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.
🙏 One more thanks is in order to those who participated in my reader survey over the past few weeks. I already used it to reshape my Baseball Bytes column the other day, and I’ll put some of its other takeaways into use soon.
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.
⚾ Bullpens Boomed at the 2025 MLB Trade Deadline - My annual trade deadline review dug into the most valuable players on the move, who added the most net WAR talent and which positions were disproportionately in-demand over the past month.
⛳ Tiger Woods Reached the Apex of Golf Greatness — And That Was Just One of His Peaks - With the help of stats from Data Golf, I dug into the career arc of Tiger Woods — and how he was able to repeatedly raise the bar for excellence — by the numbers.
🏁 Meet Connor Zilisch, Racing's Next Superstar - We throw the term “generational talent” around wayyyy too much these days. But damned if this 19-year-old kid doesn’t have as much GOAT potential as any young driving prospect we’ve seen in recent decades.
⛳ Scottie Scheffler or the S&P 500: Which has been more profitable over the last 4 years? - At The Athletic, I created a real and totally not-made-up new financial index: SCOTTIE, or the Scheffler-Centric Outperformance Tracker for Tournament Investment Efficiency — which involves betting on Scottie Scheffler to win tournaments, compared with if you’d just invested the money in the stock market every time he played.
🏀 Biggest surprises, disappointments of the 2025 WNBA season - For ESPN, I dove into the four biggest surprises — and three biggest letdowns — of this WNBA season so far. Topping the former category? The expansion success of the Golden State Valkyries. In the latter: the total dud that has been the Caitlin Clark-Angel Reese rivalry in 2025.
🏁 What worked about the In-Season Challenge — and what can be improved? - My editors at NASCAR.com graciously let me print my honest assessments about what was good — and what still needs work — with the new in-season tournament format.
🏁🎧 Bubba, Off the Bubble - In this week’s episode of Podracing,
Tyler and I broke down Bubba Wallace’s clutch win at the Brickyard and we dove into the continued rise of Connor Zilisch, plus my takeaways from the In-Season Challenge. Then we made our betting/one-and-done picks for Iowa in a long-awaited return to short tracks.
🏈 This is the NFL’s Best Hall of Fame Game in Decades. Don’t Get Too Excited. - With a combined 10.6 percent Super Bowl probability between the two teams, Thursday night’s Lions-Chargers preseason kickoff was one of the best matchups in recent HOF Game history. Too bad the game itself has almost no participation from real starters anymore:
⚾ Baseball Bytes: Deadline Needs, Ranked - Before the deadline, I mapped out which areas of improvement that MLB buyers needed to target most urgently. Plus, I paid tribute to the late, great Ryne Sandberg.
⚾ The Tigers Finally Won. But Is Their Recent Slump a Red Flag for October? - Until recently, Detroit had mired itself in a streak of 12 losses in 13 games. While plenty of historical champs have survived extended stretches of sub-.500 play, many fewer have had 13-game stretches that poor.
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 or endorse what’s linked here… but that’s also sort of the point.
🏈 Under Center Vs. Shotgun In Modern NFL Offence by Robbie Marriage
🏈 2025 Pre-Fired College Football Coaches List by Tyler Schuster
🏈 Hunter X Hunter // The two-way Travis Hunter experiment illustrates that the young Jaguars showrunners aren't afraid to think outside the box. by Mike Tanier (Note: I’m a sucker for anime-reference headlines…)
🏈▶️ Every Team's Best Player NOT in the Hall of Fame by NFL Throwback
🏀 Will the Knicks’ Extension of Mikal Bridges be a Bridge to Nowhere? by Above the Break
🏀 An Interview With The NBA Research & Development Department by Madeline Hill
🏀 Veronica Burton // Pay Her What You Owe Her by Chris Gunther
🏀 The Ever Growing Legend of Allisha Gray by Chaunte'l Powell
⚾▶️ Corey Seager Is So Good... | Baseball Bits by Foolish Baseball
⚾ I Used to Watch My Heroes. Now I Say Goodbye to Them. by Doug Glanville
⚾ How do the Padres keep getting away with this? by Hannah Keyser and Zach Crizer
⚾ A Better Way to Analyze MLB Remaining Schedules by Edward Egros
💉 How HGH could safely keep MLB stars on the field by Colin Cerniglia
🥊 Brawl for All // How clout chasers ruined boxing by Sean Nam (h/t Simon Owens )
🤖 The Anchor Model: A Smarter Way to Bet on Sports with AI by Ariel Calista
📉 Why Ohio Trying To Ban Prop Bets Is A Terrible Idea by Dustin Gouker
💰 Dear Athletes, Don't Sports Bet, Because Sports Betting is Fake by Ethan Strauss (Note: Yes, we’ve got a lot of different perspectives in here at once! I’m allowed to do that.)
🏟️ The $62 Million High School Stadium That Sparked a National Debate by Joe Pompliano
🎥Who Are Hollywood's Greatest Character Actors? A Statistical Analysis of Iconic "That Guy" Performers by Daniel Parris
Old YouTube Game of the Week
'The Ryne Sandberg Game' | 6/23/1984 (Cubs huge comeback vs. STL, Ryno hits TWO game-tying HRs!)
Music to Play Us Out
Steps Ahead - “Beirut”
Filed under: Weekly Round-up
I love Hunter x Hunter and was mildly disappointed in the lack of further references in the article (though I subscribe to Tanier and generally love his work)
I want to see the alternate universe where Ichiro was a Met.