Notice: Trying to get property 'display_name' of non-object in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/generators/schema/article.php on line 52
keyboard_arrow_uptop


Bio:
I believe I should be the next Baseball Prospectus Idol because the baseball world needs a different voice and a fresh perspective. Seemingly everywhere you look there’s a new stats-induced column or rant about the latest million-dollar Yankee signing. As BP Idol, I will bring something unique to each column and give readers a glimpse inside the locker room and out on the field. As a young female, I have had the opportunity to cover 12 different teams in various amounts and had articles featured in the American League Championship Series and World Series programs. Baseball may be a tradition-rich venture, but the call for a new voice is long overdue. If the BP judges put me through to the second round, I have no doubt your readers will agree. Think of me as your “Rookie in Relief” : young, energetic and always ready to step up and take the ball.


Entry:
Rays Relish First Taste of October

To read Brittany’s entry, you can surf over to where it was published at MLB.com.

Thank you for reading

This is a free article. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Baseball Prospectus. Subscriptions support ongoing public baseball research and analysis in an increasingly proprietary environment.

Subscribe now
You need to be logged in to comment. Login or Subscribe
invictus
5/18
Reporting is fine, I like reporting; this is okay to good reporting. I would like some analysis in my BPro, please. And there is none here.
mhmosher
5/18
Yeah. Clearly Brittany is a talented writer, but I agree with invictus.
LindInMoskva
5/18
With newspapers failing, is there room for a traditional beat writer at BP? If BP were to expand, I would prefer reading old school articles like this, to yet another article about VORP or Soccer Prospectus. It is a different approach to the game and one that I fear, may be disappearing.
Oleoay
5/18
I love the writing style, but it seems you're downplaying your past experience. You have more articles published at MLB.com than the other finalists and have had access to interview MLB players, managers, etc. Not that I think that disqualifies you, but I don't think you're a "Rookie in Relief" either. So why be coy about it?

And to echo the others what have posted so far, I go other sites for beat writing, and come to BP.com for baseball analysis.
roughcarrigan
5/18
Okay, but how is this different or fresh? Now, the piece was obviously done as a specific task to report back on a specific event. But different and fresh await corroboration.
nickgieschen
5/18
Meh, I can read this type of stuff in my daily rag on the subway.
hotstatrat
5/18
Echoing the sentiments above, it seems Brittany is playing up her femininity as being "fresh". That is not enough. BP does have Christina and she does have her own unique take on baseball. Far more overlapping at BP with Brittany's style of writing is Alex Carnavale's well selected quotes each week.

Variety and uniqueness are good things only if they are interesting. Many readers may well have found this article of Brittany's interesting, but obviously many of us didn't. Baseball is many different things to many different people.

Allow me to point to one very female and very original voice whose hilarious blogs had me enraptured a couple of years ago, but seems to have retired now for motherhood: Batgirl (http://www.bat-girl.com/). I wonder if BP could lure her out of retirement?
wcarroll
5/18
I'm adding my judging comment to each article:

Ghiroli, Brittany -- 8. It's almost unfair to be able to turn in this article in this format. No other contestant had this kind of access (though I will say I'm disappointed that no one tried to be a reporter or even called a team that I can tell.) She's very solid with the writing, really captures the flavor of such a dramatic moment without going all flowery and overdramatic, and gets great quotes, which is tough in the situation. I worry a bit that some of the heavier stats will trip her up, but I'm curious to see how she deals with it.
Oleoay
5/18
As I said, I love her writing.. but could she have arranged an interview within the two week deadline if she hadn't been an MLB.com reporter?

Then again, some of the other contestants also run blogs and I guess they could have used their connections to secure an interview.
nickgieschen
5/18
"I worry a bit that some of the heavier stats will trip her up"

My god, you never cease to embarrass yourself.
oystertoadfish
5/18
Brittany hasn't really tried to write an article for the BP audience here; this article's content was, in fact, specifically intended to NOT be a BP article, in that it was written (well) for the broadest of baseball audiences.

In a week, she'll have written an article to BP's specifications, and comments on the content of her article will be entirely to the point.
Oleoay
5/18
Are you her agent?
Oleoay
5/18
So she entered a contest to be a BP writer without ever trying to write an article for our audience? She made a submission that, since "in fact, [it] specifically intended to NOT be a BP article", would not be representative of her writing should she win the competition?

WTF?

I mean this article is six months old and you're giving me the impression she's passing it around like a resume? I truly and sincerely hope that is not what _she_ thinks because I think she's a good writer and I am eager to see what she can do for this site.
wcarroll
5/18
bingo. she's going to have to go through the same process as the other nine finalists and prove that she can take the writing/reporting skills and bring it to the bp audience.

remember, the initial submission could be anything and was just intended to bring us the best ten candidates.
BurrRutledge
5/18
Of the submissions I've read, Brittany's is the perfect foil for BP Idol. A conventional and well-written article targeted to a wider audience, it's appeal to the BP membership is, perhaps, somewhat ... lacking.

Which sets her up nicely for the first week's assignment on a BP-centric, sabermetric, stat-based topic of her choosing. Moreso than any other contestant, she has a lot riding on this first assignment.
Oleoay
5/18
Keep in mind, though, that more BP articles are being published to CNNSI and ESPN... so BP's audience as well is becoming more diverse. Kind of like the progression of statisticians reading the first Bill James Abstracts to modern broadcasters referring to OPS when comparing players.

I don't think next week will be hard for her at all though. She has an entertaining writing style and, as a college graduate, should be able to research and then convey the meaning of a BP concept or statistic. It's relatively easy to define a concept, but harder to write about it in a fashion that appeals to readers including those new to BP. Judging by her previous writing, I think she can do that.
nickgieschen
5/18
"Seemingly everywhere you look there’s a new stats-induced column or rant about the latest million-dollar Yankee signing"

Yeah, and post game write ups are hard to find.
ecarrero
5/19
This is a good piece of writing. It was certainly engaging. She's got talent. Let's see how she tackles a column based on stats.
jkaplow21
5/19
The one sentence per paragraph distracted me and my ADHD and I was more interested to see if you continued to do that instead of what you had written.
hessshaun
5/19
I don't know why some people in here imply that sabermetrical information is rocket science. All the information at hand is at the writer's disposal and you have access to it as well as she does.

If you and I both understand what OPS is and have to explain it someone else, invariably, one of us will do a better job than the other.

This is not the creation of a new metric to track careers of minor league left fielders, who converted to third base, and subsequently can now hit sliders 50 points higher than previously.
Oleoay
5/19
Information is relatively easy. Interpretation and analysis is relatively harder.
hessshaun
5/20
Agreed 100%.
jtrichey
5/20
I just don't see how this entry made the final ten. It seems to me that a writer that has been published gets an extra 3 or 4 points just because. There is nothing wrong with this article per se, but I don't see how it makes the grade for this contest or this website. I have been quite frustrated so far with the articles that have made it in. Sour grapes? Probably.
Oleoay
5/20
Now that you have a better idea what they are looking for, keep it in mind if they run this contest again. I know I will.