📝 The Week That Was (May 20-24, 2024)

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

May 25, 2024

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.

⚾ The Mets Are Stuck in Baseball Hell (Again) - The Mets are old, expensive and mediocre this year. What else is new?
🏀 How the 2024 conference finalists mirror past NBA champions ($) - Using a similarity score method that covered metrics ranging from winning percentage to net rating and the four factors, I looked for the past champs who most resembled this year’s conference finalists.
🏀 Nobody Has the Knicks’ Number Like the Pacers - After the Indiana Pacers ended the New York Knicks’ once-promising season in Game 7 of the East semis, I wrote about the long and varied history of Indy knocking N.Y. out of the playoffs.
⚾ Kyle Hendricks’ Brutal Decline Is the Absolute End of the 2016 Cubs - With this week’s news that Hendricks was being demoted out of the Cubs’ rotation, I looked at the legacy of the 2016 World Champions — and their final remaining member.
🏒 Would Connor McDavid vs. the Rangers Guarantee Big Interest in the Stanley Cup? - What really predicts how much attention a Stanley Cup Finals matchup draws? Star power, big markets… or just great teams?
🏀 Ranking the top 12 NBA players through two rounds of playoffs ($) - Just as I did after Round 1 of the playoffs, I calculated the top players of the first two rounds using a combination of multiple value metrics.
⚾ The Marlins, the Mets and Baseball’s Top Revolving-Door Teams - I looked at which MLB franchises have featured stars who did their best work with other teams.