Look Who’s Blogging Now: Minor League Player Blogs [Part 1]

June 21, 2009 — Minor League Baseball has jumped onto the blogging bandwagon, finally. Compared to 2008, when they recruited a grand total of five journals, the new-look MiLB.com boasts 23 ballplayer-bloggers. Of course quantity is not the same as quality, so how does the bigger, better bush-league blogosphere measure up?

I should begin this little exercise with a disclaimer. Along with being a writer, I’ve also been paid at one point or another in my career to coach athletics and tutor English. As you know, or should by now, . . .and if not, go look around for heaven’s sake, um, . . .where was I? Oh, right. At any rate, the motto around here at TSJ is “athletes come first.”

Technical

Creative

Overall

It would be far too easy (not to mention self-important) to throw out a bunch of judge’s scorecards and declare mission accomplished. Instead, I’m hoping this review will:

• Provide a little showcase for these labors of love; it’s not like the ballplayers get a performance bonus for putting up good stats in word counts or fan comments.
• Highlight the bloggers who put a little extra into their work; you know, stuff like originality, sweat, information, creativity, intelligence (blogging is a brain game, after all).
• Induce some grins to go along with constructive tips on how these burgeoning bloggers might improve their work; I mean, if it were you, wouldn’t you prefer the same consideration?

OK, on to the show. Because of the size of the database, I’ve organized the review into sections. This first part is a statistical overview, no critiques of content. Just the facts, in other words.

Results

Let’s start by taking a look at who’s in the mix and how they’re distributed. . .by MLB division, position, competition level. You’ll notice each blogger’s name includes a link to their site so you can visit and follow along as we go.  I purposely did not include blog titles, those will be discussed when I start reviewing the individual blogs.

Missing: Houston Astros (Central), New York Mets (East), San Francisco Giants (West), Washington Nationals (East)

Missing: Boston Red Sox (East), Tampa Bay Rays (East), Toronto Blue Jays (East)

Analysis

As you can see from the pie graphs, Western division teams, in both leagues, offer the best blog selection. This was a completely unexpected result, and I haven’t been able to come up with a reasonable hypothesis. Longer bus/plane rides? Higher percentage of English majors drafted? More hitter-friendly, high-altitude ballparks? Who knows? If there is a P.I. out there with grant money to fund further research into this curious phenomenon, please post your comment below. I promise to respond in 48 hours.

It is particularly interesting to note who’s missing from the list. The American League East has the weakest showing, with all three no-shows coming from the Eastern Division, and most notably Boston. Those of you who are Angels and/or Yankees fans, you may be gloating right now. Bear in mind, though, we’re still in the minors.

More pitchers feel the urge to put their thoughts down in print. You have to wonder, aside from PFPs and maybe BP, what else do they have to do between starting or relief appearances? Because of their reputation for being thinking men-athletes, catchers were counted separately from the rest of the position players. They may be the brainiest, however it appears as though they prefer to keep their thoughts to themselves. Only one backstop from each league. It should be pointed out this might have been a constraint mandated by MiLB editorial staff, only one catcher on the playing field =  only one catcher/league on the blogroll.

Most of the bloggers come from the Triple-A levels, nationwide. I cannot think of any reason why MiLB would have a preference for what level a player is blogging about, so I will speculate this to be a self-selected trend. Perhaps it’s a bit much to ask an 18-year-old to write home and to hundreds of strangers every week. Then again, perhaps the Triple-A player is more confident of sticking around for awhile, saving a considerable amount of embarrassment from a blog ending suddenly due to being released mid-season.

Up next, the blog-by-blog stats. How many, how long, how popular. Are we having fun yet? . . .Your friend in baseball.

Add comment June 21st, 2009

Link of the Week (or Whenever): Fields of Dreams

June 18, 2009 — Ever wonder what it takes to keep a baseball field in playing shape, day after day, night after night? And what the heck are they doing with a watering can on the pitcher’s mound? Groundskeeping is a lot more complicated than just mowing pretty stripes into the grass, as I learned from watching this interesting video series.

Want to learn even more about secret life of chalk lines, tarps and diamond dust? Well, fortunately there’s Murray Cook’s Field Blog—blogging about groundskeeping since 2005! . . .Your friend in baseball.

Add comment June 18th, 2009

Visit me at Seamheads.com

June 16, 2009 — Fun news to share with you all. I’ve been invited to blog at Seamheads.com. Seamheads is an offshoot of Baseball Daily Digest and Baseball Prospectus, a couple of those hard-throwing baseball sites I rely on to research my various stories. Seamheads started out as a historical site, it even has a fantasy league of olde tyme base-and-ballers, although it currently includes baseball events of the living present.

The topics are an eclectic mix of op-ed, history, stats anlysis, . . .in other words, yours truly will fit right in! Many of the contributors are SABR types, so I’ll hopefully absorb some of their number-crunching savvy, by association if nothing else. (Guess I’d better stop making fun of sabermetrics geeks.) My series is called “Bush League Confidential” and you’ll notice I’ve added a link to Seamheads.com under my Favorite Links menu in the sidebar. Per usual, I’ll cover the minor leagues, with a focus on the PCL and Angels farm system. By way of introducing myself over there, I’m reposting and/or revising some of my fave posts from TSJ.

The new gig has already inspired some ideas I’ll be sharing with you soon. For starters, if you hadn’t noticed yet, I’ve added a new “About Me” page, with lots of fun memories and photos from my minor league journey. Currently, I’m putting together a reader’s review of this season’s minor league player journals. It’s quite a big project, 23 blogs listed, albeit some contain just a few posts total. A bit later, I’ll be going through my personal collection to assemble a “Bush League Bookshelf.” I’m not sure if I’ll go for full-blown reviews, book by book, or an annotated list of faves. If anyone has a preference, please let me know! Please pay a visit to Seamheads, and if it’s not too much trouble, post a comment to let my editor know what you think. Or how about a campaign to get me elected in as 2009 Seamhead Rookie of the Year?

Come to think of it, I really am an oddball; I hope I never have to leave the bushes. Ha, ha, ha! As always, .  . .Your friend in baseball.

Add comment June 16th, 2009