It’s been another painful year to be a Washington Nationals fan. Fresh off a 3-0 series drubbing by the red-hot Atlanta Braves, they lost again today to the Philadelphia Phillies, leaving them with a 2-8 record in their last 10 games, and 19.5 games back of the Mets for the NL East lead.

I write, however, prompted not so much by the continued pains of the Nats (though each Corbin start does wound me deeper and deeper), but by the clearly evident skill of the Atlanta Braves - who hit thirteen home runs in their three game sweep.

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In the leadup to Opening Day, Fangraphs published a series of “Positional Power Rankings”, which sought to measure how each team’s roster stacks up against others in the league, at each position.

The final rankings were computed two ways:

1. Creating an ordinal list of teams, sorted by projected WAR at that position (ie. 1, 4, 12)
2. Creating a z-score for projected WAR at each position (ie. +2.35, -0.76)

While method one is handy to quickly check relative position in the rankings, it doesn’t do a very good job of capturing how significant the differences are… For example, Juan Soto isn’t just the best right fielder, he is projected to be a lot better than the second best right fielder. As such, visualizing this data with z-scores of projected WAR gives us a more intuitive sense of the spread of the data, in addition to the ordinal rankings.

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Today, I finally got around to migrating my website to use HTTPS and SSL - something that will go under-the-hood to nearly everyone, but is becoming more and more important to do as a foundational internet thing.

Here’s a blurb from Namecheap in response to the question “Do I need an SSL certificate?”

We’ll just say it: yes. Your website needs any SSL certificate If you’re asking for any personal information. But that’s not all there is to it. Search engines are cracking down on perceived ‘non-secure’ websites. Any websites without the SSL certificate will remain http while those with encryption will show https in users’ browsers. Chrome, Firefox and other browsers have began issuing warnings that non-https sites are insecure. Additionally, Google recently announced SSL is a ranking signal, so unless you have SSL your site will be harder to find, impacting on your traffic and revenue.

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Last month, the Senate passed a bill intended to end the jump forward / jump backward era of Daylight Savings Time, and align on a year-round implementation of the summer “daylight saved” hours.

Besides showing that at least something can pass the Senate with bipartisan support, this bill gives hope for everyone who struggles to adjust their sleep cycles that an end may finally be in sight!

It’s important to note that there is healthy debate over whether or not Permanent Daylight Savings time is better or worse than adopting Permanent Standard Time… Permanent Daylight means that the sun will rise and set an hour later in the day, which certain people prefer, while others would rather preserve morning light.

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For about the last month, there’s been a new addition to my daily routine. At some point in the afternoon, I find a comfy spot to sit, fire up Wordle, drop in a first guess, and then let my mind slowly run through vowels and consonants…

Delightfully low-tech and easy to play, yet occasionally fiendishly difficult, it’s easy to see how Wordle quickly became a phenomenon amongst the NYT Crossword and Trivia Night set.

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On December 16th, the City of Portland filed a press release that I wish more cities would publish - a quantitative recap of their shared mobility program!

Portland’s Public Data

Open Data Portal

The crown jewel of the data released is the city’s “Open Data Portal”, which contains an interactive map heatmap of trip activity, the ability to export summary trip metrics, and information about the most commonly utilized street segments. It’s very fun to play around with, and kudos to the City for publishing this data and making it easily exportable.

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Last week, T-Pain shared a fun graphic on Twitter (originally sourced from r/coolguides on Reddit) of how many streams are required to earn $1 across the biggest music streaming platforms.

The numbers are a little shocking - interesting enough that I thought it could be fun to call them out just a bit more!

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Last year, Cooper Kupp and Deebo Samuel finished as the #27 and #97 receivers in fantasy football. Through the first ten weeks of the NFL season, they’ve emerged as the clear #1 and #2 receivers.

What explains their terrific performances this season? A little bit of Matthew Stafford, and a little bit of Kyle Shanahan, for sure, but a lot of one thing in particular: yards after the catch (YAC). Kupp and Samuel (especially Samuel) have been absolute monsters this season with the ball in their hands, breaking tackles and running past safeties.

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In most ways, 2020 ended up being a pretty “quiet” year. Many workers stayed home to work virtually, international travel ground to a halt, and most Americans limited their social contact to a much smaller circle than normal to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

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For a longtime Nationals fan, watching the Playoffs this season has been a funny mix of nostalgia, jealousy, and happiness. Nostalgic for our 2019 run through the NL, jealous of the Braves and Dodgers for their success this season, and happy for longtime Nats Max Scherzer and Trea Turner, who have played such an integral role in Dodgers’ success after their blockbuster acquisition by trade.

Speaking of that deal… it was especially fun to be at the Dodgers vs Brewers Wild Card game and get to see Juan Soto attending in person, making the cross-country flight to be able to see his old teammates play a crucial elimination game!

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