Lots of cool stories on the site this week and to prevent them all from being lost in the shuffle, here's a reminder of what popped up. On a side note, feel free to let me know how you feel about putting the first part of articles on the front page and the rest "after the jump"? On one hand, it's annoying to click through sometimes, although this annoyance seems to be lessening in the current internet age, tabbed browsing and all. On the other hand, shorter snippets on the front page make it more scannable to find older articles you were looking for. Let me hear it...
- Jeff showed off just the tip of the ice berg with graphs galore based on his 2002 to 2008 injury database. Much more to come from him using that data.
- Dan posted a Graph of the Day comparing career values of knuckleballers. That Phil Niekro guy was pretty good.
- In one of the more inflammatory posts, Justin presented week two of his BtB Power Rankings, featuring a sub-.500 team at the top. Hey, anybody can rank teams based on wins, he's trying to rank them based on how well they've played. (And look, ma, sortable tables!)
- MLB draft slot value chart? Check. Quirky results? Check.
- Jack told us there have been nineteen home runs hit that would not have been a home run at any of the thirty major league parks without the aid of environmental factors, such as wind. That includes David Ortiz' only home run of 2009.
- Harry showed us how to create pitch flight paths using his Excel template and Zach spruced them up a bit. Here you can find links to three other Pitch f/x tutorials.
- While the Braves surely got a good deal in acquiring Nate McLouth, I liked the deal for the Pirates more than many people.
- Erik took a look at the top rated college arms for the upcoming MLB draft and showed which ones will be drafted based on current ability and which ones will be drafted on potential.
- R.J. took a look a look back at catching prospects drafted in the first three rounds and how they've fared in the majors.
- We kicked off a project called "Saberizing a Mac" to help Mac users become baseball uber-analysts. Part One discussed setting up the appropriate software and Part Two challenges us to install the Baseball Databank database. In the future, we'll get to querying databases -- hopefully including retrosheet and Pitch f/x -- and that should benefit all geeks, not just Mac geeks.
- Strength of schedule isn't something readily available in these intertubes, but I took a hack at it using BPro's third-order wins and ESPN's strength of schedule number. Any further ideas are definitely welcome.
- Harry took a look at MLB debuts by pitchers from the past week, including David Hernandez and Daniel Schlereth, breaking down their stuff using Pitch f/x data.
- Justin's Graph of the Day debut featured interleague records, and led to a great discussion of AL superiority over the NL.
- Trying something new for a stat geek, Jeff tried his hand at humor, in a Pitch f/x analysis of Nuke Laloosh.
Finally, don't forget that Sunday night will be our second Game Thread Night, as the Phillies play the Dodgers. Check back about an hour before game time for the actual game thread.