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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, July 08, 2010
I'd like to know what you think of BP just past the midpoint of 2010. I'd like to know what you like, what you don't like, what you would like to see more of, what you would like to see less of. I can't promise I'll be able to respond to each comment but I will read them all. What I can promise is that I and the rest of us here will take your feedback into great consideration as we continue to strive to make BP the type of site that baseball fans feel they absolutely must visit every day.
BP staff member Joe Sheehan
That, more or less, is why forums are basically a non-starter. All cost, no revenue.
TangoTiger
Fangraphs has forums, and they don't charge their readers. Primer has forums, and they don't charge their readers. You've got to have a better reason for not having a forum considering that you are already charging readers.
BP staff member Joe Sheehan
How about this?
I've done sports content as a business for 15 years. By any standard I'm one of a small number of people to do it successfully outside the mainstream, I've played most of the roles one can play and holy god I'm sick of listening to you act as if you've had 1% of the success the people you criticize have had. How about you grant that I might know what I'm talking about, given that sports content has been my career, without me having to make a business case to someone with no standing to ask for one?
Fangraphs, as far as I can tell, is financed by a rich grandpa. Primer/BTF/Newsstand/Brand of the Day isn't a business in any real sense of the word, it's r.s.b ported to the Web and stripped of its spark. That you would make these comparisons shows just how little you understand of Prospectus, how little you've ever understood.
Stick to being an academic, Thomas. Stick to your sycophant-laden fora and your above-it-all mien. Stop jumping in here and cheap-shotting a business that you've never comprehended on your best day.
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And yeah, I first heard of this place in 2001 and came over here from the Neyer board around 2002. It sometime after I graduated from college (2001) and before the Petco thread (Jan 2003).
I remember you outing yourself as a Jew a while back and at that moment I made the connection between "Srul Itza" and "Yisrael Yitzhak."
I have a Hebrew name but I never use it. I think it's Yehuda, although that is not the direct translation of my English name. (Is that common?)
On a similar note, today after three beer and about 30 minutes of Uruguay/Germany I decided to change my name to Deigo.
I've actually explained it 2 or 3 times before now, in other threads where we have discussed our screen names.
Which reminds me -- SoSH U at work -- what was your Neyer Board moniker.
As in my case, not uncommon. I knew guys whose Hebrew names were things like Shlomo or Moishe, and their parents wanted something more anglicized, so it became Steven or Mark. My father's Hebrew name was Avram, but his American name was Arthur.
Chatter must be fun if you follow a team that has any appreciable critical mass of fans, the more so if two are playing. I used to post in Rangers-Royals game chatters once in a while and it was like wandering into an abandoned coal mine.
Glad I stayed home, then :)
Man, that is being snake bit.
I don't remember where in Oz you are but I'll be in Sydney in late Aug, Perth in early Dec and an outside chance of Hobart in mid-Jan.
I was at my first (and only) adult job. I remember following some of the Sept. 11 coverage via Primer because it, unlike the rest of the Internets, could load. I remember the Mabry trade... monitoring the Boston Red Sox team bus as a canary in the coal mine for the strike.
Some of the great Yankees-Red Sox playoff games. Game Chatters. The birth of "It's a Trap!"
But since then, I've gone gray, gotten married, had a kid (who's a big baseball fan now) and seen BBTF blocked at work, imposing a sort of hiatus.
It's nice though to have a place to come in and poke around in and feel like you've never really left.
I've only ever been to one of those cities bit for some reason have visited half of America!!
I live near Brisbane in Towooomba.
All Blacks did well last night - first step towards the World Cup.
Can I just add that one chatter per night for all the games would be awesome - we did it briefly during the 2005 pennant race in September and it was awesome.
(Awesome twice in one sentence - congrats Phil Coorey you illiterate fool)
Ha, guess its really been a while since I've looked at that.
Hell, the URL I put in my website is still and active blog - its just on its third new URL.
I posted for most of the first year as "ESPNerik", and had a blog under that name. When my employer got excited about social media and I had to burrow a bit further underground, I was really worried that my identity had already been established, and I didn't think it was transferable.
It turns out it was this game. My brother and I kept score the whole way.
I'm glad I took my wife out to see a movie tonight. Movie sucked, the date was nice, and I'm glad I missed this one. Checked the score and see 15-1, I'm expecting to see 5-6 runs by Kazmir and then multiple bullpen fails. Not the case, Kazmir stays in to allow 13 runs.
That is punishment. Scioscia didn't feel like wasting his bullpen so he lets Kazmir take the beating. This tells me he doesn't particularly care about getting Kazmir right anymore. He's given up, and I would be surprised to see Kazmir in the rotation after the ASB. Not sure if Bell or O'Sullivan will get the first crack.
Now what to do about Kazmir:
1. Bullpen?
2. Can he be sent to the minors? As a veteran I'm sure he could refuse the assignment, and he'd probably have to go through waivers. Nobody would claim him obviously.
3. Just release him.
I've been here since 2003. I used to write regularly for another site, doing what amounted to Angel columns and occasional blogging. Szym remembered my name from r.s.bb days, and asked me over to, presumably, write Angel columns and occasional blogging. Seven years later, there's no Angel blog, and I haven't written anything in years. Every once in a while I'll ask about the blog, but... *shrug* If it ever comes around, I'd do it.
I do miss the chatters, which were just great. My favorite one was the chatter for this epic game. It was a blast to have Brewer fans crawl into the chatter at their ungodly hour, wondering what the hell was happening.
This has been a great thread, nothing like what I was expecting to see. I haven't been around for awhile, took a new job and can't really do this at work anymore, but this made me realize that I miss it.
I started out on Sean Forman's "Outside the Box" blog which stemmed off baseball-reference back around 2000 or so. Primer launched soon after that.
After reading this and getting caught up I'll try to poke in more often. Looking forward to catching up with a lot of you at the SABR convention.
I do feel a little like this whole sabermetrics thing has passed me by a bit. McCoy had a post on the first page I think, about how 7 or 8 years ago you could do most of what was cutting edge on a spreadsheet, but he saw where it was going turning into real science, and how he decided not to quit his day job.
I kind of feel the same way. Part of why I don't post much anymore is because I've basically been out of it for so long, I don't have anything useful to say anymore :-) Real life got in the way I guess, and post-2005 sabermetrics left me in the dust, because I just don't have the time to read it, let alone practice it anymore. Kinda depressing I suppose.
I remember getting very pissed with Joe and SJ in a sports bar in DC during (2003?) the playoffs trying to get them to put the Yankees-Twins playoff game on a TV when all that was on was college football.
Srul,
I didn't post there as frequently as some, and I think I had a couple names when I was easing into the process. The handle I settled on and posted under most frequently was Tony Muser's Mom, in honor of Rob's undying love for the Royals' skipper.
Anyway - great thread in the end - this place is special in a lot of ways and I always show it off to anyone who has a slight interest in the game.
There is nothing like a thread here when a huge story breaks - pre sterids, post steroids, #### steroids. When a huge story breaks - THIS IS THE PLACE TO BE.
One of the most memorable Brewers games in my lifetime (I was born after 1982, so, yeah). Damn Guerrero. In his next start, Sheets struck out the side against the Astros on nine pitches in the 3rd inning. What an amazing year for him.
Used to get to 600-700 posts easily - that was insane
It's easy to fall into this attitude, but the fact is that old-fashioned sabermetrics is often still extremely valuable. The fellows peddling new ideas frequently don't tell us the whole story behind their metric, precisely because they are planning on quitting the day job. Thus, they write about what they are interested in, which is not necessarily what fans of a particular team are interested in.
These newer ideas are often tiny incremental advances. Old-fashioned sabermetrics still works, and doesn't leave a whole lot out.
The reality is that most of us have got older, have got more responsibilities, and consequently got less time. It's not that we've been passed by, but that we don't have time or inclination to argue that new stuff isn't necessarily significantly better stuff.
It isn't the perfect way, it's an imperfect way. I was very reluctant in moving some people to the ignore list, because they often have interesting things to say when they haven't fallen into a sterile political argument. Just yesterday I had to take two people off ignore, because I thought they might have said something interesting. (One had, and one hadn't.)
Baseball Politics Factory has evolved over a long time, and I haven't always been as hostile to it as I am now. The descent into shabby nastiness of BBPF is sophomoric and pointless, and deserving of all the scorn and censure decent people heap upon it. There is an appropriate venue provided here for such shenanigans.
No shenanigans, no shutdowns. Seems simple to me.
A few comments...
This site is definitely not a real business. You can't run a real business in a part-time manner. Although my day job once afforded me a great deal of free time, my current position (IT Coordinator with an 8-4 day schedule) just doesn't allow me to spend as much time as I'd like operating a real business. If this were a real business, I'd be driving a much better car and some of the charm would be lost. :)
Many users are noted as joining in 2004 although they were regular members of the site before then. During the transition from Greymatter to Expression Engine in 2004, I wasn't able to link all the user accounts to previous handles.
Although my server metrics show much faster page loads for the main pages because of a change in the caching system, the individual discussion pages are still loading much slower than I want. I'll be moving to a new database server in the next month or so, which should help. I'll also be doubling the amount of memory on the web server next week as well. Some changes to the database structure and page design should also improve performance. These changes should greatly improve the site's reliability (and greatly reduce database outages) as the database server is now five years old.
Part of the updates/redesign I'm working on should improve things. I've learned a lot in the last six years--about web design, usability, managing an online community, and programming--so I fully expect the changes will be well received by most. I have a large list of excellent suggestions that I plan on incorporating. Of course, time and money, as always, will be the biggest limiting factors. :)
I am very thankful for all the positive comments. Knowing the site means so much to so many warms my heart.
I migrated from the Neyer boards, where my two most notable* contributions were (a) telling people the Twins - targeted for contraction - would compete soon because the money they weren't spending on major-league salary appeared to have been spent on amateur scouting and player development; and (b) taking Neyer to task for quoting a Red Sox staffer out of context, making it seem like Valentin's injury was being blamed on not having a new stadium. I was lurking around here in 2001-02, but I don't know when I started posting.
If you think this thread is a trip down memory lane, go to web.archive.org and search on www.baseballprimer.com. You can get the BPro cease-and-desist thread ("Unexpected Reader Mail"), among others.
Since I started posting at Primer, I'm still in the same job (though promoted), in the same house, with the same wife and the same number of kids. I don't think anyone had me pegged as "stable".
* Notable, not valuable.
I also don't think any of you guys should have Gaelan on ignore.
Then someone dissed the Yankees, and that was the last straw. I jumped into the tarpit and haven't been able to unstick myself ever since. I guess you might call it The Curse of Furtado.
1890's?
It's a private company, so you can rest in peace. It's one of those stimulus jobs that's getting funded by a surtax on talk radio shows, but his paycheck's being written by a division of one of Al Sharpton's spinoff corporations.
In this vein, this might be a good time to make an invitation: I've been posting here for years, but for many posters I have no idea why they chose their handle, or what it means. So if your handle is something other than your real name, maybe you can post a brief blurb explaining it.
My handle combines my interest in history (King John, according to one tradition, died from a surfeit of peaches) and my interest in deadball baseball (Peaches Graham was an on-and-off player for Cleveland, Chicago and Boston in the 'aughts). Furthermore, I played in a 1908 Replay baseball league some years ago, and Peaches Graham was one of my catchers. My team got off to a hot start, but slumped towards the end of the season. It came down to a one-game playoff, and I was trailing in the 9th with runners in scoring position and Graham at the plate. Unfortunately, he grounded out and kept me out of the playoffs. So my team really did die from a surfeit of Peaches Graham.
I've considered changing my handle from time to time, but have never come up with as apropos a moniker. I keep my real initials after my handle so folks can keep track of my identity when I do change. A handful of folks might even remember me from old Primer, before my current handle.
Well, my real name is 'Paul'. 'fra paolo' was a nickname bestowed on me by friends/work colleagues because I like renaissance art and liturgical music, based on that of my favourite painter, Fra Angelico.
"most"?
I like the phrase Dag nabbit. Then I found out Dag (with a little circle-thingee on top of it) is an actual first name in Sweden (though it's pronounced more like Doug) - and figured, well, that's in then - Dag Nabbit.
They've never said a word about it. Obviously, I recuse myself from certain FOX-related discussions, but they've never asked me to stop posting or adopt a nom-de-Primer or anything. That wasn't the case for a previous employer.
You should visit George Forman's house then.
well, i like baseball
and i am a grrrrl
and bat girl was already taken
seemed kind of simple and unclever but hey, i know i am not near as good at penis jokes as people who were born with em
luuuuuvvvv,
dick hedd-johnson
When I first visited, I didn't even know it was a discussion site, I just read the articles like Voros Baseball Cynic and Werr's Digging. I think after a week of reading everything that I could find, I finally clicked on the Clutch Hits link and found the linked articles and discussion. I had previously figured that a sabr savvy site wouldn't have anything interesting in a clutch hits area. I remember one piece having less than 100 comments, and people were wondering if it was the most the site had seen.
Anyway, I've been married the whole time, changed jobs 3 times, bought a house, and two dogs in that timeframe. And the only time that I haven't checked here daily was when I was on vacation, and since I've had a blackberry, every day.
I don't comment that much, but this is a great place to visit. Thank you, Jim.
That's actually pretty cool of them.
EDIT: Apparently I don't know my own handle.
And Chipper just took one ugly swing. He looks very stiff up there.
TBS showed the decline of the percentage of swings and misses of Santana pitches. Great graphic. I think there are numbers like that that the typical fan can understand and appreciate.
And a swing and pause by Gonzalez on a ball that bounced to the wall. What a putz
So if I am annoying anyone just say so.
But I am making this the Uber Chatter
Ditto.
I think the first of the BTF iterations I came across was directly from the comments at baseball-reference. I used to post frequently as bamadan at baseballboards before it became overly controlling and the new Braves moderator was Bill Shanks. My username is my initials but think I posted a few Admiral Ackbar jokes back in the day. I've been here since long before registration, read threads nearly daily, but still have less than a thousand posts.
69.
The # of UCCF's posts has dropped from about 15000 to about 7000. I guess some threads must have been lost to the ether.
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