📝 The Week That Was (March 1-7, 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.

• 🏁 Katherine Legge’s NASCAR Cup Series Debut Shows How Far Women Have Come — And How Far There Is to Go - This weekend, the Cup Series will feature its first female driver since Danica Patrick in 2018. Why did it take 7 years — and someone even older than Patrick — to get another woman behind the wheel?

• ⚾️ Does Pete Rose Belong in the Hall of Fame? Well, He Sure Was Famous. - With the debate over Rose’s eligibility for the HOF re-igniting, I focused on the “fame” part of the museum name by measuring just how ubiquitous he was during his heyday.

• ⚾️ Yes, the Dodgers Are Going to Be Good. (Like, Really Good.) - When I compiled my usual composite MLB projections for 2025, one team (unsurprisingly) towered over all the rest in the league.

  

• ⚾️ The Cubs and Blue Jays "Won" the Offseason — But Will It Mean Anything? - Relatedly, I also crunched the numbers on which teams added or subtracted the most net Wins Above Replacement (WAR) talent since the end of the 2024 season. It’s nice data to have for the purposes of storytelling, to be sure — but it’s less clear how much it actually predicts teams’ improvement on the field.

• 🏒 The NHL Trade Deadline Has Made a Comeback in Recent Years - After a few seasons with little in the way of high-impact talent going on the move at the deadline, the past few years have seen a return of productive acquisitions, in terms of performance over the remainder of the regular season. And with Mikko Rantanen on the move (again), this year could easily continue that trend.

• 🏁 Christopher Bell’s win streak is already historic — and it might not be over yet - At NASCAR.com, I wrote about the special run Bell is on at the moment: First, by winning back-to-back races at two separate track types, and then — as the statistical favorite this week — by having the chance to win three straight at three different types of tracks!

  • 🏁🎧 Bell Ringer - This week on

    Podracing
    ,
    Tyler
    and I talked about Bell’s win at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, his historic streak, the significance of Legge’s debut, and made our picks for this weekend’s race at Phoenix.

• ⏱️ Numlock Sunday: Neil Paine on the best return on your time in sports - My longtime friend and colleague

  Walter Hickey
  interviewed me about my story on which sports provide the best ratio of action to time-investment.

• 🏀▶️ Boston/OKC or The Field? FEAT... Neil Paine - I was a guest on my buddy

  Marc Campbell
  ’s podcast to talk about the East and West playoff pictures — and with both favorites over 50 percent to make the Finals, whether we would truly take the Celtics and/or Thunder over the field in their respective conferences.

• 🏒 Programming Note: I’m updating my 🚨 Ovi Tracker 🚨 after every Washington Capitals game to estimate Alex Ovechkin’s chances of tying or breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, by any particular date, over the remainder of the 2024-25 regular season.

• 🏀 Other Programming Note: Be sure to check out ESPN’s Bubble Watch to find my ongoing analysis of teams vying to make the NCAA tournament, and consult the NCAA Tournament Meta-Forecast 📊 for the big picture across a bunch of different models.

Chart of the week

Net Goals Above Replacement (GAR) talented added by NHL teams from Jan. 1 through Friday’s trade deadline:

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.

• 🏈 The Biggest Snub in Sports History by Gridiron Lore

• 🏈 BUILT TO LEAD: The Arduous Rise of Cincinnati Bengals OC Dan Pitcher by

  Tyler Dunne

• 🏈 Paul Justin: Promising Future Snuffed Out By Peyton Manning by

  Robbie Marriage

• 🏈 Bill Belichick is Remaking North Carolina in His Own Image by

  Conor McQuiston

• ⚾️ The Case for Leaving the Starter In by

  Lewie Pollis

• ⚾️▶️MLB could suffer HUGE revenue loss with streaming-only by Brodie Brazil

• ⚾️ Mistaken Identity // What was the surprise on Aug. 5, 2001? by

  Sam Miller

• 🏀 Introducing Net Points! The latest NBA metric and its amazing early findings by

  Dean Oliver
  and ESPN just released NET points, a new NBA metric. Here's how to DIY. by
  Jeremias Engelmann

• 🏀 The irony of March by

  Chris

• 🏀 Why hasn't anyone said "the SEC is overrated"? by

  Ken Pomeroy

• 🏀 Actually, Being the Face of the NBA Ain't Half Bad by

  Michael Hendricks

• 🏀 Why Don’t Players Use The Skyhook? by

  Nam Tran

• 🏒 Let's break down a blockbuster: Mikko Rantanen becomes a Dallas Star. by

  David Castillo

• 🏒 Rantanen's System Fit with DAL by

  Jack Han

• 🏒 The Winnipeg Jets are less fragile, but are they better? by

  Garret Hohl

• 🏒😍▶️ Boston Garden Table Hockey by Dan Ryan

• ⚽ Conflict of Interest // A few thoughts on unknowingly getting tangled in the youth sports web. by

  Melissa Jacobs

• ❤️ How I got my dream job at FiveThirtyEight // And what I might do next. by

  Nathaniel Rakich
  and My thoughts on the end of FiveThirtyEight and what comes next by
  Galen Druke

• 💰 Economic Statecraft and Trade by

  John H. Cochrane

• 💰▶️ DOGE: A Weapon of Class Destruction by

  Nicholas Pardini

• 🎵 Is Old Music Eating New Music? by

  Chris Dalla Riva

• 🖥️ Who and What comprise AI Skepticism? by

  Benjamin Riley
  (h/t
  Max Read
  )

• 🌆▶️ Moving Cities Won't Solve Your Problems by Varun Rana

Neil’s Substack Throwback of the week

Old YouTube game of the week

Ken Griffey Jr. legs out a walk-off inside-the-park home run! | Hidden Classics

Music to play us out

Dirt Poor Robins - Mad Gods

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

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