BP Unfiltered

Sometimes there is value in stating the obvious.

Please program enhancements to the fantasy baseball projection and forecasting software using the prior year's data now. That way the software should be ready to use as soon as the projection work is done. Don't tell us software is ready to use when it isn't. Please provide more frequent updates when there problems are known. Don't continue to label software as "beta" for an extended time period -- at some point it becomes an excuse for issuing error-prone work.

(1) I'm looking forward to the long-promised re-design of the homepage, which still looks cluttered, crowded and sort of ugly. I love the content but the homepage is hard to look at, like a beautiful woman with food in her teeth.

(2) When I want to look up a players stats, pitchFX data, game logs, or stat leaderboards, I go to fangraphs.com 100% of the time, which just feels more user-friendly. If I want up to date minor league stats, I go to milb.com. Seems like for a site that has the analysis of statistics at its core, we should be able to find this kind of thing here quickly and efficiently. The player stat pages here are a mess compared to fangraphs, which has obviously done a lot more thinking about presentation.

(3) I'd suggest growing a Kevin Goldstein clone in the BP labs. Sure seems like there'd be room at BP for another guy with a prospect focus, judging by the response his prospecting work always gets.

(4) Finally, would it be so hard to get Nate Silver to throw us an article once in a while? Just to show us he still cares...

I miss Joe.

Can you please do something to help your mobile readers? I am not smart enough to know what it is but I generally read everything now through a RSS feeder on my iphone (without going to a webpage). Because I cannot get to the subscription only part of BP this way BP has fallen behind Fan Graphs and other sites that publish this way.

I've really been enjoying Ben Lindbergh's articles. Keep 'em coming!

I loved the Kiley McDaniel stuff last year, and was kind of disappointed a replacement wasn't found for 2010.

I'm a rankings geek, so I'd love to see three things:

1) Kevin Goldstein doing a ranking series based on the "Top Under-25 Talent" portion of his offseason prospect rankings.

2) Someone, if not Nate, who will take on the old "PECOTA Takes on the Prospects" series.

3) A PECOTA Upside-based version of Nate's 50 Most Valuable Commodities in baseball.

Seconding the difficulty of reading the player cards for the current season's stats. Put the current season stats up top alone, not at the bottom row a long way away from the column headers.

I'm disappointed that I had to go elsewhere for my Omar Infante should not be an All-Star rants. This used to be THE place for intelligent "______ is a dumb move" articles. Someone should be on call for those things when they come up.

It would be great to have a mobile theme for BP, and better navigation between the blog articles - reading four or five of these in a row requires going back to the home page between each, currently.

I'd like to be able to read through the blog entries consecutively without returning to the home page, the way I can with the articles. I wish also you'd make up your mind: a given essay is one or the other, not both.

Everything has become "big picture". If a player doesn't get injured or traded, there is no content for what occurred. Not that I think there needs to be a box score roundup, but managerial decisions that Joe used to point out, or interesting things that occurred during a game that someone might not be watching but would find interesting, are no longer brought up here. The day-to-day element is no longer present here.

This is somewhat fantasy-related: I think we should be able to run a search to see who has the biggest "breakout" potential according to PECOTA...

Don't have weekends completely dark. HOld back an article or 2 for Sunday.

I enjoy the articles appearing earlier but miss the weekend content.

I know I have mentioned this in an email, some college baseball coverage, even if it is limited to once a week during the season, would be great.

Finally, more prospect coverage.

I LOVE the Scouts View portion of John's articles, I want more off the record opinion on more players. It's usually like 3-5 players, why not make it 10? The 5 mins-10 mins of calls you make, just have the scout spill out thoughts on 10 guys. I'm always anxious to know who the guys with great eyes and experience for talent think are turning the corner and about to break out, and who is on the decline. No new software or layout, just a few more mins of time with each call you make John and that would be an incredible addition.
Thanks for your hard consistent great work you do.

I love the Davenport translations for the minors (renamed "True Averages"?) but for some reason, it started listing leaders regardless of number of plate appearances. Any way to change it back?

i miss Joe also

1) Scrap the layout of the entire site and start from scratch. The statistics pages in particular are not even up to early 2000s standards in terms of readability/usability. It's not a few simple tweaks away from being good; it's going to require a true overhaul from a professional designer.

2) Introduce ratings for articles. I.e., readers could rate them from 1 to 5 stars. This would help readers find the most interesting articles quickly, and more importantly, provide a way for BP to figure out what subscribers like and don't like.

3) Get rid of the blogs beta section. If ~70% of site content is contained in this section, it shouldn't be obscured by this designation.

4) Produce more original, cutting-edge research on how to predict player performace -- both for future season and for rest-of-season stats. E.g., more Swartz and Lindbergh; fewer five-page rants about minor transactions.

Better copy-editing. (Seriously, "times flies?") This has never been a strength of the site, but I feel it's gone downhill the past few months.

The stats research has been beefed up this year, and some of the new content is really good, but I wouldn't mind seeing more of the stats-informed analysis that CK and Jay do but that we seem to see less of now, not just with Joe no longer writing but also with many other writers and features that have disappeared over the years, like "Prospectus Triple Play." Joe's take on All-Star Game selections had gotten repetitive, but I was surprised to see no one discuss this year's selections.

I like the tons of new content BP has added, especially during the offseason including the guest pieces (particularly by that sports agent). It's also neat to see more collaborations between multiple authors. The fantasy content has been much more active (though I tend to disagree with a chunk of it).

I still go to baseball-reference, ESPN.com, or fangraphs for player data or game logs. I think the proofreading/editing hasn't gotten better, which was supposed to be John's strength and focus. I also think the layout needs to be changed a bit since it can be hard to find an article older than a week... which gets to be a problem when following ongoing discussions once they cycle off the main page.

Please add a threaded forum for discussions (and perhaps for some of us to post our own articles/research/etc). Also, I thought the +/- system was going to be changed so that you could see threads rated negative even if the initial comment was rated negative...

Also, something has to be done to quiet the repetitive "PECOTA sucks" comments... pull back the veil a bit so people know a bit better how it operates or something... the repetitive preseason revisions to PECOTA (in part, based on changing depth charts), cause issues for people who use it.

I greatly appreciate your openness to feedback.

The presentation of the blogs is sub-standard. Laying it out like this would be more user friendly and take up less space:

Future Shock
Last update:
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BP Unfiltered
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Fantasy Beat
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Transaction Action
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Also, are the blogs *still* in beta mode after all these months.

Most importantly, I really miss the day-to-day articles, like Joe's Prospectus Today, that will analyze/criticize moves and decisions based on something that happened in the last 48 hours. It was appaling that the ONLY all-star coverage we got was your "one man's ballot" article, with no detailed stat analysis either before or after the fact.

Oh, one last thing. Please keep the layout clear and uncompliucated. I don't need videos etc popping up all the time, and I'm glad y'all don't do this.

1) There absolutely, without question has to be a Daily Prospectus-type article. I was not always Joe's biggest fan, but his article anchored the site. You have these great columns on injuries and transactions and prospects and history... all rotating around the center, which was Daily Prospectus. I was one of the first on board with BP, but I will leave next year without this. Joe's success with his daily newsletter should tell you all you need about the appetite for this kind of product.

2) Directed to the authors of the annual... Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid. Over the past couple years the authors have shown a strict adherence to PECOTA projections, to their detriment. The writers are more likely to defer or equivocate than to make bold predictions that might run in the face of the numbers. This was not always the case. In my opinion, what was once an informed scouting manual has become merely an interpretation of numbers.

You'll never satisfy everyone but....

1) The upgraded fantasy content has been stellar. In particular, the regular "value picks" posts have been extremely useful to me. Keep 'em coming

2) Make the PFM more relavant during the season. I don't know if this is relevant today -- and it's mearly a question of you marketing it more effectively -- or if there's real work to be done, but upgraded PECOTA projections + PFM that can be done to enable me to evaluate in-season roto trades would be great.

3) Expanding Goldstein's work. People who focus on prospects tend to overvalue them; people who ignore prospects tend to undervalue them. What would be fantastic is some blending of prospects and non-prospects in a way that's not done anywhere else. Immediate ideas that come to mind are expanding and periodically updating a Top 200 under 25 year-olds (prospects and players) -- essentially building off the "Top 10 under 25 year-olds" from the offseason Top 11 lists.

One more note: I suspect every one of your tens of thousands of subscribers has their favorite authors, and I'm no exception. (I particularly like Swartz and Goldstein and used to love Silver, Fox and Huckabay.) I leave it to your judgment to make sure that the most popular writers are the ones kept around. However, from a business perspective, it's important for me to say that, as much as I like lots of the writing here, I pay the premium rate for the fantasy content. And while it may be hard for professional writers to swallow, I suspect that many others agree with me. Please don't neglect the fantasy stuff; PFM upgrades and *actionable* colums/blogposts (value picks, SIERA updates, etc.) likely bring in a disproportionate percentage of your revenues.

I am an RSS hound, and the BP RSS feed just doesn't cut it. I only read BP nowadays when someone I trust mentions that there is a good article out there. I understand you can't provide full text because of the subscription, but can you provide some text? Give us the first 150 or 250 words so we can see if the article interests us.

As of know, i always choose fangraphs or beyond the box score first because it is simpler. I come to BP when i have run out of things to read. I have been a subscriber since day 1 and a reader for a long time before that too.

While I still enjoy reading articles, I think a lot of the joy I used to get from BP is gone. Maybe this is because I am old and cranky, maybe it's because the particular flavor of analysis that BP offers isn't that unique anymore, or maybe it's that the newer writers and analysts just simply aren't as strong as the old ones.

I think the easiest improvements have been mentioned in this thread. I know I've mentioned some before.

1. The mobile experience isn't very good. I know someone from defended it, but you're wrong. Widely used WordPress mobile themes put the BP site to shame on mobile.

2. Overall the web design is stale and hindering people from finding the good content that we paid for. The RSS feeds should be full for the articles that you give away for free and contain the same amount of text that you expose on the website. I'd love to see custom feeds too so I could put Christina and Will in one and all the other people I might read in another feed. At the very least there should be a single combined feed for the entire site.

3. I hope that storm of rollover ads never returns. That was insulting.

4. The formating of the stats pages isn't very good. Why is Baseball-Reference better here? And faster! Why can't I filter by position for WARP? See also mobile formating. The team pages aren't very good. This would be a great place to make mobile apps. Partner with someone who has made a good one already.

5. BP often seems to stumble into that weird state where they pretend that no one else is doing analysis on the web. John's links to newspaper articles are welcome improvement, but could be improved further with a bit more meaty information. It would be great if someone else did it for blogs.

6. Someone proposed article ratings. I think that would pay immediate dividends to both the readers and writers of the site.

7. The glossaries aren't very good. They should be improved and incorporated with summaries and links of the great articles that have been written about different stats.

8. Why are there 3 different playoff projection reports? One should be the best. Or maybe a combination is best. Find that and post that one.

You need to do away with Matt Swartz. His last article was the very worst I've ever read on this site, and to top it off he was hostile when readers presented negative comments.

I play some fantasy baseball. I found BP because of that and have enjoyed it for just over a decade. That said - you are buried in fantasy baseball content. Now I have to wade through piles fantasy specific information to find the articles I want to read.

I'm willing to allow them to have the 'main page' if that is your bread and butter these days. I would appreciate though a non-fantasy main page.

Whether Sheehan comes back or not I have to agree with one thing. I've been missing something for a while now at BP and that was the feeling of a personal connection with an author. I didn't even realize that was that important until I noticed it wasn't there anymore.

Someone needs to put down the calculator and start a conversation instead. I read the VORP, WARP, Davenport Translations, PECOTA translations because Daily Prospectus showed me why it mattered in a game and then I went on to learn about it after I was shown it was useful.

Show me in a game why something was done right or wrong, then show me how using SIERRA or Pitch/FX or what have you could have improved that decision process then when I go to read the statistical article I'll have a reason to do it and the necessary context to give me a reason to want to.

A couple suggestions and things I would greatly appreciate.

1. Forum. I really think this would be a positive thing for the site. If you had a message board where other could discuss articles, continue to dive further into topics, and your readers could prove to provide some pretty valuable content as well. Just look at the articles that get a lot of comments. They would be very frequently traveled sections of the forum and it's not technically challenging to support it. It would also be a great asset to contributions to the cards with lineups, playing times, rotations, and general team discussion. Game threads, prospect information, team pages, it would develop into a community and communities in a community. Ultimately any information you have can be linked to the message boards and vice versa.

I just think you are missing a large market out there and if managed properly it can be a huge asset.

2. Numbers explanations. I read all these articles on numbers, new calculations, and just isolating numbers on a specific person for comparative purposes. Numerous times I have gone to the numbers via to stat page and I feel like I am trying to learn a new command line. Some type of tutorial on how to isolate data or information pieces would be great. I know it's not the most interesting thing in the world to write about, but I would really appreciate it.

An RSS feed of the chats. I've gone from "guy who checked the site 4 times a day" to "guy who relied on the newsletter in his e-mail" to "guy who relies on his RSS reader for everything". As a result, I constantly miss chats, unless I think to check the front page of the website.

Maybe this is a feature from your folks perspective - it should, theoretically, get me to check the front page more often - but I see it as a bug.

I'll also second the stat pages. It seems like making the statistical data more presentable, more flexible, would be among the easier, and most user-friendly, things that could be done. There are few things more frustrating that wanting to find out who has the most WXRL in their career since 1979, and not being able to figure out a way to make the stats page tell me that. Or wanting to look up the adjusted standings of July 1, 2008, and not being able to find them.

And if you need beta testers for new features, you have a lot of long-time, loyal subscribers who I bet would be happy to help out (maybe even for free).

The search function on the website is totally inadequate and cumbersome to use. At the least, it should include blog and chat content. And why not have a search box on every page, rather than having to click through to the special search page?

Christina Karl needs to temper her style in the transactions reports.

The newspaper highlights feature seems like a glorified search function not worthy of BP.

Love Will Carroll and Kevin Goldstein.

By the way, it's ridiculous that because dawhipsaw's post was given a "-5" that now every comment threaded to his is also collapsed. There's good comments in that mini-thread by Richard, pobo and evo, (along with ok ones by me) and they are hidden.

Anyway, I've going to give dawhipsaw a +1 just to keep it visible. dawhipsaw makes reasonable enough points, and just because we disagree doesn't mean we should hide it. Readers here are way too into the rating on the "niceties" of the post, rather than on the merits. dawhipsaw makes worthy comments. That there are several of us that are responding to it should count for something.

I love On the Beat and Goldstein; I would read more about prospects.

David Laurila has completely converted me to appreciating baseball interviews. I used to find them universally vapid, but his work has been routinely excellent. I'd like to hear more, both from major and minor leaguers, if more of that level of quality is possible.

For me the biggest negative is that I often feel overwhelmed by numbers and underwhelmed by personality. I have graduate statistical training, but articles about small fractions of value are better when accompanied by application and opinionated analysis.

I love the chats, every single one by every single author. The mix of personality, research, and opinion is a lot closer to what I appreciated in the BP articles of yesteryear.

I can't read Christina any more unless she's writing about a specific team/transaction I care about. Too much convoluted construction, too much assumption of reader awareness. I'm smart, I follow baseball closely, and I read authors who disrespect their readers, but it's just too much. I'm sad when I skip her articles because they used to be among my favorite.

Emphasizing what others have written:

1) I use Opera Mini on my BlackBerry. I won't visit BP from there because the site loads so poorly. Please improve/construct the mobile version of BP.

2) Still waiting for the website redesign promised in January.

3) If I want a player's 2010 stats, I type "Player Fangraphs" into google. Fangraphs lets you customize your own "dashboard" so you always get the stats you're looking for on each player.

4) I used to read everything posted on BP. These days I read:
- Anything by Goldstein, Carroll and Lindbergh
- Most chat transcripts
- The "MLB Rumors and Rumblings" of every "On the Beat"

5) I like reading the above because they analyze *current events* in the MLB world. So much of BP these days is backwards-looking (TA, Hit List) or theoretical (you know what I mean). I said it in January and I'll say it again... I would pay extra in my Premium subscription just for baseball articles by Sheehan, Rany, Silver, Huckabay, Law.

Rany just wrote 5,000 words for his free blog on the Royals' potential trade deadline moves. Law produces high-quality content for ESPN. Silver is an elite political wonk. Huckabay... I have no idea.

At least now I know that Sheehan's been writing a newsletter all year. Sign me up.

Is there any reason BP continues to ignore pitcher velocity data? The avg. velocity tables and charts are prob. the single most useful feature at fangraphs. I have no problem continuing to use them for this information, but it seems like it would be a good addition to player pages here. Ultimately, using pitch types and avg. speeds should allow for creating much better comparable players lists (even if the historical data is not yet deep enough to allow for full use in PECOTA).

This thread got pretty meta as far as "ways for BP to improve itself" go...

"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?"

Yes, for more of this award-winning commentary and insightful analysis, be sure to check out Joe's newsletter!

Note that, after two days, this thread has already scrolled off the main page (and it wasn't even a weekend). Yet another argument for redoing the blog format or the search archives format.

Two suggestions.

1. Allow blog posts to be selected by date range, say a week at a time. If they are older than ones on the main blog page on the right, there's no way to get them by date. For example, I should be able to select the blog posts for the 4th week of June.

2. Allow search of reader comments. I comment on here from time to time, and I have no idea if anyone responds. There's no way to find my comments and check.

"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?"

I can think of a plethora of major league managers and GMs who could have said something similar to this to Joe Sheehan after many of his columns in the past.

Seriously, Joe, how dare you criticize, for example, Dusty Baker (in past columns) when you haven't had 1% of the success as a major league manager that he's had? How about you grant that he knew what he was doing, given that managing has been his career?

Do you get what I'm saying here? Do you see the irony?

A lot of love here for Kevin Goldstein, which I echo. He's one of my favorite prospect guys, for sure, and I think BP has more reliable prospect rankings and information because of him.

One thing I do miss, though, is the Top 50 roundtable discussions the old crew used to do. Is there a way to bring something like that back? When it comes to prospects, nuance and dialogue is really crucial.

Indeed, as a general rule, I'd love to see more roundtable discussions. We got a small taste of that with the CK/KG collaboration on the Cliff Lee trade. There's a lot of smart people who write for the site and I'd love to hear their disparate opinions on prospects, the trades of the day, etc.

Stop allowing users to rate comments. It's ridiculous.