The Best of FanGraphs: March 30-April 3, 2015

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.

ALL WEEK
Did you hear that baseball season is coming? True story! Dave previewed five of the divisions this week to get us in the mood — NL West, AL West, NL Central, AL Central and NL East. In addition, we concluded our Positional Power Rankings and detailed our 2015 Staff Predictions.

It was also Season Preview Week at The Hardball Times. That link will take you to all five glorious posts, but if you only have time for one, make it Sean Dolinar’s piece, entitled The 2015 Season Preview in Data Visualization. It has so many pretty pictures.

MONDAY
The MLBPA Has a Problem, by Nathaniel Grow
The Players Association may not have 99 problems quite yet, but they do have some major problems, and they need to figure out how to solve them. In addition to their percent of revenue problem, they also have what we can call the “Kris Bryant problem,” which Nathaniel also wrote about this week.

Weighing Javier Baez’s Terrible MLB Debut, by Chris Mitchell
Timing may not be everything, but it counts for a lot. The timing of this piece was perfect, as Baez was optioned down to Triple-A almost immediately after it was published.

TUESDAY
The Anatomy of a Mike Trout Double Play, by August Fagerstrom
We’re going to miss pieces like this when August heads over to MLB.com.

Zach McAllister’s Attempt at the Carlos Carrasco, by Jeff Sullivan
The Indians rotation was already going to be very good, but if McAllister does pull this off, the rotation might hover into “no fair!” territory.

Karl de Vries’ 10 Bold Predictions for the 2015 Season, by Karl de Vries
Not only does this post have some very bold predictions, specifically about Brandon Belt, Jay Bruce and Alex Rodriguez, but it also has a sweet Vanessa Williams reference.

WEDNESDAY
This Isn’t April Fools, ESPN Launches First Site Redesign Since 2009, by Michael Tunney
The focus on mobile content comes front and center.

THURSDAY
The Mets Go Defensive, Lock up Juan Lagares, by Owen Watson
This story sort of slipped through the cracks this week — not only was it a busy week, but also we tend to only focus on the Mets when they do dumb things — but Owen was all over it.

FRIDAY
The Guys I Own The Most, by Brad Johnson
Brad is in a lot of fantasy leagues.

Six Feet Under: Evaluating Short Pitchers, by Elliot Evans
This contains a very cool short vs. tall graph.





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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