The Week That Was (May 13-17, 2024)

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

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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

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.

• ⚾ Bat Speed Isn’t Everything - MLB’s new bat speed data is pretty cool. But does it tell us who will be a productive hitter — or even who will hit the ball hard?

• 🏒 Young NHL stars who are leveling up in Stanley Cup playoffs ($) - At ESPN, I wrote about nine NHL players under age 25 who are stepping up their production in the playoffs.

• ⚾ Do the Toronto Blue Jays Have Any Potential Left? - One of several breakout teams of 2020, the Jays (and their legion of MLB sons) looked like a sure bet to contend for the World Series over the decade to come. But four years later, things have gone off script in Toronto.

• ⚾ The Brewers Turned a Weak Talent Pipeline into a Top Team. The Marlins Did the Exact Opposite. - I looked at which MLB teams lose or gain the most value if, instead of their actual rosters, they could only use the players they originally brought to the majors.

• 🏀 WNBA player rankings - As part of my WNBA projections page, I also added a leaguewide Consensus Wins added rankings table.

• 🏈 A.J. Smith's Chargers Did Everything but Win - The late former San Diego general manager, who died Sunday, was a polarizing figure — but the team he built, with LaDainian Tomlinson, Philip Rivers and Antonio Gates, might have been the best to never make a Super Bowl.

• 🏒Sergei Bobrovsky and the Panthers Are Confusing Us All over Again - Who can figure out Bobrovsky and the Florida Panthers? Last year, they were mid in the regular season but caught fire in the playoffs. This year, they were great in the regular season — but despite the team doing relatively well, Bobrovsky has been mid at best in net.

Some interesting things I read/watched this week

• 🏀 Like Mike: Comparing The Clark Effect to the Jordan Effect by

  Alex Varghese

• ⚾ A Look At Statcast Bat Tracking Data by

  Drew Haugen

• 🏀 The Book of Brunson: Breaking down his two-point bag by

  Mike Shearer

• ⚾ The State of Hype in Baseball by

  Michael Hendricks

• 🏀 Which Schools Get The Most Out Of Transfers by

  Evan Miyakawa

• ⚾ "You're putting WHO on the cover?" by

  robneyer

• ⚾ Is Elly De La Cruz Going For 100? by

  Sam Miller

• 🏈 The NFL's Deal With Netflix Could Eventually Lead To A $100 Billion Payday by

  Joe Pompliano

• 🏀 Caitlin Clark's home debut is a clunker, but give her time, and give her grace by

  Bob Kravitz

• 🏀 It's time to talk efficiency in the WNBA by

  Matthew Coller

• 🎧🏀 The Finder POD: Kirk Goldsberry and Brandon Payne by

  Tom Haberstroh

• ⚾ What's in a swing? A metrics explainer by

  Noah Woodward

• 💻 The death (again) of the internet as we know it by

  Noah Smith

• ⚾ How Have #1 Overall Draft Picks Fared In The MLB? by

  Sean Beney

• 🏀 Destiny ends somewhere: The Lakers and LeBron James, or, when two brands of exceptionalism collide by

  Katie Heindl

• ⚾ The Magic of Maddux by

  Joe Posnanski

• ⚾📺 How The White Sox Were Ruined By The Braves ‘Strategy’ by Purely Baseball

• 📺 Why YouTube will continue out-competing Hollywood by

  Simon Owens

• 🃏 What makes a card game great? by

  Matt Glassman

• ⛳📺 Why Are There So Many Weird Golf Games? by GameDay

• ⚾ Tony LaZerre: Joosta Like Babe-A-Da Ruth by

  Gary Cieradkowski

• 🎧 First episode of Risky Business podcast by

  Nate Silver
  and
  Maria Konnikova

• ❤️ SUPER MEGA ROUNDUP! Amazing Substackers tell YOU their Favorite Players! by

  Smayan Srikanth
  (Note: Smayan was nice enough to ask me to contribute an entry on my favorite player growing up.)

• 🎶📺 The Silent Takeover: Ted Gioia on AI's Threat To Music by Rick Beato

Video game of the week

⚾ World Series Baseball (Sega Saturn)

I remember being so jealous of the kid in my fifth-grade class who had a Sega Saturn, specifically because he could play the legendary World Series Baseball series. (Which somehow never held the Baseball Video Game Championship Belt despite being way ahead of its time on the Genesis.) In hindsight, it was good to not own a Saturn, since SEGA abandoned it after less than 3 years in North America.² But I still missed out on some great baseball games — most notably, World Series Baseball II and World Series Baseball ‘98 (which were very different — but equally good — games, as the video below will show).

Old YouTube game(s) of the week

Braves at Red Sox - June 4, 1999

Music to play us out

David Sanborn (RIP) - Run for Cover

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

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

2. I went through a version of the same thing with the late, great Dreamcast anyway.