The Best of FanGraphs: January 4-8, 2016

by
January 9, 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
Your Keeper Questions, Answered, by Brad Johnson
Brad got more than he bargained for. Ask him some more questions anyway!

The Best Long Plate Appearances of 2015, by Corinne Landrey
The longest plate appearance of the year took over seven minutes. Find this, and other exciting facts, within this post!

TUESDAY
Evaluating the 2016 Prospects: Boston Red Sox, by Dan Farnsworth
Dan was back in action this week, with both the Red Sox and Cubs lists.

10 Wide-Awake Sleepers, by Paul Sporer
Paul is just making up phrases now. Whatever you need to do to get through the offseason, I suppose.

GPS-Based Athlete Tracking Systems: A Primer, by Bryan Cole
I feel like this is like the third step to us all ending up living through Brave New World. I mean, uh, there’s a lot of sweet tech here!

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.

WEDNESDAY
The Greatness of Ken Griffey Jr, by Dave Cameron
He was pretty fantastic.

Alan Trammell on Infield Defense, by David Laurila
Good stuff from a guy who knows what he’s talking about. The part about which players from his era would have been shifted against was especially interesting.

An Alternative Hall of Fame Rating System, by Craig Edwards
A thought-provoking first step from Craig. He introduced step two, i.e. pitchers, on Thursday.

THURSDAY
Appreciating Jim Edmonds, by August Fagerstrom
It’s pretty ridiculous that Jim Edmonds was a one-and-done on the Hall of Fame ballot.

What Do You Think of Your Team’s Ownership?, by Jeff Sullivan
Vote in Jeff’s polls, won’t you?

Give Joe Ross a Chance, by Scott Spratt
Strikeouts are king, and Joe Ross knows how to get strikeouts.

Cold Weather, Positions and Penalties, by Gerald Schifman
Gerald had a great two-part look (Part 2 is here) about how cold weather affects the game. Very interesting stuff.

FRIDAY
That Kenta Maeda Contract, by Eno Sarris
Were you expecting to see Mike Hampton referenced in this article? I know I wasn’t!

On the Use of Aging Curves for Fantasy Baseball, by Ryan Brock
You should read this article, because your leaguemates sure are!





 

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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