📝 The Week That Was (September 30-October 4, 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!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.

• ⚾ Baseball Bytes: Wild Card Wrap-up, Division Series Duels - After the first round of the 2024 MLB postseason concluded, I reset the odds and dove into the big takeaways going forward.

  

• 🏁 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Odds: Byron and Blaney Up, Reddick and Larson Down - This week’s NASCAR playoff column looked at the biggest changes in the odds since last week — and which drivers are facing the highest leverage this weekend at Talladega.

• 🏈 Football Bytes: Is Jayden Daniels Putting Together the Best Modern Rookie QB Season? - Jayden Daniels’ rookie year is off to one helluva start — but is it better than C.J. Stroud last year (or any other rookie QB since 1970)?

• 🏀 How Dikembe Mutombo helped Allen Iverson and Sixers climb the mountain in 2001 - After the unfortunate news that Mutombo died this week, I paid tribute to the great big man by looking at his role on the 2001 Philadelphia 76ers — when his defensive presence helped Allen Iverson make his lone trip to the NBA Finals.

• ⚾ Baseball Bytes: We Couldn’t Have Done It Without You Guys - My baseball column wrapped up the regular season by looking at the players whose performance over expectations helped power their teams to the playoffs.

• 🏒 2024-25 NHL Team Elo Power Rankings - With the NHL calendar technically dropping the puck on Friday from Czechia, I fired up the ol’ Elo predictor model for the new season.

• ⚾ What to Watch For as the 2024 MLB Playoffs Get Underway - Before the postseason began, I introduced my Playoff Predictor and went through the most interesting (to me, at least) items that jumped off the page.

Some interesting things I read/watched this week

At the request of reader Ori, I’m going to be organizing these by sport from now on, with miscellaneous items at the bottom.

• 🏈 Data vs. Film: Finding the Right Balance in NFL Analysis by

  Troy Chapman

• 🏈 When Does Quarterback Performance Get Real? by

  Conor McQuiston

• 🏈 Every Game. Every Team. 2000 Words. by

  Mike Tanier

• 🏈 Boomer Esiason's Remarkable 1997 Retirement Tour by

  Robbie Marriage

• 🏀 RIP, Dikembe Mutombo by

  Justin Kubatko

• 🏀 NBA hard-copy magazine enthusiasts … rejoice! by

  Marc Stein

• 🏀 Who Let The Hogs Out? by

  Jordan Ennis
  and
  Nic Thomas

• 🏀 Is The WNBA Headed Toward A Lockout? by

  Joe Pompliano

• 🏀 The History of the “Big Ball” Dance by

  Nam Tran

• ⚾ Was Francisco Lindor Nervous? by

  Sam Miller

• ⚾ Why Do Most Wild Card Series End in Sweeps? by

  Lewie Pollis

• ⚾ Anything Can Happen in October Baseball by

  Sean Beney

• ⚾ How Playoff Baseball Is Different by

  Lee Judge

• ⚾ The 10 Most Interesting MLB Teams of the 1990's by Game Winning RBI

• ⚾ Baseball Celebrations will never again be subtle by

  Mark Kolier

• ⚾ FRANK ROBINSON / The Expos were slated to be scrapped & wouldn't have taken the field in '02 if Bud Selig had his druthers. He tapped a HOFer to manage the Expos for the zombie season by

  Gare Joyce

• 🏒 The Greatest Vezina Snub in NHL History by

  GabArr

• 🏁 Michael Jordan is Suing NASCAR // And dare I say, he might just win by

  Michael Hendricks

• 🏁 Modeling NASCAR by

  Noah Lombardozzi

• 🎰 A Casino in our Pockets (1980s) // How legalized gambling is swallowing sports by

  Michael Weinreb

• 🎵 Needles in Haystacks: The Lostwave Story by

  Chris Dalla Riva

• ⚓ The 'Biggest Man-Made Disaster' Ever? // The longshoremen strike and the democracy of automation by

  kyla scanlon

• 👀 Statistical Evidence Suggests That Shit Be Less Crazy by

  Jeff Maurer

• 🎥 Does 'Avatar' Have No Cultural Footprint? A Statistical Analysis by

  Daniel Parris

Old YouTube game of the week

Dale Earnhardt's final NASCAR win | Talladega Superspeedway

Music to play us out

Joe Cocker - Feelin' Alright

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

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