Morning Mound Visit: WAR, exit velocity get re-evaluated

Russell Carleton | Baseball Prospectus $: When WAR was first introduced, it wasn’t “just better but entirely different than what came before it.” Now, as teams approach roster construction differently, certain aspects of WAR might be outdated. Russell Carleton continues his work to fix the stat we’ve become all too reliant on.

Connor Kurcan | Six Man Rotation: Not all hard-hit balls are created equal. A 107-mph pop-up inspired Connor Kurcan to re-evaluate exit velocity by not separating it from launch angle. The result was dynamic hard hit percentage (DHH%) and TrueHit.

Alex Coffey | The Athletic $: Dave Stewart arrived in professional baseball in 1976, and if not for some advice from Sandy Koufax, he might have stopped there. Instead, Stewart went on to finish in the top four in Cy Young voting four times and won the World Series MVP in 1988. Like Stewart, Koufax also needed someone to show some confidence in him to succeed.