The Best of FanGraphs: February 29-March 4, 2016

by
March 5, 2016

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.

MONDAY
Baseball’s Wage Scale: An Argument for a Safety Net, by Dave Cameron
Pulling liberally from his THT Baseball Annual 2016 piece, which we re-ran this week, Dave presents a new proposal.

Previewing the Best and Worst Team Defenses for 2016, by August Fagerstrom
Come for the excellent analysis, stay for the table at the end of the piece.

Special Cloth Alert: Two Power-Speed Guys Ready to Explode, by Paul Sporer
If you’re in my fantasy league, don’t read this article.

TUESDAY
Free Dilson Herrera, by Chris Mitchell
I’m a sucker for these “free” stories, and Chris makes a great case.

Dealing With Fringe Keepers, by Brad Johnson
If you’re in my fantasy league, also don’t read this article either.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
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4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

How To Use R For Sports Stats: Visualizing Projections, by Brice Russ
This should be required reading for anyone looking to get into this here sports analysis game.

WEDNESDAY
MLB Suspends Aroldis Chapman, Sets Important Precedent, by Nathaniel Grow
It could be argued that the punishment was light, but the negotiated suspension is still an important milestone, as Nathaniel details exhaustively.

Changes Are Coming to Coors Field, by Jeff Sullivan
The effect on run-scoring will be minimal, as Jeff points out, but the effect could be major for fans in a few sections.

Domingo Santana as George Springer, by August Fagerstrom
Last chance to get in on the ground floor of the Domingo Santana bandwagon…you know, if bandwagons can have ground floors.

Molars, Mustaches and Mongooses: Bygone Tales From Spring Training, by Alex Remington
The greatest argument against spring training ever made is contained within.

THURSDAY
Using Recent History to Analyze Dee Gordon’s Defensive Improvement, by WhyCantWeHavePeace
I have a predisposed bias to liking articles about Dee Gordon. There, I said it.

FRIDAY
Rockies Playing Time Battles: Pitchers, by Blake Murphy
Guess who’s back? No, it’s not Rakim (though how awesome would that be???), but Blake is pretty cool too, and we’re thrilled to have him back at RotoGraphs.

2016 Scoresheet — A Work In Progress, by Brandon Warne
Brandon’s got a contender this year, I think.

2016 Ottoneu FGpts Rankings – Prospects, by Tom Oltarzewski
This was Tom’s debut post at RotoGraphs. Welcome, Tom!

Quantifying the Trade-Off Between Power and Contact, by Eli Ben-Porat
This graph isolates Mike Trout.

SLG-TRUContact-Trout

Click through to see the rest of the players in this and many other fantastic graphs.





 

Paul Swydan used to be the managing editor of The Hardball Times, a writer and editor for FanGraphs and a writer for Boston.com and The Boston Globe. Now, he owns The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Acton, Mass. Follow him on Twitter @Swydan. Follow the store @SilUnicornActon.

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