_speedangle and shifted all 26 columns after it one position off: miss_distance never appeared, and the trailing bat-tracking columns were silently mislabeled (it even produced a duplicate intercept_ball_minus_batter_pos_y_inches, which process_statcast_payload() then dropped). That matches #408: "downloads without the error, but there's no miss_distance column."

Changes Made

File / Function	Change
R/sc_statcast_search.R (statcast_search)	Insert "miss_distance" into statcast_columns at position 93 (after swing_length); add @return row for it; add a comment explaining that mid-frame inserts must be placed in the canonical vector
man/statcast_search.Rd	Regenerated @return table row via devtools::document() (roxygen2 7.3.3)
tests/testthat/test-statcast_search.R	Add miss_distance to the expected-columns vector
NEWS.md	Add bug-fix bullet under # baseballr 2.0.0 → ### Bug fixes (#408)

Submission Checklist

• Code follows tidyverse style and the conventions in CLAUDE.md.
• I ran devtools::document() and committed the regenerated man/ and NAMESPACE (no hand edits).
• Roxygen blocks are complete (@param, @return, @export, runnable @examples).
• I added or updated tests, respecting the live-API gating.
• devtools::check() passes with no new errors, warnings, or notes.
• I updated NEWS.md; cran-comments.md/_pkgdown.yml need no change (no new export; summary-level cran-comments already covers Savant column handling).
• Commits follow Conventional Commits and contain no AI co-author trailers.

Testing

• devtools::test() passes locally.
• New/changed behavior is covered by a test using subset-direction column assertions.

Execution time before: N/A
Execution time after: N/A

Screenshots / Output

N/A

Reviewer Checklist

• Function naming uses the correct data-source prefix.
• Return value is initialized before tryCatch; error path returns an
  empty value with a cli message rather than erroring.
• man/ and NAMESPACE are regenerated and consistent with the source.
• Tests are appropriately gated; no test hammers the NCAA stats site.
• NEWS.md / cran-comments.md / _pkgdown.yml are consistent for any
  API-surface change.
• Commit messages are conventional and free of AI co-author trailers.