📝 The Week That Was (April 14-18, 2025)

A roundup of what I wrote, read, watched, etc. over the past week.

In this space on Saturdays, I do a weekly round-up of sorts: Sifting through what I wrote that you might have missed during the week, what I’ve been reading and watching myself, and some other fun things that have been going on. Let me know what you think about the format in the comments (or email me!¹), and if there are running sections you’d like to see on a regular basis.

What I did this week

Here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance.

• ⛳ Rory McIlroy’s Career Grand Slam Was Hard-Earned — And a Very Long Time Coming – With Rory (finally) conquering Augusta, I wrote about his career Grand Slam — and how unusual it was to be completed after such a historically long wait.

• 🏒 The Winnipeg Jets Ought To Be Stanley Cup Favorites. Vegas Disagrees. – Although the stats say Winnipeg is the best team in hockey, the betting markets aren’t buying it. So, on the eve of the playoffs, I dug into why the Jets aren’t getting the respect they deserve — and why this might be the year they make everyone regret it.

• 🏀 Why the NBA’s Play-In Lifeline Isn’t Working for 10-Seeds – The NBA Play-In tournament was supposed to revitalize the league’s middle class — and yes, this year did finally see a 10-seed advance (!) to the playoffs proper. But for the most part, the tourney may have had the opposite of the intended effect for low-seeded teams, leaving them just good enough to go nowhere.

• ⚾ Baseball Bytes: Busted O's and Killer B's – This week’s edition of my baseball column checked in on Baltimore’s alarming start, then paid tribute to the classic Houston Astros “Killer B’s” era, and featured a short poem on the tragic recent career of Kris Bryant.

  

• ⚾ Classic Post: Jackie Robinson Was An Analytics Superstar – Updated for Jackie Robinson Day in 2025, I revisited an old favorite post of mine about how Robinson’s all-around brilliance shines just as bright when viewed through today’s analytics lens.

• 🏁 Which Xfinity Series drivers will rock at Rockingham? – For NASCAR.com, I previewed the Xfinity Series’ return to “The Rock”, looking for current drivers who might thrive on this old-school track — or were even alive when stock cars last raced there:

  

  • 🏁🎧 Rockingham Rocks, Larson Rolls - This week on Podracing,

    Tyler
    and I recapped Kyle Larson’s latest Bristol beatdown and, with the Cup Series off for Easter, we shifted our attention to Rockingham's return — where there might (or might not) be a new tire-wear profile — ahead of the Xfinity Series race.

  

• Programming Note: Check out the ⚾ 2025 MLB Elo Power Rankings 📈 page for your baseball forecast needs all season long. And now, I’ve also added 2025 WAR rankings according to JEFFBAGWELL — the Joint Estimate Featuring FanGraphs and B-R Aggregated to Generate WAR, Equally Leveling Lists — plus a spreadsheet of data for paid subscribers.

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Some interesting things I read/watched this week

A collection of articles (with a heavy focus on my fellow Substackers), videos and other media that I enjoyed and/or found thought-provoking over the past week. I don’t always 100% agree with what’s linked here… but that’s also sort of the point.

• 🏀 Regular Season Re-Visualized by

  Owen Phillips

• 🏀 The 2025 portal: a slasher film by

  Will Warren

• 🏀 I Think We Can Fix College Basketball by

  Austin Cornilles

• 🏀 Don't Have a Cow, Man! It's Just a Bart Torvik Query by

  No Ceilings

• 🏀 A Statistics-Free NBA Playoff Preview by

  Madeline Hill

• ⚾️ The Rays’ Emerging Core by Steve Adams

• ⚾️▶️ How Data is Changing Hitting Forever and Why The Dodgers WON'T Ruin Baseball - A Parity Analysis by Wilytics

• ⚾️ The (Abbey) Road to the Show: Who Has the (Rubber) Soul to Be a Star, and Who Could Use Some Help! by

  Down on the Farm

• ⚾️ The Boswell Stats by

  Daniel Evensen

• ⚾️ Jackie Robinson's lousy finale // Trailblazer deserved a better finish to his career by

  John Nogowski

• ⚾️▶️ I Faced an MLB Pitcher. It Changed How I Watch Sports by Joon Lee

• 🏒 A case for Connor Hellebuyck for Hart by

  Garret Hohl

• 🏒 The Hall of Fame Case For Marc-André Fleury by

  GabArr

• 🏒 Unpacking the Skill Revolution in Today's NHL by

  The Hockey Writers - NHL Stuff

• 🏒 2024-25 Season Spotlight: Nikita Kucherov by

  Vinh Cao

• ⛳ Every Rose Has Its Thorn by

  Christian Red

• 🏁 The FIA’s Loosening Grip on Reality by

  Olivia Hicks

• 🎵 I Analyzed Chord Progressions in 680k Songs by

  Chris Dalla Riva

• 💵 Is Dollar Dominance Good for the U.S.? by

  Josh Hendrickson

• 🍿▶️ Revenge of the Sith: End of a Marketing Era by HoloNet Marauders

Old YouTube game of the week

NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs 1996 Compilation

Music to play us out

Donell Jones - “U Know What's Up”

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

1. I’m at neil[dot]paine[at]gmail[dot]com.