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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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Oh my, it’s prediction time. Can you feel it? Another season is upon us. Another chance for us to look like huge idiots. Like last season, when none of us pegged Kansas City to make the playoffs, and just five of us pegged the Mets as a playoff team. Being wrong on the internet can be an annual thing, but rarely do we crystallize just how wrong we are in one single location. Yes, it’s good to be back.

This year, there are a couple of no-doubt teams, according to everyone who voted. Chicago and Houston enter the season as our two locks to make the postseason. Considering that, as recently as 2013, these teams won 66 and 51 games, respectively, this seems pretty remarkable. We can save the tanking discussion for another day, but no matter your name for it, these franchises have really built themselves up into something. Houston has had an especially sharp transformation. Last season, they got zero votes for the postseason, and this year they got every single vote.

The Astros and Cubs aren’t the only teams in which we’re big believers, of course, but let’s get right to looking at the actual predictions.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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And so we come to the end of the positional player positional power rankings (say that three times fast). If you’re not familiar with this series, please read the introduction. Designated hitters are actually a little bit more in vogue this year than last year. At this time last year, I was bemoaning the downfall of the DH. This year, it could be back with a vengeance.

OK, perhaps vengeance isn’t the right word. After all, not a lot of teams actually have good designated-hitter situations. The National League teams, who don’t appear in this PPR but do show up on the DH depth chart, pop in first at sixth place overall. This is a little tough for them to do. For starters, NL teams don’t usually use a DH, so their standing there is part-DH, part pinch-hitter, and to reflect this lighter usage At the time of the piece, only six players were projected to garner 400 or more plate appearances as a DH: Billy Butler, Nelson Cruz, Edwin Encarnacion, Kendrys Morales, Mitch Moreland and David Ortiz. This year, that list has expanded to 13, as every AL team except for the Athletics and White Sox suddenly have full-time DHs. That’s nice to see, even if it won’t last with a couple of teams.
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Email newsletters are a burgeoning communications tool, and FanGraphs is getting in on the act. This is something we’ve actually had our eye on for quite some time — as far back as 2013, actually — and we’re excited to finally be bringing it to you. Today, actually: the newsletter’s inaugural edition will drop this afternoon. Let’s talk details.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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Adam LaRoche may or may not be retiring. It certainly seems as though he is, and it seems as though his decision was made abruptly. While that may not be 100 percent certain, now seems like a good time to look back on his career. On one hand, LaRoche was sort of a letdown, in that he never really took off the way it seemed like he might. On the other hand, LaRoche was a huge success, and should be celebrated as such.
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