The Best of FanGraphs: June 4-8, 2018

Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across 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, 6/4
The Mariners Are Bucking a Trend, by Sheryl Ring
Congrats to the Mariners for not following the status quo and being their own team. All of our moms would be proud.

TUESDAY, 6/5
The Physics of the MLB Report on Home Run Rates, by David Kagan
An excerpt: “Do you have a coffee filter handy? Off-the-wall question, I know. However, coffee filters are a great demonstration of the drag force. Drop one, and you’ll notice it falls rather slowly compared to things like your keys or a coin. The drag force on a coffee filter is a higher percentage of its weight than for your keys or a coin.”

Day One Draft Recap, by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel
FanGraphs’ resident experts recapped the draft, day 1. If you’re not into evaluation, then you might be into some of the draftees names.

WEDNESDAY, 6/6
Francisco Cervelli Finds his OPS in the Air, by zjgifford
Who knows what else is up there.

The Most Competitive World Series of All Time Formula, by Dave Jordan
An excerpt: “A lower score means a Series was more competitive. The two most important components are the Overall Run Differential between the winning and losing team for each game (which is slightly different than the individual team’s run differential) and “Lead Changes.” Few things get fans more fired up than when their team loses the lead. The events ignite passion inside them – a home run, a double off the wall, a triple into the power alley, an error behind the bag. But it’s the result of this action that catalyzes the excitement; what that dinger or ground-rule double truly means.”

Is Ian Kinsler Cooked?, by Jay Jaffe
Or is he fried?

Don’t Blame Hitters for All the Strikeouts, by Craig Edwards
They are trying their best, okay?

THURSDAY, 6/7
Placeboball: When Baseball Proves Itself Nonessential, by Steven Goldman
An excerpt: “Google a simple phrase like ‘baseball heals country,’ and you will be rewarded with countless headlines about the aftermath of 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombings, or even the June 2017 shooting at the Republican team’s practice for the annual charity Congressional Baseball Game. ‘Much of the ritual of public healing after the 9/11 attacks came at big-league baseball games, pastime as patriotism,’ columnist Erik Brady wrote in USA Today last June 15 after the latter shooting in Virginia. ‘…Baseball is our everyday game, the one most connected to our past, always ready to get us back to the rhythms of life. Play ball.'”

The Yankees Probably Need to Make a Trade, by Craig Edwards
This is peer pressure, Yankees. Doooo it.

Something Has Paused the Home-Run Spike, by Jeff Sullivan
And if the home run spike were in a VCR, then we’d only have a little while to push play before the static crept in on the TV screen.

FRIDAY, 6/8
The Daily Grind: Too Many Aces!, by Brad Johnson
How many aces is too many? And why? And how? A lot of questions answered in one click.

In Play, Et Cetera: Observation(s) of GameDay, by John Paschal
An excerpt: “The most modern way to witness the game, perhaps, is by use of GameDay or software programs like it. GameDay, of course, is the MLB.com program that allows users to track any big league game with the sort of pitch-by-pitch, play-by-play scrutiny that leaves no informational stone unturned. Since its introduction in 2002, it’s evolved to include multicolor graphics that indicate pitch type and pitch angle. The ‘Feed’ page provides additional info, like launch angle and batted-ball speed and distance. At its core, though, GameDay leans on a select few messages to usher a user through the game.”

The Most and Least Team-Friendly Strike Zones, by Jeff Sullivan
All of your suspicions confirmed and denied in one tidy article.

Paul Goldschmidt’s Troubles with Velocity, by Jay Jaffe
I hope they work things out soon.