Blake Murphy Sports Writing

Title: Rejected FanGraphs Spin-Offs
Date: September 5, 2013
Original Source: Notgraphs
Synopsis: With Fangraphs having spawned Beergraphs, I looked at some rejected spin-off ideas.

A few months back, Rotographs editor and Fangraphs writer Eno Sarris createdBeergraphs, a site dedicated to the analytics of beer. It’s a fantastic site, focusing on beer stories (“Barely Beer”) and the analysis of user beer ratings, trends, ingredients and more (“Beergraphs”).

The site uses some of the Fangraphs intelligence and means of evaluating baseball players to evaluate and rate beers. If you consider the connection that exists between beer and baseball – whether that be drinking at the park or drinking away your sorrows – it’s a logical spin-off.

What many people don’t know, though, is that this wasn’t the first spin-off idea that was tossed out there. For every “Fraser” there are some “Joey”s. Thanks to some internal emails the powers that be thought were destroyed, I was able to find out what these rejected spin-offs were.

Snackgraphs
Synopsis: Analyzing the sales volume of ballpark snacks.

Sample graph:

Reason rejected: 100 percent of husbands and wives vetoed the idea for a “Super Size Me” style feature on eating nothing but Boomsticks for a month.

SmirnoffIcegraphs
Synopsis: Same as Beergraphs, but dedicated entirely to Smirnoff Ice.

Sample graph:

Reason rejected: Matt Hunter was the only one willing to drink nothing but Smirnoff Ice.

Trollgraphs
Synopsis: Analyzing the frequency and vitriol of troll commenters and tweeters.

Sample graph:

Reason rejected: Don’t feed the trolls.

Gifgraphs
Synopsis: Analyzing the length, volume and quality of GIF-makers.

Sample graph:

Reason rejected: Too much sploosh for Chris Sale slider GIFs.

PitchingProspectgraphs
Synopsis: Analyzing pitching prospects.

Sample graph:

Reason rejected: There’s No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect

Eno’s
Synopsis: When he captured two notorious badguys back in Hazzard County, bumpkin deputy Enos was invited to join a Special Branch of the Los Angeles Police. When he found two predictive formulas from his San Fran home, editor Eno was invited to join a special branch of SABR.

Sample graph:

Reason rejected: Well, it sure didn’t work for Dukes of Hazzard.

Graftgraphs
Synopsis: Measuring the success rate of hair-grafts and the incidences of graft-versus-host.

Sample graft:

Reason rejected: I mean, all you need to do is have the hairplugs removed.

Beardgraphs
Synopsis: Measuring facial hair growth rate among baseball players and writers.

Sample graph:

Reason rejected: I have no idea. This should be a thing.

Fangraphsgraphs
Synopsis: Analyzing the writers and stories found on Fangraphs.

Sample graph:

Reason rejected: Too meta.

Graphgraphs
Synopsis: Analyzing the use and efficacy of different types of graphs on the internet.

Sample graph:

Reason rejected: Too nerdy, even for us.