The Best of FanGraphs: October 27 – October 31, 2014

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, purple for NotGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.

MONDAY
The Absurdly Slow Pace of the MLB Postseason, by Dave Cameron
It’s not just the commercial breaks that take longer.

How Much Can Nick Castellanos Improve?, by Brett Talley
Probably not much.

TUESDAY
Patrick Dubuque Made This Baseball Painting for Me, or, How NotGraphs Improved My Life, by Robert J. Baumann
This was the last week of NotGraphs, and they went out with a bang. Here, Robert got to talk about his dong one last time. We wouldn’t have had it any other way.

OPEN THREAD: What I Learned About Baseball By Reading NotGraphs, by Jeremy Blachman
What I learned was that my baseball musings are not not as funny as I think they are, because to read the electronic pages of NotGraphs was to read real humor at work.

WEDNESDAY
Come Back, Sammy Sosa; All is Forgiven, by Bradley Woodrum
You might not think that this post is so great, but keep in mind that Bradley wrote it and created the graphic for it the day before his son was born. Congratulations Woodrum’s!!! (Also, it is great, don’t be dumb.)

NotGraphs Short(er) Form: An Actual, Final Swansong, by John Paschal
My next job is going to be Internet governor.

Not Good-bye. Just NotGraphs., by Mike Bates
After not posting for more than three months, Bates dad-shirted all over NotGraphs’ final day, with not one but two posts!

Loins First: The True Uncensored History of NotGraphs.com, by Carson Cistulli
Did you get to read this before it was removed by the administrator? It was a whopper, let me tell you.

Joe West Tosses NotGraphs, by Navin Vaswani
There was a flurry of goodbye posts before Carson’s valedictory statement. Jeremy, David and Patrick all checked in to check out. But none of their posts had Joe West tossing NotGraphs. Navin wins.

NotGraphs: A Valedictory Statement, by Carson Cistulli
It’s weird, every time I read this, a freak dust storm rolls through my house. I should probably call someone about that.

THURSDAY
How the Giants Beat the Royals at Their Own Game, by Tony Blengino
Perhaps Tony’s last sentence says it best – “Hail to the victors – this was no fluke.”

Alex Gordon Barely Had a Chance, by Jeff Sullivan
Pretty conclusive evidence that Royals third base coach Mike Jirschele made the right call.

Il Gioco, by Stan Jacoby
No better way to usher in the offseason than with a poem that imagines Alex Rodriguez, Pedro Martinez and Heinie Zimmerman on the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

Review: Gametime’s Ticket Purchasing Via Mobile, by David Wiers
This is undoubtedly a cool app, but are people really paying that much to see a Michigan St. football game? Those are joke prices, right?

FRIDAY
Fantasy Puzzle: What Will You Pay For Madison Bumgarner?, by Brad Johnson
The simple answer is more than last year, but the tricky part is how much more? Comment and help us establish a consensus!