The Best of FanGraphs: October 6 – October 10, 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 Washington Nationals vs. Vic Carapazza, by August Fagerstrom
Umpires don’t win or lose ballgames by themselves, but it will still probably be a long time before Nationals fans forget the name Vic Carapazza.

The Longest Postseason Game Ever, or Not, by Shane Tourtellotte
In his first post at FanGraphs, Shane reminds us that truth is in the eye of the beholder…or perhaps in this case, the couch potato.

Could Yasmani Grandal Devin Mesoraco?, by Eno Sarris
It was Catcher Week at RotoGraphs, and Eno just had to sneak a post in the day before his wife delivered their second child. Congratulations to Eno and the entire Sarris family!

Oh the trouble I've seen pic.twitter.com/A8sQmv4jTt

— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) October 7, 2014

Should Short Pitchers Still Get Short Shrift?, by Jeff Zimmerman
Inspired by Brandon Finnegan, Jeff takes a very deep in the data and finds some very interesting conclusions.

BABIPf/x: A Predictive Pitch-Based Model, by Jonathan Luman
Jonathan is to be commended for the incredible level of work that went into this piece, which builds off of work done by our own Max Weinstein and Jeff Zimmerman earlier this year.

TUESDAY
The Top 10 Prospects for 2015 by Projected WAR, by Carson Cistulli
The 2015 Steamer projections hit the site with a vengeance this week, and Carson used them to create some piping hot internet content.

Yasiel Puig’s Sudden Problems Making Contact, by Mike Petriello
Mike goes in deep on the swing of a certain Wild Horse.

A Fantasy Puzzle, by Brad Johnson
There are a lot of thoughtful answers to the Ottoneu-specific question posed by Brad here. Myself, I’d go three dollars on Puig. It won’t make the player in question cut him, but it might make him just a little less valuable in trade talks over the winter and into next season, especially if the other league members allocate their three dollars there as well.

You Won’t Believe What You Get If You Click To Read This Post, by Jeremy Blachman
Congratulations are also in order to Jeremy and the Blachman family on reaching the one-year mark with their son! Some things in life are more important than baseball, as Jeremy details in this essay.

MLB 2014 All-Loser Team, by Brad Oremland
A post with a title like this is always a winner. I certainly didn’t expect the Ultra-Loser Team to be so good.

WEDNESDAY
Q&A: Dan Kantrovitz, St. Louis Cardinals Scouting Director, by David Laurila
When you read this, you will realize that it’s not that surprising that the Cardinals are consistently successful, if you didn’t know that already.

Shockbox Aims to Help Diagnose Concussions on the Fly, by David G. Temple
What an age we live in.

THURSDAY
How Chris Tillman Keeps Runners From Running, by Jeff Sullivan
Jeff expertly blends observation with statistics in this great piece on Tillman’s quasi-legal mound movements.

FRIDAY
FG on Fox: Does Anybody Else Throw Zach Britton’s Sinker?, by Jeff Sullivan
Click through to find out!

Discussing the “NLCS Powered by JABO” with Rob Neyer, by Dave Cameron
Rob has to wear fancy pants tonight, and we should all absolutely hope that it is worth it.