The Week That Was (Feb. 12-16, 2024)
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!), and if there are running sections you’d like to see on a regular basis.
What I did this week
Stealing a bit from Will Leitch’s newsletter format, here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance.
🏈 Patrick Mahomes Is Literally Impossible to Stop When You Need to Stop Him - After he did it again in the Super Bowl, I looked at just how good Patrick Mahomes has been at leading must-score drives for the Chiefs. (This is the post where the viral stat about Mahomes going 7-for-7 in those situations came from.)
🏈 Where Do the 2023-24 Chiefs Rank among the Toughest Super Bowl Paths? - Prompted by a remark in one of my fave podcasts, I set out to measure the difficulty of K.C.’s path to the title. It will probably be lost in the narrative of inevitability around Mahomes and the Chiefs’ dynasty, but this was not an easy road and the Chiefs were not favored to survive it… but they did anyway, which is pretty special.
🎧 The Finder pod: Analytics storyteller Neil Paine - My friend
was nice enough to have me on his podcast to talk about our shared history telling stories with numbers, lessons from analytics over the years (hello, Andrew Wiggins), my experience with the Atlanta Hawks’ front office, and what our favorite weird stats have been.🏁 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Preview - Using metrics like my Adjusted Points index, I went through each full-time team on the grid in the NASCAR Cup Series, discussing their strengths, weaknesses and what they need to succeed in 2024.
🏀 Why Isn’t Jayson Tatum Getting More MVP Buzz? - Though it feels like being the Best Player on the Best Team™ is a reliable ticket for MVP consideration, that hasn’t really been true for Tatum this year. Why is that? And how often does that mantle actually lead to MVP success throughout history?
⚾️ An Early Look at 2024 MLB Predictions - Pulling projection data from a bunch of different sources, I took a tour through what the stats and oddsmakers think going into the 2024 MLB season.
🏈 There’s No Limit to the Bets You Can Make on Patrick Mahomes - In the immediate wake of Super Bowl LVIII, I wrote about how Mahomes is able to negate any on-paper advantage the opponent seems to have. His most impressive feat yet was leading K.C. over a San Francisco team that had been substantially better for most of the season, causing that track record to become irrelevant in crunch time.
🏀 14 Takes: The NBA's Spectacular Rookie Class - As a guest in another star-studded
ensemble, I wrote a little about Scoot Henderson’s rookie year. Yes, his metrics are horrible — but there are some recent examples of young players who were nearly as bad and ended up turning out just fine.🏀 When Will Caitlin Clark Break The All-Time Scoring Record? - This is another one of those updating trackers, but it’s cool to finally see Clark’s line rise above Kelsey Plum’s line on the chart:
Some interesting things I read/watched this week
⚾️ There's At Least One Stat Left To Invent by
- Just wanted to chime in and say this is one of the best baseball things I’ve read in a while — it poses the question of how much the postseason should factor into players’ legacies as MLB expands the playoffs and makes them take on more weight within the overall season than ever.🏁 Can Jimmie Johnson Win at Daytona? by
🏈 Worst NFL Coaching Hires of the 21st Century (Pt.1) by
🏈 How accurate is the mock draft universe when it comes to QBs? by
🏀 Brandon Miller will be a winner. (Don't hold the Hornets' record against him.) by
🏀 Which team is hurt most often by late-game blown calls? by
🏀 How Will Today's NBA Teams be Remembered? by
🎙️ Bill Simmons is Right About Pat McAfee by
🎮 I gave Jimmy Butler a Basketball team made from random Trading Cards by Kofie
🎮 BARKLEY, SHUT UP AND JAM: GAIDEN | A Retrospective Review by poqreslux
Blast From The Past
Here’s a random old story I wrote (from around the same time on the sports calendar) that might still be of interest in 2024…
🎧 Listen To How Walt Hickey And Neil Paine Tried To Break Madden (Feb. 25, 2015)
Updating tracker of week
Random sports game of the week: ⚾️ MLB Power Pros
Anybody else remember MLB Power Pros? At a glance, the cute, abstract character designs suggest a simple game intended for children — but that would be selling Power Pros extremely short. Based on the long-running Japanese series Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū, this game had a surprising amount of depth, from gameplay that felt smooth but offered a challenge (the targeting system while batting recalled the Ken Griffey Jr. games for the N64) to numerous different modes of play. Those included a HR derby, season mode and, of course, “success mode” — a full-fledged JRPG/visual novel/life simulator that allowed you to build the career (and social life) of an aspiring young baseball player in school. I’m still waiting for Tim Rogers to do a 6-hour video retrospective on this one.
Old YouTube game of the week
Music to play us out
“Turn the Lights Back On” by Billy Joel
Filed under: Weekly Round-up
Thanks for including my article Neil!
Thanks for the shout, Neil! :)