The Best of FanGraphs: March 6-10, 2017

by
March 11, 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
Fantasy Baseball Preview Week
The wonderful Alex Chamberlain, Jeff Zimmerman, Paul Sporer, Andrew Perpetua and Mike Podhorzer unleashed their fantasy fury at THT this week. Each piece was so good that I have a hard time picking my favorite!

MONDAY
The New Brazilian Flamethrower, by Kate Preusser
This week, we introduced the FanGraphs Residency. We are overjoyed about this program, and even more overjoyed to have Kate be our first Resident. If you don’t know why we’re so excited, read this article and you’ll see!

Statcast and the Future of WAR, by Dave Cameron
This is a must-read from Dave.

Gary Sanchez and the Persistent Belief in Small Samples, by Travis Sawchick
As Travis poignantly asks, have we learned nothing?

Top MLB Prospects for 2017: The Pitchers (Part 1 of 2), by Marc Hulet
Don’t forget about Part 2!

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.

TUESDAY
Projected 2017 Strengths of Schedule, by Jeff Sullivan
As if Cincinnati and Oakland weren’t screwed already.

Basic Machine Learning With R (Part 3) by The Kudzu Kid
This part three is even better than Terminator 3, and I really liked Terminator 3.

WEDNESDAY
J.D. Martinez Debunks Conventional Wisdom, Thinks a Tipping Point Is Near, by Travis Sawchick
J.D. Martinez is pretty, uh, sure of himself.

Why Team Israel Isn’t a Surprise, by Nicolas Stellini
The players in the World Baseball Classic are still the best in the world, even if they’re not the best in Major League Baseball.

PITCHf/x Forensics: Matt Harvey and Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, by Mike Sonne
Before this article, I wouldn’t have drafted Matt Harvey with a 10-foot clown pole, and this article did little to comfort me.

THURSDAY
Average Draft Position Now on the Site!, by Paul Sporer
This is pretty huge.

FRIDAY
The Cubs, Astros, and Paying the Young Superstars, by Dave Cameron
Players who have not yet reached arbitration have no leverage when it comes to their contract, but perhaps teams are starting to realize that they need to put a little more thought into those contracts anyway.

MLB Teams With the Most Dead Money, by Craig Edwards
Hopefully all this dead money doesn’t come back to … haunt them! Thank you, I’ll be here all weekend!!!





 

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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