In case you missed anything on BtB over the past week, here's your weekly round up. (You can always check out the Archives, which will also list any new comments as long as you're signed in to SBN.)
- Tommy Bennett joined the BtB team, bringing links to saber-slanted from around the web into one one place in a column we call the Daily Box Score. If you have any feedback, please leave it here.
- Sky "defended" Harold Reynolds, although his essay was really about how two sides of a debate should communicate, if they ever hope to bridge the divide. Yes, statheads can be obnoxious. Stop it.
- Beyond the Box Score now has a Facebook page. Become a fan!
- Erik (who recently started writing for Fangraphs, congrats!) crossed party lines (did you know he's a Cardinals fan?) by helping convince the Reds they should jettison Willy Taveras from the lead off spot, the starting lineup, and the state of Ohio.
- Harry busted out more pitch f/x-based leader boards. I'm not sure why these aren't more popular, but learned that Kevin Baker has the highest percentage of pitches swung at, Livan Hernandez never misses bats, Ted Lilly throws a huge percentage of pitches in the extended strike zone, and Joba Chamberlain can't get anyone to swing at his pitches out of the strike zone.
- R.J. ventured into basketball territory, pondering about the value of second round draft picks in the NBA draft.
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Daisuke Matsuzaka's periphals are very similar to last season, but his ERA is about thirty seven runs higher. Cosmic joke or injury issues? Tommy Rancel took a look.
- Here's a great group of names, who all garnered Rookie of the Year support in 1986: Jose Canseco, Wally Joyner, Cory Snyder, Ruben Sierra, Danny Tartabull, and Mark Eichorn. Jeff gave them the career trajectory treatment in a nice graph. Other Graphs of the Day included the most and least effective sinkers, how much various power rankings match actual win-loss records, context-dependent (using WPA) stolen base cut-off rates,
- Sean Smith's WAR database is awesome, but only goes back through 1995. Jeff crunched the numbers to put Win Shares on the WAR scale so we can compare players all the way back through the beginning of time.
- Sky took a look at the Rockies' pitching staff, which is among the best in the majors, despite an ERA in the bottom third of all teams.
- Justin's power rankings once again featured four AL East teams at the top of the list, but also recognized the Rockies as the big upward movers of the week, while the Royals took home the downward honor. Dan followed up Justin's power rankings with his Poor Man's Projected Standings.
- Jack took a look at question not unfamiliar to Reds' fans -- what the heck is up with Jay Bruce's freakishly low BABIP? Is he unlucky or just unique?
- Jeff noted that hitting streaks tend to take place during warmer weather, although more hitting streaks take place in the earlier part of the summer, not during the absolute hottest days. I love articles with answer and more questions.
- Tommy Rancel looked at two surprising division leaders -- the Tigers and Rangers -- and preached to the old football cliche, Defense Wins Champsionships.
- You want more DL database yumminess? Jeff dissected the Royals DL info from 2002 through 2008.
- Harry's weekly column, New Arms of the Week, checked in on Sean O'Sullivan, Alfredo Figaro, and Brad Mills.
- Sky, while acknowledging he knows as much about SQL as he does about Nigerian moth mating rituals (very little, in case you were wondering), presented an introductory SQL tutorial. If you want to slice and dice baseball data, it's really not that hard to get into, if you take it one step at a time. Look for Part II soon.
- Got any ideas of what the smart people should be doing with pitch f/x and hit f/x data? Join the brainstorming thread.