The Best of FanGraphs: February 16-20, 2015

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.

ALL WEEK
There was some very excellent prospect work this week at the site, particularly from Kiley McDaniel and new writer Chris Mitchell, but also from Dave Cameron, Jeff Sullivan and new writer Sean Dolinar as well. Rather than scatter them through this post, go to this link right here for a compendium of links!

MONDAY
Introducing Our New Writers, by Dave Cameron
We’re pretty excited to have Craig, Owen, Sean, Chris and Larry on board at the main blog, especially since three of them came to us originally from the Community blog.

Off-Season Twitter Usage Among MLB Teams, by Sean Dolinar
Sean’s first main blog post looked at team’s Twitter usage in the offseason. The least engaged team? The ivory tower Yankees. Shocking, I know.

Looking at Pitcher WAR, by Jeff Zimmerman
We all know that our pitcher WAR, while certainly good, can be improved. Jeff takes a stab at doing so here.

TUESDAY
Rotographs Top 300 Now Available, by Paul Sporer
Get some.

WEDNESDAY
Javier Baez and the Cubs Extreme Second Basemen, by Owen Watson
Owen’s first main blog post focused on the Cubs’ keystone.

xK%, History and Speculating on Dellin Betances, by Alex Chamberlain
In addition to introducing five new writers at the main blog, RotoGraphs also introduced three new writers of their own this week — Alex Chamberlain, Adam McFadden and Josh Shepardson. Alex debuted first with this insightful post.

THURSDAY
Winter Contract Extensions are Becoming Increasingly Rare, by Craig Edwards
Craig’s first main blog post makes note of an interesting trend across the game.

Automate the Strike Zone, Unleash the Offense, by Steve Lind
There are a lot of reasons to love this article. One such reason is that Steve compares catcher framing to the flop in basketball.

Pitching Pace Through the Years, by Shane Tourtellotte
Shane goes deep into the weeds and comes up with a startling revelation.

FRIDAY
Carlos Gonzalez and Risk in the Outfield, by Adam McFadden
Adam’s first RotoGraphs post looks at some outfielders that have question marks heading into the spring.

Ace Ventura: A Shields-less Royals’ Rotation, by Josh Shepardson
Josh’s first RotoGraphs post looks at how the Royals starting rotation will move forward.

Are Groundball Pitchers Overrated?, by Matthew Murphy
Matthew makes his case.

NHL.com to Introduce 35 Advanced Statistics Today, by Michael Tunney
The NHL analytics movement seems like it’s the baseball analytics movement on speed. I can’t even imagine the pressure of introducing three new stats on the same day, nevermind 35. Kudos to the NHL for not only embracing new statistics, but actively championing them.

Do Pitchers Adjust to Their Receivers’ Strengths and Weaknesses?, by Henry Druschel
Catcher framing might be like the flop in spirit, but it’s also an endlessly fascinating topic. Here, Henry scratches the surface.