The SABR Gamer

I thought I heard them say Darvish would be the championship game.

The best part of that is him keeping it in the back seat of his car.

As a counterpoint, I'll bring up that this site's traffic has been consistently declining for a few years. Long-term posters inevitably leave and if they're not being replaced (which they haven't been for a few years now), a forum can become a ghost town. People WANT high quality commentary. It has been our calling card for years on Twins Daily and was the case for 20 years on Brewer Fan. The same has carried over to Brewer Fanatic, we're just giving good smart posters an option they may not have known about before. If you're irritated by the likes of Twitter and Facebook commentary, other people are, too... we try to be a place that attracts those people and bring them into the fold. We also don't hesitate to give Twitter bros the boot because we don't want to hear their thoughts any more than you do. As long as this is the direction you’re taking, I’ll be behind you 100%.

Mostly monetization happens through volume, both in our overall company traffic and individual site traffic. Our goal is mostly eyeballs, really, and we do that through aggressive social media usage, search engine optimization, email lists, and other assorted things. Because we have such a high volume of traffic from other projects (Twins Daily), we have access to premium advertising options that pay *much* better than most small sites have at their disposal. We want more forum traffic to sustain the community but what we REALLY want is for our news stories, videos, prospect tracker, etc. to dominate social and search channels. And a thriving community only stays that way if the community is on board with tone, opinions, and whatnot. We have some rules forced on us by advertisers but it's pretty extreme stuff that I haven't encountered here at all (racism, bigotry, the really bad stuff) so I don't foresee many issues in that regard. So mostly when it comes to the forums, don't expect us to be heavy-handed. You all like things the way they are in the forum and that's why you're here; if we change too much of that, we're just shooting ourselves in the foot. The way I've thought about this in the past is as "we wrap a shell around your community to protect its integrity and continued existence". We do that with news, user blogs, videos, guides and resources, etc. and a by-product of that is that new users join the community but we don't actually change much about the community itself, nor do we want to. Down the road I might have suggestions how to make things a little more welcoming to new users but it won't be major and it won't happen immediately (and they'll be suggestions). This sounds reasonable. I’m an overly-reactive grump!

I would be happy if this is true. I’m just skeptical of someone coming in here and the main selling point is how much traffic they can generate to the site.

I’m also flying back to cold ass Chicago right now, so maybe I’m just in a bad mood lol.

I can be an horsefeathers, so maybe ignore me, but this seems like the official death of whatever NSBB has been for the last 20 years. I honestly don’t think anyone who regularly visits here wants this site to grow, or cares about making it the largest Cubs related anything. A large part (most?) of the value is in the smaller and tighter community, which will be diluted by this change. I’m not trying to be a gatekeeper either, I just appreciate that a large portion of the posts on the site at this point are high value, which makes it a superior option to alternatives. Oh well, hopefully you can prove me wrong and I will be rooting for you to, but if not, it’s been great to be part of this site for so long, and it really helped expand and grow my knowledge and love of baseball. Thanks to all the real ones. Also, this post will be a good test of how much freedom people will have under new management to express their reasonable opinions.

I’ve always been a fan and like the profile, maybe now that he’s older it won’t happen, but I always thought there’d be a slight power increase getting out of SF too. One of the downsides will be potentially hearing let's go Brandon chanted extremely obnoxiously by some fans lol.

This post is borderline dumb as horsefeathers, sorry for being an horsefeathers though. The presence or lack of highlight reel plays is not exactly how defensive metrics determine value, and while they aren’t perfect, they are pretty good. The fact that you can't tell my tongue was firmly in my cheek says you should reevaluate your reading comprehension before criticizing a post. Always fair.

This post is borderline dumb as horsefeathers, sorry for being an horsefeathers though. The presence or lack of highlight reel plays is not exactly how defensive metrics determine value, and while they aren’t perfect, they are pretty good.

Well, to start, as that post clearly says, it's Instagram, not Twitter. To answer your question, if a profile is set to public and not private, you can see all of their follows and followers without following them.

LOL CubinNY is owning himself in this thread and keeps digging in deeper. ETA: This guy annoys me so much with his hot takes, he's got me defending the damn Cardinals.

lol, ok I don't know what you are loling about. They are a combined 2 games above .500 playing teams other than the Cubs, Pirates, Brewers, and Reds. You do know most good teams get there by mostly beating the bad teams and not sucking against the good ones?

I've got some news for you.

And we thought the bottom for Derwood was jorts Curling rocks Rocks, stones, whatever. It's a non-serious sport with non-serious rules LOL. Oh, Derwood.

So much relief from seeing this.

Probably a completely worthless thing to post, but for whatever it’s worth, my friend lives in Lake Forest and claims to have seen Pace today and said he was visibly angry.

LOL, this guy is getting roasted in this thread and is like, “I’m just gonna ignore the boos and keep shooting shots.” So how marketable was Zack Davies at the deadline? Wade Miley is a soon-to-be 35-year-old soft-tossing lefty five-inning pitcher who faded in the 2nd half of last season. He's not a guy to get excited about, nor is he a guy who's going to bring back any type of prospect in a trade at the deadline. He's Zack Davies who's four years older and throws with the other hand. The best thing anyone can say about him is that he only costs money. Because Davies had a horrible season? Davies could have gotten something if he had been having a good year. Miley is also probably at least a bit better than Davies, regardless, and it’s definitely in the range of possible outcomes that he pitches well and would fetch something decent at the deadline.

How marketable was Zach Davies at the deadline? LOL, this guy is getting roasted in this thread and is like, “I’m just gonna ignore the boos and keep shooting shots.”

All I know is that in his last 29 games, Davante has had 5 or less targets and 4 or less receptions in only 1 other game. He's a target and reception hog and we held him to 4 catches on 5 targets. Yeah, that's the good part. 22 yards per catch is the bad part. 32 and 47 yard catches allowed along with a DPI call (albeit weak). Did hold him out of the endzone as well. Wasn't trying to knock Johnson. Adams beats everybody, and it took taking Johnson into the slot, where he's not comfortable, to only beat Johnson a couple times. Adams is the best route runner in the sport, correct?

If it were just the White Sox players? Yes. But unfortunately they're packaged with their fan base. Therefore, their fans' misery must be greater than or equal to mine. And I'm a Cubs fan, so... Lol I hate horsefeathers like this. How thin is your skin? Cubs vs Sox isn’t a real rivalry.

Some golden commentary in this thread from the most obvious of people you’d expect it to come from.

I actually think there is a non-zero chance he returns in the offseason.

Lol okay.