The Best of FanGraphs: September 6-9, 2016

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
This week, we put forth the American League MVP case for several different players. Neil Weinberg wrote about Mike Trout, Corinne Landrey wrote about Jose Altuve, I wrote about Mookie Betts, Craig Edwards wrote about Manny Machado and August Fagerstrom wrote about Josh Donaldson.

MONDAY
We celebrated Labor Day on this day. We hope you were able to as well.

TUESDAY
How Brian Dozier Put Together a Season for the Ages, by August Fagerstrom
The short short version: dongers.

The Making of a Baseball Life, by Jason Linden
He’s only received three plate appearances since the article went up, but Hernan Iribarren got two hits in them, including a triple, and now has a .500 AVG for the season. Pretty cool.

WEDNESDAY
Projecting the First Wave of September Call-Ups, by Chris Mitchell
Catch the wave.

Wait, That Guy Isn’t a Lefty?, by Eno Sarris
When Eno first mentioned this article, I thought of it as one of those crazy Eno ideas that he scraps halfway through, but to his credit, this one comes off really well!

The Iron Man In Baseball, by Rachel Heacock
This was Rachel’s first piece at THT. Please welcome her!

THURSDAY
Jharel Cotton’s Changeup Is Objectively Impressive, by Carson Cistulli
In case it wasn’t clear, Carson is a big fan of Jharel Cotton.

MASH Report: Pitcher Spin Rates and Injuries, by Jeff Zimmerman
There’s nothing conclusive here yet, but this will be very interesting to watch, and you can trust Jeff to keep track of it.

Could A High BABIP Be A Sign of Good Pitching?, by Andrew Perpetua
Maybe, maybe not, but as Andrew shows, there are a lot of good pitchers with high BABIPs.

Are The Umpires At It Again?, by Brian Mills
This was Brian’s first piece at THT as well. If we’re really nice to him, maybe he’ll write more often for us!

FRIDAY
Ryon Healy Made That Popular Adjustment, So Should We, by Eno Sarris
I almost linked to Iggy Azalea’s “Change Your Life” here, since it seemed topical, but I just couldn’t do that to you folks. So instead, here’s an old Naughty By Nature song. It doesn’t make as much sense in context, but it’s the weekend, so it doesn’t really have to. You’re welcome.

Assessing the 2017 Value of Kevin Gausman, by Josh Shepardson
Josh is bullish.

Don’t Forget Sam Lynn, by Jen Mac Ramos
A beautifully written and photographed story from Jen on the unfortunate demise of a baseball institution.

Examining Baseball’s Most Extreme Environment, by Jacob Phillips
All articles about Coors Field are good articles.

(Header image via Jen Mac Ramos)