The Best of FanGraphs: February 13-17, 2017

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 and blue for Community Research.

MONDAY
So Much Talent in the WBC, by Craig Edwards
As opposed to the so much drama in the LBC.

Mixed LABR Chat with Paul & Jason, by Paul Sporer
Paul and Jason chatted while they drafted their LABR team. This LABR league also has fellow RotoGraphs authors Mike Podhorzer and Alan Harrison in it, as well as RotoGraphs alum Howard Bender. Also, Paul and Jason discussed their LABR draft in Tuesday’s episode of “Sleeper & The Bust.”

The Homogenization of Ballparks, by John LaRue
John put a lot of work into this piece detailing how ballparks have become more and more alike over time, with the help of several of his trademark fancy infographics.

TUESDAY
DJ LeMahieu Gets No Respect, by Jeff Sullivan
If pitchers continue to disrespect LeMahieu, he might just take them back to school, because he’s something of a natural born killer. As they say, that’d be easy money.

Christian Arroyo Could Be Next, by Ben Kaspick
This was Ben’s debut piece at RotoGraphs. Welcome to the team, Ben!

Tracking ADP Changes: The Delusion of Cheap Speed, by The Birchwood Brothers
Try not to delude yourself, OK? At least not when it comes to your fantasy draft.

Basic Machine Learning With R (Part 2) by The Kuzdu Kid
The second part in this series was just as informative as the first.

WEDNESDAY
Is Brian Dozier’s Power Repeatable?, by Gerald Schifman
Gerald shows that the Twins may have overplayed their hand moreso than previously thought.

CBS Industry League AL Only Auction, by Justin Mason
They say the most boring thing in the world is someone else’s fantasy draft, but I find that these recaps often provide a lot of good nuggets of info that I can take into my drafts.

THURSDAY
The Best Transactions of the 2017 Offseason, by Dave Cameron
As always, Dave presents a list with a mix of high- and low-profile moves. Go and tell him why he’s wrong, even though he probably isn’t.

Billy Eppler on Rebuilding the Angels, by David Laurila
This is a very comprehensive interview, and is required reading if you’re interested in the inner workings of a baseball operations department.

PitchFX-Forensics: Alex Reyes, by Mike Sonne
Interesting stuff from Mike on the first big injury of the year.

FRIDAY
Ilitch Offered Model for Owners to Follow, by Travis Sawchick
They really don’t make many like Mike Ilitch.

Eno’s 2017 Pitcher Ranks, by Eno Sarris
Eno just couldn’t help himself. Also, I think Stephen Strasburg is being wildly overrated by everyone. If you’re going to draft a pitcher that early, you’d like to be confident he can pitch 200 innings.

Quantifying Bullpen Roles: The Math by Matt Malkus
Matt continued his bullpen role series this week with two pieces that were published simultaneously. If you aren’t into math, check out his “Quantifying Bullpen Roles: The 2016 Season” piece instead.