The Best of FanGraphs: January 11-15, 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
The Impending Battle Over the Future of Televised Baseball, by Nathaniel Grow
A typically excellent job by Nathaniel, who was also a guest this week on FanGraphs Audio.

An Early Look at the Projected Standings, by Dave Cameron
There’s a lot of chasms for teams between their actual 2015 performance and their projected 2016 performance, but the Reds and Yankees look to be nearly identical, albeit at different ends of the spectrum.

Nomar Garciaparra: Four Years a Hall of Famer, by Matthew Kory
If you were there for those four years, it’s hard to believe NOMAH!!! didn’t end up a Hall of Famer, but such are the cruelties of life.

Team Ownership Ratings, By the Community, by Jeff Sullivan
Only 12 teams got a rating of “Very Good” by more than 10 percent of the voters.

TUESDAY
The Change: Finding This Year’s Next Closers, by Eno Sarris
One of the most fun parts of the offseason is trying to forecast who will end up closing games in the upcoming season. Eno has a comprehensive look here.

The Astros Hack Won’t Be the Last in Sports, by David G. Temple
If someone wants to get in, chances are they’ll get in.

WEDNESDAY
The Decline of Carlos Gonzalez: Star Player, by August Fagerstrom
Some pretty startling revelations here from August.

What is Ottoneu?, by Trey Baughn
So much good news here. New writer announcements plus new coverage announcements. Welcome to Trey!

THURSDAY
Investigating Steamer’s Optimism for the Red Sox, by Dave Cameron
I think that projection for Blake Swihart is conservative, but the point is that Steamer isn’t infatuated with every Red Sox player. And that’s why its Red Sox projection seems reasonable.

The Physics of Broken-Bat Homers, by David Kagan
David excels at explaining hard to explain phenomena.

Started From the Bottom, Now We’re…Average, by Brian Reiff
A Drake reference plus some interesting research is a real winner of an article.

FRIDAY
A Modest Proposal: Making Second Base Optional, by Matthew Kory
Well, it’s Saturday now, but you still probably don’t have ish to do!

The Year in Catchers Playing Other Positions, by Neil Weinberg
Turns out, major league players are pretty good at playing major league ball, even when they’re playing sub-optimal positions!

New Closer: Will Smith, by Paul Kastava
The second new writer to debut at RotoGraphs this week was Paul, who also investigated a closer situation. Welcome, Paul! You can never have enough Paul’s, you know.





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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