Alright, let's do this! Before you begin your wonderful weekend, have a look at some of the better FanShots from the last couple days.
Johan Santana is still really awesome. Harry put together a pretty darn extensive PITCHf/x look at how he does the voodoo that he do over at The Baseball Analysts.
Sports Illustrated put together a list of the best and worst owners in baseball. And Sky took it to task. He believes they give too much credit to the owners for moves made, and that they should be judged by how much they spend, who they hire and how little they meddle. I tend to agree with all of that.
Steven at Fire Jim Bowden dismissed the fanfare over Ryan Zimmerman's hitting streak as silly, and also took on Bruce Bochy's decision to Zimmerman in the 7th. What I found most interesting was that A) walking Zimmerman raised the Nats' run expectency that inning almost 1/5th a run and B) Orlando Cabrera in 2006 set the RetroSheet-era record for 63 games reaching base. I did not know that.
Baseball Prospectus announced they'll be doing weekly Depth Charts updates and, more importantly, in-season PECOTA updates. I'm giddy.
Over at Driveline Mechanics, Devil_Fingers utilizes Colin Wyers's Baseruns-FIP metric (among other things) to look at what exactly "twilight of his career" meant for Roger Clemens in 1996. Spoiler alert: his twilight was kind of really good.
Zach Sanders looked at Dontrelle Willis's debut in PITCHf/x.
Dave Cameron at FanGraphs reminds the world that fielding is very important and ERA is a team stat. And that's what's going on with the Rangers improved run prevention. The move of Michael Young to third has a trickle-down effect that has helped Texas (so far) dramatically improve their ability to convert outs over last season.
Keith Law discussed who a few teams at the top of the draft are apparently looking to go with right now.
And at FanGraphs (again), Eric Seidman uses their nifty in-season ZiPS projections to look at the worst starting pitchers the rest of the year.
In one of the more frivolous uses of stats (which I love!), The Hardball Times put together an All-Time team made entirely out of brothers. Very cool.
A lot of good FanShots over there, even more than posted here. Keep supplying great information, great stories, great ideas and great comments. I think the section here is the best I see on Sports Blog Nation, and it gets better all the time.