Considering there is some time here before Akron's next playoff series and the season winds down as we wrap up another season of minor league baseball, I wanted to give a quick thanks to those who visit this site as well as TheClevelandFan.com to read the player stories as well as Minor Happenings or anything else minor league related. Grazi.
Things will continue to be business as usual here for the remainder of the month as I have three-four Minor Happenings pieces still planned and have six player articles coming (Stephen Head, Kevin Dixon, Chris Jones, Josh Judy, Jonathan Holt, and Brian Juhl). One of those Happenings pieces will be a special Mahoning Valley piece with interviews from my visit last week where I spoke to Cord Phelps, Trey Haley, Tim Fedroff, Heath Taylor and pitching coach Anthony Medrano. And, as always, the final Happenings piece will be my year end awards at the end of this month.
That said, while the season is coming to a close, things will be as hectic as ever this offseason. As most of you may know, I put together my first Indians Top Prospect book last year and will be doing so this year again. This time there should be even more info and nuggets included as the book that had about 75 scouting reports last year could have 100 or more this year. More on this soon, but my target completion date is late November/early December so I have books in hand to ship out by the first week of December.
Also, I am thinking of upgrading the blog and taking it to an actual "site"....but I need to research how easy that may be to do and also the cost involved. If anyone out there knows more about this and would be willing to offer some advice or lend a hand in building a new site, please email me at tlastoria@gmail.com. One of the big reasons I want to move the site is because I want the freedom to be able to add more things, but mostly because I want to add some sort of discussion forum devoted completely to just the Indians prospects. I don't believe phpBB can be added to the Google blog sites, so would have to have my own to do it. If anyone has any experience setting up phpBB message boards, I would love your input on that too.
Also, if anyone is interested in contributing in some way to the site with any kind of opinion or analysis piece, by all means email me. I'd be looking for someone with some knowledge of the Indians farm system to provide some short opinion/analysis pieces from time to time to supplement the site. This would provide a good opportunity to anyone maybe looking to get into the writing field, or offer an outlet for those estalished in their careers but love to talk prospects.
If anyone has any suggestions of things they would like to see added, changed or removed in regard to the site, please let me know. I value honest feedback that is positive or negative.
And as a reminder, just because the season is over does not mean there will be no more coverage of the Indians minor league system. With minor league free agency, the Rule 5 Draft, roster decisions, rankings, trades, and so on to occur between October through February, there will be a lot to talk about before I kick coverage off on the 2009 season in late March from spring training in Arizona.
Thanks again for the support.
Monday, September 8, 2008
A Big Thank You
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13 comments:
I know for one I would be very interested in writing additonal content. I have done football blogging in the past, but this being one of my favorite sites I would love to be involved
I big thank you to you too Tony for all the work you've put in! It's been a pleasure to help out now and then and I'd be more than happy in helping you out any time you want.
I would really like to thank you for a wonderful year of Cleveland organizational coverage. Anything I can do to help, all you have to do is ask. My daughter does web site work but is an audio specialist. Even though she is extremely busy until her slow period in January, I can probably get answers to questions you may have.
Thanks for all your hard work Tony.. You do excellent stuff.
Appreciate all of the work put into the site and look forward to the evolution. Always glad to participate in helping out here too.
Great job Tony, I'm certain the evolution of this site will be very exciting for us die hards.
Whatever help you need, just let me know.
Thanks for the kind responses everyone. Even though the season is ending, there will still be lots to cover in the offseason with winter leagues, the Rule 5 Draft, prospect rankings, trades, free agents, and so on. Gonna be a busy offseason.
And thanks to all for the interest in writing. It is my goal next year to have the game recaps every morning (like this year) but also have an article everyday. I usually do 2-3 a week, sometimes 4....but it is impossible to do one everyday, hence the reaching out for some help next year. I'm ideally looking for some help from people to write something as long or short as they want on anything they want minor league related. Once a week. So, this will be something to workout this offseason and again I appreciate the interest. Those that expressed interest I will contact privately.
jellis, contact me by email at tlastoria@gmail.com so we can discuss off list. Same for any of the anonymous repliers. Thanks.
sent you an email via my yahoo account
Tony,
We went from a blogspot site to a .com, but we still go through Blogger to edit posts and layout. There isn't much we can't do through Blogger with HTML, which you would use with a regular .com. The only problem is the comments and chat, cluncky. We decided to bet on Blogger improving comments and chat soon enough that it wouldn't be worth switching to something else, but we may be wrong. We're not a chat site anyway, so it wasn't as important for us, and I hate the look of straight phpBB sites. The cost for the .com was $10, so not an issue. Just renew each year. If I can be of any help let me know. Oh, and I linked to your article on the Indians English 101 program, liked it. Keep up the great work. Doug FYI our site is raysprospects.com.
Doug, thanks for the input. There are lots of things I am going to consider this offseason with the site. Another thing I was maybe toying with setting up is a network of minor league sites for teams. There are already some well established ones out there, and for all I know this has already been done. The Red Sox prospect site is great, as are so many others....would be kind of cool to interlink everyone.
I've thought of that too, kind of a minor league network. OT: survive the storm? No power, phone or water here, glad the library is open!
Starting up some sort of network is on my to-do list this offseason. Even if it is just us interlinking one another. This stuff is always good for reference, especially when trades, waiver claims, or minor league free agent signings occur. I would really have to search out to see if 1) this has already been done or 2) search out the best sites for each team.
In any case, yeah, I survived Ike's wrath on Sunday. Got caught in the storm leaving the Browns tailgate and heading home where we ended up losing power at 7pm just as I pulled in the driveway....had to pack up the kids and rush to my parents house 20 minutes away where they had power and see us lose again. Thankfully we found out our power was back on around the end of the 3rd quarter.
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