Astros Weekend Links

In our first Spring Training edition of weekend links we find articles discussing Jon Singleton, defensive shifts, strength of schedule, and the passing of Dr. Frank Jobe.

Oh, I almost forgot. Here’s another interesting link for Astros fans.

MLB.com

"Hamilton usually waits until he’s contacted to get involved in somebody’s life, but he’d be happy to reach out if Singleton or the Astros ask him to.“I’d love to,” he said, “but I don’t get in people’s business on those things unless it’s prompted.”"

Fangraphs

"I pulled all the schedules off of MLB.com and put them into a spreadsheet. I gathered all the team-by-team projected WARs, as of the moment, and normalized them so that the sum came out to 1,000. For each team, I subsequently calculated the projected average 2014 WAR of their opponents. Here are the results."

Ultimate Astros

"Jobe worked under Kerlan. So then I go out to L.A. and they look at it, they do the testing, they decide to try the Tommy John surgery again … it was within weeks they wanted to do the surgery. I was a free agent."

The Crawfish Boxes

"The Astros had the fifth highest number of major defensive shifts. The Astros may have an above average overall pitching BABIP, but the shift appears to be producing a beneficial effect, slicing five points of BABIP compared to situations when the shift is not used."

Jon Singleton (Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports)