FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, April 10, 2022 [1. Watch Out Next Year For The Young Detroit Pistons]( [Cade Cunningham]( The Detroit Pistons last made the NBA playoffs in 2019, capping Dwane Casey’s first year as head coach. In the years since, the Pistons immersed themselves in another rebuild: They traded that season’s leading scorer (Blake Griffin) and the franchise’s second-leading rebounder (Andre Drummond). [Read more]( [2. 3 Starting Pitchers Poised For A Breakout]( [MLB-22-PITCHERS-4×3]( Springtime in baseball is rife with expectation for pitchers. It’s a new year, and over the offseason, players have been working on their craft, whether that be tweaking their pitches, adjusting their mechanics or getting their minds right. Spring training allows players to practice those changes in a simulated setting, but it’s not until a ways into the regular season that we truly know what they have. [Read more]( [3. Emmanuel Macron Could Lose France’s Presidential Election]( [Emmanuel Macron]( Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. [Read more]( [4. The Culture Wars Couldn’t Stop Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation]( [Senate Holds Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings For Ketanji Brown Jackson]( Everything’s part of the culture wars now, including Supreme Court confirmations. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation process ended on Thursday when the Senate voted 53-47 to confirm her to the court, and it was quick — it took just six weeks to move from nomination to confirmation — and partisan. Many Republicans spent Jackson’s nomination hearings accusing her of giving light sentences to child pornographers (she didn’t), supporting teaching critical race theory in secondary school (no evidence for that either) and trying to let dangerous criminals out of prison (nope). [Read more]( [5. The Bucks Looked Different Without Brook Lopez. Now That He’s Back, Can Milwaukee Repeat?]( [Bucks 76ers Basketball]( For much of this season, the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks have not seemed like the same Milwaukee Bucks team we had come to know over the past few seasons. Milwaukee won more than 71 percent of its regular-season games and led the league in wins (by a mile) during the first three years of the Mike Budenholzer era, but at the All-Star break of this season, the Bucks were just 36-24, good for the fifth-best record in the Eastern Conference. [Read more]( [6. The Stats Led Our Brackets Astray This March Madness. That Doesn’t Happen Often.]( [MM_2022_BRACKETS-4×3]( Since Ken Pomeroy began releasing his team ratings in 2004, his site has become the go-to source for advanced metrics in men’s college basketball. It has helped win bracket pools for countless people — myself included — and firmly established the value of efficiency and tempo-free statistics in the minds of pundits and coaches alike. Sometimes the ratings from Pomeroy and his ilk have been so useful that it’s easy to forget why March has a reputation for madness. [Read more]( [7. If Tiger Woods Tees Off At The Masters, He’ll Be Playing To Win]( [Tiger Woods]( It really does look like it’s about to happen. Thirteen-and-a-half months after a car crash that Tiger Woods said could have resulted in the amputation of his lower right leg, the greatest golfer of his time looks poised to return to competitive play at the tournament with which he has become almost synonymous: the Masters. In a sport packed with young stars, the veteran is the week’s biggest story. [Read more]( [8. Does Alaska’s Special Election Create An Opening For Sarah Palin’s Comeback?]( [Sarah Palin]( On Friday, Sarah Palin returned from the political wilderness by announcing a bid for the U.S. House of Representatives, nearly 14 years since the then-governor of Alaska entered the national spotlight as the Republican vice presidential nominee. [Read more]( [9. How Our MLB Forecast Is Changing For 2022]( [MLB-MODEL-PREVIEW-4×3]( After an extra-long offseason of doubt and acrimony, baseball is finally back. Thursday’s slightly belated opening day will feature 18 teams in action — including many of the ones we think will be the most interesting to watch throughout the year. To help you prepare for the new season, we have booted up our MLB prediction model once again — with a few twists this time around. Some are due to new format changes in the sport, while others involve our own improvements to the forecast. Read on to find out what’s new in the model and what it says about the favorites in the season to come. [Read more]( [10. The Raptors Don’t Need Bigs To Pound The Ball Inside]( [Cleveland Cavaliers v Toronto Raptors]( On March 26, the Toronto Raptors began a game against the Indiana Pacers by pounding the ball in the post. But they weren’t feeding a big man — though they roster two centers, both come off the bench when the team is at full strength. Instead, they were playing their own version of small ball: The ostensible small forward OG Anunoby used four possessions in the post, guarded by various Pacers, and the Raptors scored 8 points as a direct result. Per Second Spectrum, it was tied for the most points a non-center has created in the post in any first quarter this season. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: Americans Think The War On Drugs Failed. 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