The Best of FanGraphs: January 30-February 4, 2017

by
February 4, 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
A Champion’s Outfield: Where Line Drives Go to Die by Casey Boguslaw
Coincidentally, it’s just a few miles north of where fun goes to die.

Maybe the Rockies Are Contenders in 2017 by Dave Cameron
Everyone knows the Rockies aren’t contenders. What this post presupposes is…

TUESDAY
How Often Is the “Best Team” Really the Best? by Cavarretta
Not even half the time, concludes the author. Life is cruel, concludes the reader.

It’s Ottoneu Cut Day! by Brad Johnson
More accurately, it was Ottoneu Cut Day.

Rich Hill: “A Role Model for Failure” by Travis Sawchik
Writes Emil Cioran: “I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions.” Not entirely irrelevant in the case of Rich Hill.

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.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
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.

Switch-Hitting with the Two Jonathan Villars by Eno Sarris
Jonathan Villar contains multitudes.

The Astros Have a Completely New Look by Jeff Sullivan
Houston is going to make a lot more contact this year, evidence suggests.

Top 24 Prospects: St. Louis Cardinals by Eric Longenhagen
Another installment from one of the top lead prospect analysts today.

WEDNESDAY
The Worst Pitch in Baseball by The Kudzu Kid
Isn’t a middle-middle fastball, this Community author contends.

THURSDAY
Carlos Martinez Gets Paid, Leaves Money on Table by Craig Edwards
A young player frequently has only one opportunity to become absurdly wealthy.

Why the Astros Didn’t Catch Chris Correa by Ryan Pollack
A cocktail of human error and insufficient resources, among other factors.

FRIDAY
Aaron Nola and the Rich Hill Prescription by Travis Sawchik
More curveball.

Projecting MLB.com’s Top 100 Prospects by Jeff Zimmerman
In spite of his myriad personal flaws, Zimmerman has produced some very compelling work on the relationship between scouting grades and production. Here’s another example of it.





 

Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
aklangMember since 2016
8 years ago

To nitpick, white sox would be a few miles, wrigley is across town. A trip from the place where fun goes to die was substantially longer than going to Comiskey or US cellular field or whatever we called it. Though a fond memory was U of C night at sox park and seeing the President of the University quite drunk in the outfield seats. But of course fun was had.

0