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FanGraphs | Jay Jaffe: The Dodgers have hit .296/.396/.559 for a 144 wRC+ through their first 11 games, and it’s one of the best stretches of run-scoring to start of a season in baseball history; one would have to look at the steroid era to find something similar. This has been bolstered by Cody Bellinger, who has hit seven home runs with a .435 batting average, as well as Joc Pederson and Max Muncy. Shockingly, this team is good.
Baseball Prospectus | Matthew Trueblood ($): Nicholas Castellanos is in his walk year, so this is a fork-in-the-road moment. If he stays the course of high-power, low-OBP, but if he has an OBP over .350 like he has the last season and change, then he could see himself getting a deal like, say, Andrew McCutchen instead of the one-year deals his usual profile would receive.
Tangotiger Blog | Tom Tango: Here’s a funny thing about WPA: if you adjust WPA based on pre-game win probability, it would have funny consequences. If you had Superman on your team giving you a 100% chance of winning, he would add “zero” value. Or, it would have the issue of creating a pre-game probability that is equally spread across the players even though the contributions are different. Yet ESPN has released a new version that adjusts per plate appearance, and there’s more to be done with adjusting for relievers.