Josh Gordon thinks he might play this Sunday against the Saints
September 10, 2014FCC favors abolishing NFL TV blackout rules
September 11, 2014Sometimes in life, we all forget things. Sometimes when I’m driving out west to my new home in Oregon, I forget to tell my new WWW rotation partners Ben and Kirk to sub for me before midnight Eastern Time. Sometimes, I’m then forced to write WWW at a hotel called Le Ritz in Idaho Falls. Yes, it’s packed and there are little French symbols on each dinner. Idaho is weird.
Thus, I’ve been out of the sports world a little bit for the past week. At the end of last week, I was packing like crazy. I left on Sunday afternoon and I’ll finally arrive in Eugene on Friday morning. It’s been a long haul through Wisconsin, South Dakota, Wyoming and more. I’ve visited Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. You can see all my pictures on Twitter at @WFNYJacob.
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Terry Pluto is writing his newest book, in collaboration with Tom Hamilton, about the mid-‘90s Indians. For the last several weeks, I’ve been fact-checking and editing. Reading through the 28 chapters so far, it’s been an incredible journey through all of the details I missed as just a wee youngster in those glory days.
To finish off the book, in classic Terry Pluto style, he’s asking for fan emails to serve as introductions and transitions. Do you have a story about meeting one of those all-time great Indians stars? How about your first memory at The Jake? Any fond recollections of listening to Hammie on the radio? We want your contributions.
Send in your stories here this week: http://www.grayco.com/terrypluto/Indians.html. I’ll be the one reviewing them and picking out the best for inclusion in the book. If you’re picked, you’ll get a free autographed copy. Sound like a deal?
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Crain’s Cleveland’s Kevin Kleps wrote a feature story earlier this week about the Akron RubberDucks and their wild success over the past two seasons under new owner Ken Babby. It’s a really good tale with some great quotes, including from Akron’s mayor Don Plusquellic and Indians president Mark Shapiro.
In his follow-up blog post to that article, Kleps shares even more quotes … including some from me. As I’ve shared before, I’ve been consulting for Babby based on my undergraduate thesis on minor league baseball attendance. We’re in constant communication and there’s no better boss in the world.
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Random tidbits:
An incredible goal was scored at the University of Dayton’s Baujan Field!! … But unfortunately, it wasn’t by the Flyers. Shucks. (h/t SB Nation’s Ryan Rosenblatt)
Here’s my latest Roundup at the Sports Analytics Blog. As always, I have a ton of fun putting these links posts together each week.
For some unknown reason, SB Nation’s Brendan Porath (an original WFNY weekender) thought it was a sane idea to look back through Browns season openers since 1999. WHY, WHY WHY.
FanGraphs’ August Fagerstrom (a guy you really should be following) wrote a don’t-give-up-on-me post defending young Indians starter Danny Salazar. It’s encouraging, no doubt.
Fear The Sword’s Chris Wilson dove into Dion Waiters to see what we might see on the court this season. Man, Dion is so much fun.
Grantland’s Ben Lindbergh set out to write about how KC’s Yordano Ventura controls the running game, but oh there’s also a veiled Yan Gomes complement too.
And pretty much, the only other kind of news I’ve heard all week is about Olive Garden’s insane $100 all-pasta-all-the-time offer. I’ve gotta say, undergrad Jacob would’ve been all over this.
25 Comments
Jealous of your new house in OR. Living in SoCal and my wife and I are trying to find a way to make it work in Bend. Enjoy!
Glad to hear you are enjoying your trip out West thus far.
As for first memories of the Jake, I’m weird (surprise!), but what I remember most was trying to bang the plastic chairs and being completely disappointed that they barely made any noise.
Speaking of minor leagues here’s a look at the top minor leaguers. Notice how many Indians are mentioned.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/yahoo-sports–all-minor-league-team-002059625-mlb.html
and that Kershaw stat on your analytics link is absolutely jaw-dropping.
This might not be the “right place” for any airing of grievances, but the navigability of the new site is rough. And I don’t mean that as a resistance to change thing, as I’ve given it a fair shake. I just can’t get a good handle on it, as in it’s hard to know where to look for new items or to re-visit items.
Examples:
1. On the mobile site, there’s a tab for WWW, but not on the full site.
2. Sometimes a story is a “featured” one on the main page, and then it’s gone later, and I can’t quite locate it for re-visiting. Does a Browns story forever stay in some featured archive page, or will it at some point go live in the Browns tab?
3. Sometimes a story will show up in a social media feed, that you can click to get to…but if you go to the site it’s not on there (or easily found). Specifically, yesterday Craig had a story about Josh Gordon that I clicked on from FB, but when I went to the site later to find it, it wasn’t on the main page or under the Browns link. Maybe the issue is that things aren’t cross linked or categorized under Browns, Tribe or whatever. Or maybe I just suck at navigating, and it’s my fault. The latter is entirely possible.
Anyway, hope this is received with the constructiveness I intend. Or if anyone has any tips on above, that would be great.
pretty much the 2 links I use now for WFNY:
https://waitingfornextyear.com/2014/09/ (will have to update each month)
and
https://wfny.disqus.com/latest.rss
There was a different RSS feed for the article posts, but I neglected to bookmark it and have forgotten it now (but it would take away the need for the updating to the month).
The column on the left is where the WWW posts pile up.
That’s really helpful. Muchas gracias.
I’ve had issues with seeing that a new article has been posted (via FB or Twitter), only to come to the site and not be able to find it anywhere. Happens frequently, especially on the iPad.
RSS feed is good too if you don’t want to update your bookmarks
https://waitingfornextyear.com/feed/
And is anyone else getting the blue background? WTH is that? I’m not one to complain, as this is a free site and you are allowed to tinker as you please, but the articles are damn-near illegible.
This drought is a motherf’er
http://media.giphy.com/media/9tsS9EuN08tqw/giphy.gif
That Disqus feed would be great if it told you the commentator. Now it’s just good.
Where in SoCal are you?
look at the “creator” line. the commenter is there.
So glad someone could write something about defensive metrics that epitomizes what i’ve been saying about WAR and defensive metrics in general for a long time.
ANALYTICS ARE GREAT – but they are flawed and can’t be consumed as the de facto tool of measurement for player value.
Does anyone REALLY think Alex Gordon has been the 2nd best player in baseball this year? Or that Phil Hughes has been better than David Price and Chris Sale?
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2014&month=0&season1=2014&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0
I didn’t think so.
I have a similar problem on my tablet as well. My little workaround is the following:
1. Click on the latest WWW article that I see.
2. View any new articles that appear on the right side of the WWW article.
100% agreed. I find myself looking for stories on the Disqus RSS during breaks in work, but they haven’t all been populating there for some reason. Safest strategy is to go to the WFNY Facebook page, which houses links to all posted content chronologically.
WFNY editors: hopefully you don’t see this as collective whinging, but rather as constructive feedback from people who appreciate what you do and value your content. Something does need to be fixed, it would seem
Has happened only once to me, but I know what you’re talking about. Annoying
Fullerton. You?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlRTyt6dALM
R.I.P.
Long Beach, but work in Cypress
The comments RSS feed is now in the footer, by the way.
I’ve heard of this issue, but I have no clue what causes it. I have not been able to replicate it on any of my systems.
It could be a caching issue, which unfortunately there’s not much we can do about. But I assure you, nothing hits our social media feeds without being on the site first.