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Stepping in from the MLBTR Bullpen today to helm the site is Mike Glab.  If you find rumors and don’t see them on the site, feel free to drop him a line at bigmikeglab@hotmail.com.

I’m proud to announce two more additions to the MLBTR Bullpen.  At this point I will probably not add anyone else.  However I am keeping all the applications on file and regret not being able to act on many excellent ones.  Thanks for all the interest in helping out.

Cork Gaines is the editor and lead writer for Rays Index. He is a Tampa native and University of Iowa graduate that is currently lost in New York City.  Despite this, he still maintains his status as a Tampa Bay Buccaneers season ticket holder and often makes trips back to the Bay Area just because he has an urge for a grouper sandwich from Hurricane and to see people wearing jorts. In addition to Rays Index, Cork wrote a chapter in the "The Hardball Times 2007 Season Preview". Outside of baseball writings, Cork has authored several scientific publications about whales and DNA that are written in a language even he does not understand.  Cork can be reached at corkgaines@gmail.com.

Matt Birt is currently a high school English teacher in Ohio, hoping to head to graduate school in the fall to pursue his doctorate in English Literature.  This is Matt’s first sports writing gig, though he has held a post at a small-town newspaper covering school board meetings and potluck dinners, and he can often be found about town in various restaurants and coffee shops writing and rewriting his fantasy baseball line-up (a compulsion only the fantasy baseball gods can fully understand).  His most bizarre baseball memory involves a Cincinnati Reds winter basketball barnstorming team, his best friend’s house, and Barry Larkin in bib overalls staging a wrestling battle royale with his two brothers, Stephen and Byron.  Matt can be reached at mattbirt.mlbtr@gmail.com.

Today I did a half hour chat at The Happy Recap, a Mets forum.  You can read the transcript here.

Yesterday was a thrill for me – the man himself, Peter Gammons, mentioned MLBTR in his blog.  He mentioned MLBTradeRumors.com under "sites that I never miss" and added "I do not want any psychologist to know how many times a day I go to ESPN.com, Baseball Musings or MLBTradeRumors.com to check updates."  It’s a huge honor that the king of baseball hot stove frequents this blog.  Thanks Peter.

Here is a full list of Gammons’ favorite blogs; get bookmarking!

Buster Olney’s blog
Baseball Musings
Baseball Prospectus
MLB Trade Rumors
The Hardball Times
Baseball America
Boston Sports Media Watch
Baseball Think Factory
The Baseball Analysts
Squawking Baseball
Sabernomics
Beyond the Box Score
Dan Agonistes
Minor League Ball
Deadspin
U.S.S. Mariner
Fire Brand of the American League
Ducksnorts
Athletics Nation
Viva El Birdos
Lone Star Ball
River Ave. Blues
MetsBlog
FishStripes
Dodger Thoughts
Bronx Banter
LoHud Yankees Blog
Reds Reporter
Bleed Cubbie Blue
Brew Crew Ball
Baseball’s Steroid Era

We’ve got another new addition to the MLBTR team: Mike Glab.  Or, Big Mike as he likes to be called.  Here’s a short bio:

Big Mike Glab is a freelance writer who has covered politics, education, real estate development, and a host of other topics. His real love is baseball and he’s working on a book about the coming of age of a fan, framed by a day by day account of the the 2007 season. His literary idol is one James Alan Bouton of the Seattle Pilots – "Hey Shakespeare, put that in your @$%^&*!# book!"

Mike can be reached at bigmikeglab@hotmail.com.  Contributions from he and Karl should begin appearing within a week or two.

A reader recently mentioned that it might be interesting to see which states are best represented among MLBTR readers.  I could do a straight ranking of visits by state for this month, sure.  But that would be skewed toward the most populous states.  Instead let’s look at MLBTR January visits as a percentage of each state’s population.  Here’s how they rank:

District of Columbia
Illinois
New York
Connecticut
Massachusetts
Missouri
New Jersey
Rhode Island
Minnesota
New Hampshire
Maine
Iowa
Maryland
North Dakota
South Dakota
Vermont
Wisconsin
Pennsylvania
Kansas
Indiana
Delaware
Washington
Virginia
Ohio
California
Kentucky
Nebraska
Nevada
Texas
Georgia
Montana
Arizona
Florida
North Carolina
Tennessee
Alaska
Oregon
Colorado
Hawaii
Michigan
Oklahoma
Arkansas
South Carolina
West Virginia
Idaho
Alabama
Utah
Louisiana
Mississippi
Wyoming
New Mexico 

• No surprise that Illinois loves MLBTR, since I’m from there and can’t help but be a little more plugged in with the Cubs and Sox.
• 10 million people in Michigan, how come more of them don’t read MLBTR?  Same question, Florida, Texas, and Colorado.  You have baseball teams, come visit!
• North Dakota residents go to the most pages per visit (1.53), Wyoming the least (1.23).
• North Dakota residents spend 2 minutes and 44 seconds on the site on average, tops among the states.  West Virginians only spend 1 minute and 1 second on the site.

We have a new addition to the MLBTR team.  His name is Karl Micka-Foos.  I’m not sure exactly how the team of additional writers will contribute yet, but I’m glad to have Karl aboard.  A little about him:

Karl Micka-Foos is a senior at Princeton University, majoring in English and hoping to pursue a career in sports journalism. He has previously served as the sports editor of the student-run "Daily Princetonian" newspaper, and as a sports intern for "Metro New York" newspaper, covering the Mets and the Yankees. His favorite baseball card is a 1997 Pinnacle “East Meets West” insert, which features Pedro Martinez holding a paper umbrella while giving a grown man bunny ears.

Karl can be reached at mickafoos@yahoo.com.

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I recently asked MLBTR readers to tell me how much they liked various site features on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 means they hate it, 10 they love it).  The results are in, with over 900 responses.  Let’s discuss, in order of your enjoyment.

• Odds and Ends – Average Score: 8.01.  People seem to quite enjoy this feature and didn’t have suggestions to improve it.  It stays as is.
• Needs and Luxuries – Average Score: 7.93.  Pretty high rating, but good ideas for improvement.  Here’s my plan for this feature for ’08.  I will do the entire series in October ’08, a team per day (it’s a slow hot stove month).  Then we will revisit each team in March of ’09, assessing how or if they addressed their needs.  As for 2007, I will do the remaining teams over the next few weeks so that every club gets equal attention.
• GM Trade Profiles – 7.49.  These are cool but take a really long time to do, especially if the GM has been around a while.  Just a lot of research before I can even write about the GM.  So I will probably continue to do these sporadically.
• Mailbag – 7.08.  People don’t seem to love the mailbag, relatively speaking.  Nonetheless maybe it can become a staple if I do it more regularly.  I am thinking about doing one every Wednesday.
• Rumor Royalty – 6.46.  The most common feedback about this feature is that it can be boring, partially because I spread out the three or four questions into separate posts.  I will switch it to two posts per sportswriter after we finish the stuff in queue.  One post will announce the selection and also allow you to submit your own questions.  We’ll see how it goes with reader-generated questions – I’ll choose the best.  Then all the questions and answers for that writer will go into another post.  I still like this feature despite the lukewarm response – it’s instructive to see what a team expert thinks; these people often don’t get to put their valuable opinions in their stories.
• One other note – I received about 300 inquiries from people willing to join the MLBTR team.  It will take me weeks to comb through, I will go about it carefully.  Thanks for the interest!

Here at MLBTR we have various features, some of which appear more often than others.  They are Odds and Ends, Rumor Royalty, Needs and Luxuries, Mailbag, and GM Trade Profiles.

Click here to take a brief anonymous survey where you rank your enjoyment of each feature on a scale of 1 to 10.  There’s also a comment box for you to suggest a new feature idea if you have one.  Thanks for your help.