The Best of FanGraphs: May 7-11, 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, 5/7
Matt Harvey Is Now a Reclamation Project, by Sheryl Ring
The Mets ended their week by announcing Matt Harvey would be DFA’d (before he was traded to the Reds), and Sheryl began ours by recounting Harvey’s fall from grace.

Lies We Tell Ourselves About the Marlins, by Meg Rowley
Lies made in kind come easiest at the beginning of a long season in order to spare hope, so that maybe the feeling of it will last maybe until July or maybe August. The Marlins faithful, those few who make it to the park, must have a plethora of those lies. No?

TUESDAY, 5/8
Nick Markakis Is Somehow the Best He’s Ever Been, by Sheryl Ring
Among the positives in Braves’ surge (yes, the Braves’ surge), this outfielder is outdoing himself, which is not easily accomplished at 34 years old with a 6+ WAR season under the belt.

Mets and Reds Exchange Horror Stories, by Jeff Sullivan
Cincinnati and New York sit`huddled and apprehensive around a campfire, each listening to the other weave and eventually introduce their respective tales of fright.

WEDNESDAY, 5/9
The Endless Possibilities of Franchy Cordero, by Tim Jackson
Not including an eventual post-baseball career marketing a French onion dip/ranch hybrid he created called “Franch.”

In the Sunshine, by Rachael McDaniel
I spent considerable time plotting how to best do justice to this piece. The best I can come up with is to tell you that it’s thoughtful, constantly applying pressure and then allowing release. An excerpt: “I had reached a point where I could no longer ensure my safety simply by wearing the right colors and stepping onto the field. I was now conscious of how the kids in the youth group must have seen me — how normal people must have seen me. The bright fields where I’d for years felt so much happiness and comfort were suddenly too bright, too open. As long as I had played I reveled in pitching, the center of attention, involved in every play. Now I felt like I shouldn’t be there. I felt like I had to hide.”

A Bad Day at Work, by Jeff Sullivan
Imagine your worst day at work. Then imagine you also accidentally took the wrong flight to a city hours away from the conference you’re scheduled to speak at. You have no way of getting there because, also, snow figured out how to happen in March, and now you’re stuck. How is that even possible, you might ask, what with modern flight regulations and ticket scanners and the like. To that I’d respond, “exactly,” but even then your day at work probably would still pale next to Dylan Bundy’s day.

The Pirates Have Won the Lottery, by Travis Sawchik
Congrats to the Pirates on all of the extra cousins and uncles they’re about to find out they have. Family is so important.

THURSDAY, 5/10
Searching for the Formula for Team Chemistry, by Stephanie Springer
A chemist does chemist things in an attempt to discover team chemistry’s formula. C h e m i s t r y. An excerpt: “This is where sabermetricians cringe. We know we want to measure this thing … but we haven’t decided how to measure it, or even exactly what it is that we’re measuring. It’s akin to asking a toddler to describe an imaginary friend, at a time when the toddler has yet to fully grasp the boundaries of reality, and doesn’t quite have full command of the language or lexicon. We’re asking to measure this intangible factor – which could be a collection of intangible factors; we haven’t really decided that part, either – by a metric we know to be an oversimplification of the game.”

Addition by Subtraction: Fixing Dylan Bundy Long-Term, by Alex Chamberlain
Alright Dylan, you just had the worst day at work ever. What do you do next?

Adventures In The Trade Trade: Who’s Been (Un)lucky So Far, Hitter Edition, by The Birchwood Brothers
There’s probably a parody of Britney Spears’ “Lucky” (BABIP edition) to be made about this. It would likely be bad. But does that really mean it shouldn’t exist?

Here Are Baseball’s Most-Changed Hitters, by Jeff Sullivan
We all want to know who’s done some evolving, and Jeff is here to give the people what they want.

Roberto Osuna, the Blue Jays, and the Limits of Presuming Innocence, by Sheryl Ring
According to Toronto police, Osuna was charged Tuesday for assaulting a woman. Where does the amoeba of the practice of “innocent until proven guilty” begin and end?

FRIDAY, 5/11
A Sense of Urgency, by Jason Linden
An excerpt: “But the more I thought about it, the more bothered I was. Because the Reds could have gotten better. Indeed, they could have gotten better simply by letting top-prospect Nick Senzel break camp with the team. But they didn’t. Instead, they sent Senzel to Louisville, where he’s currently cooling his heels waiting for what is hopefully a short bout of vertigo to pass so he can get back to destroying Triple-A pitching.”

Baseball’s Pace Changes Making Only Mild Impact, by Travis Sawchik
You mean to tell me that limiting mound visits isn’t taking hours off of games?