Uncategorized News & Rumors

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.

Got an email address?  Of course you do.  Why not receive MLBTR posts via a daily email?  That way you’ll never miss anything.  Sign up below.  (I will definitely not use your email address for any other purpose).

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.

I am looking to assemble a squad of capable writers who can step in on the occasional MLBTR post when I’m not available.  I tried the "team representative" approach, and I’ve decided that’s not the best way to do it.  Instead I want to put together a crack team of 5-10 people who can blog about any rumor intelligently.  Here’s what I’m looking for:

• Lack of bias.  I get some flack for being a Cubs fan but I honestly don’t think it affects objectivity here at MLBTR.  I can happily compliment a good Cardinals move and rip on a bad Cubs one.  You need to be able to check your bias at the door.
• Strong writing skills.  Obviously I need excellent writers.  That means grammar, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, brevity, style, and possibly sportswriting experience of some kind.  One optional way to demonstrate this would be to write some kind of mock MLBTR post and include it in your email.  A voice similar to my own would be good.
• Attention to detail.  If Buster Olney speculates on a trade he’d like to see and you report it as actual trade discussions, that’s bad.  If two teams are "making progress" and you say the trade is done, that’s a problem.  Not everyone on MLBTR clicks through to read the source material, so you have to be very careful about your choice of words.
• Baseball knowledge.  You need to be able to write about all 30 teams without the fanbases calling you out for mistakes or ignorance.  Can you name each team’s rotation off the top of your head?  Can you name five prospects from each club?  Which ones have a bad history with Scott Boras?  If there are teams you know nothing about or don’t care to cover then you don’t fit the bill.  Also, an understanding of modern stats is important – we can do better than talking about a guy’s batting average and RBI total.   
• Know your way around the web.  Do you know some places to look for rumors?  Where will you get contract info?  What’s the best site for stats?  Are you subscribed to ESPN, BP, and sites like that?  Do you know how to quickly dig through the MLBTR archives and find older rumors you need to reference?
• On the computer often; usually available.  I need people who are constantly connected to the Internet, checking baseball stuff throughout the day just because they love to.  People who reply to most emails within a few minutes.  I might ask you to write a post without advance notice, and timing will be of the essence. 

I know I am asking for a lot, and it’s not a paid position.  But the actual work might only be a post or two a week.  If we expand to larger things – say, you covering eight hours on a Saturday – that would be paid.  Here are the benefits of joining the MLBTR team:

• Huge audience.  This month we’ve had about 20,000 absolute unique visitors per day.  It’s pretty cool to have that kind of readership.
• Resume builder.  If you are trying to break into sportswriting without spending four years covering youth field hockey, this might help.  You can use me (Tim Dierkes) as a reference, for what it’s worth.
• Learn about blogging.  You get to use the TypePad blogging platform for free, and see exactly what goes into an MLBTR post. 

If this appeals to you, write me an email at mlbtraderumors@gmail.com.  Unfortunately I won’t be able to reply to all.  Tell me why you’re perfect for the gig and what you bring to the table.

Thanks.

Take a look at Jim Callis’ Ask BA piece for Baseball America today.  This was an interesting mailbag for hot stove fans.  Callis touches on:

• Why Billy Beane deserves, but has escaped blame for Oakland’s previously weak farm system
• The new draft order, with adjustments made for free agent signings (Mets and Twins now pick twice in the first round)
• A Kosuke Fukudome scouting report
• Why Edinson Volquez is a tease