The Best of FanGraphs: March 20-24, 2017

by
March 25, 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.

ALL WEEK
POSITIONAL POWER RANKINGS
Like we always do about this time. This annual tradition is a great way to think about your favorite team a little differently. Dave, Travis, Eno, Nick, Craig, Jeff, Neil, Carson and myself put in work on these.

2017 Positional Power Rankings Series

BOLD PREDICTIONS
Oh, how I love Bold Predictions time. Technically, it started last week with Josh Shepardson, but things really kicked into gear this week. Here is the list:

MONDAY
The Dark Horse Dominant Bullpen, by Jeff Sullivan
If everyone stays healthy, the purple people eaters could have one heck of a bullpen.

A KBO Thumper’s Path Back to the Majors, by Sung-Min Kim
In this piece, Sung-Min details how Eric Thames needed the KBO, and the KBO needed Eric Thames.

TUESDAY
Danny Espinosa’s Bat Path: An Angel Battles to Erase Eight-Hole Woes, by David Laurila
Very interesting discussion from David, who has been on a bit of a bat path kick this spring.

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.

Are Early Adopters of the Uppercut Influencing Their Clubhouse Peers?, by Travis Sawchick
Travis gets an assist from Sean Dolinar in this informative piece.

WEDNESDAY
The Present Imperfect, by Kate Preusser
This is such a beautiful piece of writing. I hope you’ve been reading Kate’s work this month, and will continue to in future months.

Auction Market Values — REVISED!, by The Birchwood Brothers
Perhaps foreshadowed by the great Joseph Conrad, the brothers screwed up their auction draft, but you can reap the benefits of their failures.

My Favorite Moments, by Alfonso Tusa
This is a wonderful short story about a father and son, and baseball.

Carl Edwards Had a Bad Day in a Great Year by Ben Bailey
An interesting, in-depth look at a pitcher who might turn a lot more heads this season.

THURSDAY
If the Braves Fail, It Will Be for the Right Reasons, by Travis Sawchick
Down in Florida, Travis finds the Braves committed to developing a winner through pitching.

FRIDAY
Yoan Moncada Deserves the Kris Bryant Treatment a Year Early, by Craig Edwards
Craig compares the major league birth of two (now) cross-town phenoms.





 

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.

3 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
tz
8 years ago

Bonus clip: what Finland’s baseballers did during the WBC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuXBrAnmQ7k

8