The Best of FanGraphs: May 4-8, 2015

by
May 9, 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.

MONDAY
Kyle Blanks & Marco Estrada: Deep League Wire, by Karl de Vries
Kyle Blanks is one player I have always rooted for, so I’ll use any excuse to post about him. He had a pretty good week, so hopefully you followed Karl’s advice and scooped him up.

Catching Hell: Rookie Backstops Won’t Save Your Season, by Paul Sporer
Paul recounts the long list of rookie catchers who did not provide salvation.

TUESDAY
Player’s View: Does Lineup Protection Exist?, by David Laurila
I’m continuously impressed by Joe Girardi, and this is another example. Lots of other good quotes from David (and Eno).

Ron Roenicke and the Career Afterlives of Fired Managers, by Carson Cistulli
Cheer up, Ron Roenicke!

WEDNESDAY
New Hitter xBABIP Based on BIS Batted Ball Data, by Alex Chamberlain
This doesn’t necessarily get us closer to finding that white whale that is the perfect xBABIP, but this is still noble work nonetheless.

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.

Dynamic Run Value of Throwing a Strike (Instead of a Ball), by Dan Meyer
This in-depth look at run values examines the value of each ball not put in play, and thus, the value of catchers who know how to frame.

The FAA Shifts Their Drone Policies, by David Wiers
David kind of goes next level here, as this doesn’t affect sporting events quite yet, but one could see how sports coverage could easily be improved with drone use. One example that leaps to mind is marathon coverage, as I have always hated how TV trucks just drive alongside the runners. I’m sure there are plenty of other examples.

THURSDAY
On the 162 Game Workload, by Dave Cameron
As Dave points out, it seems incomprehensible that the owners will advocate for the everything burns approach of lopping off four home games from their slate each season.

Assigning Blame for the Red Sox Rotation, by Jeff Sullivan
Surprise! The Red Sox starters have been more or less as good as could have been expected.

Scott’s Miscellany – Shift Candidates by Oppo%, by Scott Spratt
Great breakdown by Scott, potentially bad news for the starting shortstops of the Cubs and Red Sox.

A Decade of ERA-xFIP: Is Clay Buchholz a Buy Low?, by Colin Zarzycki
The Czar checks in with a spirited defense of everyone’s least favorite pitcher.

Buying CC Sabathia, by Mike Podhorzer
Mike hasn’t given up on Carsten Charles. Should you?

Introducing a Concussions Database, by Julien Assouline
Important effort here from Julien. Building this kind of database is difficult.

FRIDAY
A Visual Look at Defensive Metrics, by Sean Dolinar
Visual aids help so much.





 

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.

Comments are closed.