Community Blog

Two weeks ago, David announced a new feature here at FanGraphs, aimed at giving you guys an opportunity to show off your capabilities. Our community blog has surpassed our expectations so far, as you guys have really stepped up and submitted some great stuff. Since there’s a a lot of content going up on FanGraphs on a daily basis, I wanted to highlight some of the community blog posts from the first couple of weeks, in case you missed them.

The first submission we published was from Daniel Moroz, and looked at Nick Markakis’ lack of power this year. Daniel did a great job of diving into the issue, using both data and images to help explain why Markakis has suddenly lost his ability to hit the ball over the wall. He followed this entry up with a later look at Adam Jones’ plate discipline, which was also very well done. Both articles came from his blog, Camden Crazies, which is clearly a must-read for any Orioles fan.

In a different vein than player analysis, “lincolndude” responded to a Tom Verducci article with a piece called Saving Baseball’s Charm. He looked at the way the game has changed over the years, looking at how different styles of baseball provide different value. It’s different than what normally goes up on FanGraphs, and that was one of the reasons I liked it.

A few days ago, “badenjr” took a stab at an always fun topic – Dusty Baker and pitch counts. He looked at how hard the Reds starters have been worked relative to the rest of the league, and showed that Baker may be at least somewhat reformed, as he’s not slagging his pitchers like he used to. The article gets extra points for use of pretty graphs.

Finally, yesterday’s submission from Mike Lee featured an interview with Padres GM Jed Hoyer, which touched on a variety of subjects and led to some pretty interesting answers. Based on the comments, this one was a winner as well. I will point out that any interviews, or articles containing a quote from any person, will be verified before they run.

These are just a few of the terrific posts that have gone up over at the community blog in the last two weeks. Keep them coming, and we’ll continue to feature the best ones here on the site. If your submission didn’t get approved, don’t get discouraged, and feel free to write something else up and submit it. If you’d like feedback on a piece you submitted that didn’t make the cut, you can email community@fangraphs.com, and we’ll do our best to explain why it didn’t get published.

Keep up the great work, everyone, and keep the great submissions rolling in.