We have added 5 new writers! Please join me in welcoming them to the team.
Ashley (Twitter: @wcoastfangirl)
Stacey Gotsulias (Twitter: @StaceyGotsulias)
Dalton Mack (Twitter:@dmack1291)
Dan McCloskey (Twitter: @_LeftField)
Bryan O’Connor (Twitter: @replevel)
You can read all about these fine folks on our About page.
Awesome! Welcome to everyone!
Adam, you deserve a special thanks for being so helpful to me in this recruiting process. In addition to Dan & Bryan, I’m sure that getting Stacey (the highest-profile person ever to be on our team) was due in large part to you getting her to contribute to your earlier post.
I’m happy to pass the credit for getting Bryan to Dan. He recommended him for the Hall of Clearly Above Replacement. I was like… “I know that blog!”. He’s such a great writer.
And I’m happy to give Graham credit for Stacey. He’s how I met her!
I’ll totally take credit for Dan. He actually runs the Adam Darowski Fan Club. He makes shirts. And a zine.
Darnit! I forgot to add “President of the Adam Darowski Fan Club” to my HHS Bio. Can we still do that, Andy? Can I hawk the t-shirts and promote the fanzine on here? Cause this thing has me really in the red right now.
Seriously…Adam’s wife can buy only so many shirts.
Phil a delphia FREEDOM. Here come the Phillies, if the Cards and the Bucs lose tonight they will be 5 behind the Cards and 2 behind the Bucs. Don’t doubt me JA! Also the Sox are beating Detroit and will take a 3 game lead, and Alex Rios is having a very nice year along with A J Pierzienskisky. Many heroes for the White Sox this year. Contrast that with Plump Fielder for Detroit that plays hard only if the occasion suits him.
Looking forward to the contributions of our new crew. Welcome aboard!
Cincy just beat the Bucs, and the Cards are getting beat by the Padres 8 – 3 in the eight inning. What a thrill a one game playoff with Philly and Atlanta would be! Philly just a few games above .500 and Atlanta winning 92 – 96 games. I also had the Chargers beating the Raiders tonight and I was getting a point.
Always great to hear some new voices and get some new perspectives. Welcome all.
I received a very nasty email regarding these new authors from an active user of this blog. He wanted to be an author too, but rather than stealing from our audience for new authors (as I did with Doug and birtelcom) I wanted to bring in outside people.
This nastygram cited that most of these authors have allegiances with the AL East, and I presume there’s a fear that this blog will pay even more attention to that division.
I’d like to assure everyone that these folks are all smart people who are heavily involved in baseball. They will not be writing just about their favorite teams. They were not brought on board to be champions of their favorite team. They were brought on board to be what they already are–excellent baseball writers, including some really great stats-based work.
Andy – Sorry to hear that someone sent you a nasty email. Personally, when I first saw the list I had mixed reactions. On the one hand, since we have a fairly strong community here, I would have preferred to see more names drawn from the existing community. I was glad to see Dan on the list because even though (I think) he’s fairly new here, he’s definitely made some strong contributions. And I have at least heard of Stacey Gotsulias.
Now, onto the other hand….when BR decided to pull the plug on their old blog, you’re the one who stepped in to rescue things and create this community. You’ve put a lot of time, money, and effort into this site and into keeping this community alive. And I give you a lot of credit for that. And that means that you’re the one who gets to make the decisions. You’ve obviously shown fine judgement with your prior choices of writers and I have no doubt that you have made wise choices again. And as you mentioned, you have big plans for this blog so it makes sense to pick some people who may already have a following via their existing work. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what the new people have to contribute!
Ed, I think your mixed reactions are very understandable. let me explain myself a little further.
1. Birtelcom & Doug have worked out wonderfully as authors. We all knew beforehand it would. They are very bright, friendly, & prolific. They are cast in the same mold as John Autin, which is meant as high praise. They have produced wonderful stuff for this blog. BUT–as I explained to a few people–I robbed Peter to pay Paul. I took two guys who were already contributing great content to this site and shifted them from readers to authors. It didn’t actually add anything new to the blog, and certainly didn’t draw in a larger audience.
2. For that reason, I wanted to go outside our usual circle. I made these decisions very carefully. Stacey, Dan, and Bryan all contributed to Adam’s first HHS post (the other contributors were of course Adam himself, as well as Graham and myself.) I’ve had interplay with Stacey and Dan on Twitter for a long time and already know them to be high-quality people with a lot of good stuff to say. Bryan was new to me but you need spend only about 5 minutes looking at his blog to see that he’s as core a person as we could possibly have at HHS. Ashley I someone I contacted directly and asked to join after reading some of her stuff. She’s done some great research and has a great voice.
3. I think it’s important to add these new people because it’s been 5.5 years for this blog format (considering it as a continuation of the B-R blog.) We’ve reached the point of massaging the same stuff over and over again–at least *I* have. The new folks we’ve added (Doug, birtelcom, Doug, & Adam) have all met my expectations and been wonderful, but they are also fairly “core” guys, with the exception of Graham who is actually a professional writer and somewhat overqualified! In order to keep HHS evolving, we need new voices. Keep in mind, these folks are going to write about baseball and baseball stats. The blog isn’t going in a new direction–just gaining new perspectives.
{TLDR version: ‘Haters gonna hate’}
All of the writers you chose that I know were excellent choices and I look forward to reading their contributions.
Of course, I can’t help but be somewhat disappointed that you didn’t choose to add me, but I also recognize you went for people with plenty of public experience writing about baseball who will bring great things to this blog.
Job well done.
I for one, welcome our new insect robot sabermetric overlords.
no standard html codes in comments?
Personally Andy, it is beyond me how anyone could send a nastygram over this type of issue. This is supposed to be a fun site by and for fans of the game we all love. I sincerely hope that this petty person takes a hike.
As for the new authors — welcome aboard! And kudos to Andy for bringing on some writers who are women.
This guy just wrote me another nastygram. I am sorely tempted to post his emails here (anonymously, I wouldn’t name him)…should I do it?
Honestly, I wouldn’t. Don’t let it bug you.
To get back at him, though, I’m going to write 172 articles about Jody Reed.
I don’t know, this site is wonderfully free of the vitriol and bile found on many a web forum, it might be best to let those emails remain unseen. That these nastygrams have been sent at all is disappointing enough.
Good point. I’ll just say this: in his second nastygram, he expressed anger that I didn’t “promote from within” to reward those people who have helped me build this site. He cited Doug & birtelcom and didn’t understand why I didn’t do it again (even though I provided the same explanation that I gave to Ed above.)
These remarks are incredibly stupid and rude, and the irony is that I did actually promote, mainly, people who have contributed already to HHS.
Maybe there should just be a Vitriol & Bile tab between Chat and Glossary.
Oh, no vitriol at all please. Someone who we both know (a female photographer) has just gone through dealing with extreme vitriol inside her camera club, and it really stinks. While I am at best a negligible contributor to this site, I am amazed by the collegiality of all involved…keep it that way!
Sad to here about this, especially that this came from someone commenting among us. Well, hopefully he’s not among us now, but still… the thought of nastygrams and vitriol on this site disgusts and worries me all at once. This is the last sports site of significance without commenters spewing nasty comments back at the author(s) – sadly, even Joe Posnanski’s once-wonderful community has fallen victim to the nastygrammers (and even worse, hackers – always be wary of the hackers).
As a Red Sox fan, I also hate how people complain about how BosWash-centric sports reporting supposedly is… sometimes it’s true, but sometimes it’s not. ESPN is supposedly the #1 offender, when they’re airing sports late at night to accommodate the West Coast (at the East Coast viewer’s expense) and at times openly rooting for LA teams (especially the Lakers) as well as LeBron and the Miami Heat.
Personally, I don’t care how extensive these writers’ ties to the site are, as long as they keep us on the stat-centered direction started over at the B-R blog. Granted, I wouldn’t want people who were centric to one team or division either, but I also trust that you’ll pick writers who aren’t going to do that.
Another Nasty Comment:
How the hell am I going to get any work done with 5 new contributors. I will be reading HHS all day – not just w/ my coffee and over lunch and during my afternoon break.
Looking fwd to the new columns – just in time for the Race to October.
Welcome on board everyone!
Welcome aboard, everybody. I’m a longtime baseball fan, but I am also a big fan of baseball stadiums, especially the Minor League variety. Looking forward for a new perspective on baseball, stats and history.
Andy, don’t worry about showing us those mails. One of the things I like when I first start reading de ol’ B-R blog, was the respect, politness and the well spoken/writenn contribuitons everybody got there(contrary to the MLB forums where trolls are all over the place).
In other matters, my sincere condolences from south of the border, to all the families whose heart was broken eleven years ago today. I hope we can find peace for all the corners of the world.
Welcome, new authors! Luis, I went to one of the new authors’ blogs(Bryan O’Connor’s) and the first article I read is a rollicking history of all the stadiums he’s been to in his life. Funny ride of an article, if you’ve got a few spare minutes:
http://replacementlevel.wordpress.com/
Thanks for the link, Bstar. It was fresh read. I liked his sense of humor about how he missed some of the games.
I´ve been planning with my wife for a couple of years (actually, I´m still trying to convince her) to take one of those bus trips that takes you to a different stadium each day.
I´ve been to only 5 Major League stadiums, but also, a bunch of minor leaguers. A great and different experience with each one.
Welcome to the new cadre of writers, pontificators, number-crunchers, mudslingers, and other ne’er-do-wells.
Now get to work, we’ve got numbers to be crunched, arguments that urgently need to be had, and excuses needed for sitting in front of the computer typing more dumb stuff.
Thanks for the welcome, everyone.
You need to back that statement up with some numbers Stacey.
🙂
An outstanding share! I have just forwarded this onto a friend who has been conducting a little homework on this.
And he actually ordered me breakfast simply because I discovered it for him…
lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!!
But yeah, thanks for spending time to discuss this issue here on your
blog.