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Brock Beauchamp

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Blog Entries posted by Brock Beauchamp

  1. Brock Beauchamp
    The Cubs' season has concluded, but do you need your next baseball fix over the long winter?
    Fans that follow the Cubs know the thrill of building a team from the ground up — from scouting promising talent to developing all-stars. But what if you could experience that same excitement firsthand, managing every detail of your own franchise? That’s where Franchise Ball steps up to the plate. It’s a free online baseball simulation game that lets you become the general manager of your own team, competing in real-time leagues against other passionate baseball minds around the world.
    In Franchise Ball, you’re not just watching the game — you’re building it. You’ll draft players, negotiate trades, and fine-tune lineups to maximize performance. Each simulated game unfolds with advanced stats and analytics that reflect real baseball logic, making every managerial decision matter. Whether you prefer to model your team after the [blog team name] balanced strategy or carve out your own unique identity, Franchise Ball gives you the tools to do it.
    The experience runs 24/7, with games played daily across competitive divisions and playoff seasons. As you progress, you can develop player depth charts, scout prospects, and manage your team’s finances for long-term success. The system rewards strategy, patience, and smart decision-making — the same skills that front offices use in Major League Baseball.
    Unlike many sports games, Franchise Ball doesn’t rely on flashy graphics or pay-to-win mechanics. It's a pure test of baseball management and intellect.  You can join leagues, form rivalries, and climb the global rankings while keeping tabs on your stats through the game’s detailed dashboard. Every box score and scouting report feels like a genuine piece of baseball management history in the making.
    Franchise Ball is completely free to play, with membership upgrade options, and we're constantly listening to our community to bring new features to the game as they come in. So if you’re inspired by the way the Cubs rebuild, retool, and compete year after year — now’s your chance to run your own team and see if your baseball instincts can match up. Visit Franchise Ball today, start your own franchise, and take your first swing at baseball greatness.
  2. Brock Beauchamp
    FOCO is a partner with North Side Baseball and support of their products helps support this site; 100% of the funds/materials received from these promotions go directly to our users in the form of prizes and gifts.
    What a phenomenal start it has been for our Cubbie Blues as they lead the National League Central in which has turned out to be a non-competitive division thus far.  As the Chicago Cubs continue to show off their skills offensively leading all of Major League Baseball in runs batted in, showing off their elusive speed on the bath paths with stolen bases, runs scored, and total team hits, the Cubs look to shock the National League in what is setting up to be a fun pursuit all season long in the National League.  If you want to get in on the action this season and swag out your starting lineup of Cubs collectibles, our pals at FOCO have got you covered with a bobblehead launch that dropped this morning you do not want to miss out on.

    The Blues are back! Upgrade the style in your starting lineup with the Chicago Cubs Baby Blue Alternate Uniform Bobbleheads.  Featuring your favorite Cubs stars, Shota Imanaga, Kyle Tucker, and of course, our beloved mascot, Clark the Cub, these bobbles portray the 3 individuals wearing their new baby blue alternate gameday uniform in an action pose, ready to show off their awesome threads.  The backdrop is team-colored as the Cubs logo and cityscape backdrop displays in case there were any doubts where your allegiances lie this season.
    With only 225 bobbleheads per player/mascot being made by the bobblehead company, these will surely fly off the shelf before you know it.  Make sure to snag one of your own Chicago Cubs Alternate Uniform Bobbleheads now before they are all gone and be the Cubs fan of all Cubbies fans!
    Like all FOCO bobbleheads, each one is hand-crafted and painted so that no two pieces look exactly the same creating a unique and diverse presence to each collectible the company creates.  Click on any of the links you see above to get your hands on a Kyle Tucker, Shota Imanaga, and a Clark Chicago Cubs Alternate Uniform Bobblehead now before it’s too late and as always… GO CUBS GO!!
  3. Brock Beauchamp
    FOCO is a partner with North Side Baseball and support of their products helps support this site; 100% of the funds/materials received from these promotions go directly to our users in the form of prizes and gifts.
    As opening day is creeping right around the corner, we as baseball fans have been itching to get back into the season since that exciting World Series finish between the Dodgers and Yankees ended back in November.  But let’s focus on what matters most and that’s Chicago Cubs baseball returning to action next week as they take on the defending World Series Champions, Los Angeles Dodgers, in the 2025 MLB Tokyo Series.  Get back in the baseball spirit with a little bits of Peanuts pizazz as Snoopy makes his appearance in your Cubbies starting lineup this season with a special bobblehead from our pals at FOCO.
    The beagle is now batting! Step up and get ready to swing for the fences with this Chicago Cubs Snoopy Peanuts Batter Up Bighead Bobblehead.  FOCO will be bringing your favorite Peanuts character to life as the company is launching an MLB collection of these Snoopy Team Themed Bighead Bobbleheads, including the Chicago Cubs.  Snoopy is portrayed wearing a team uniform in an action pose holding a team-colored ball and baseball bat ready to knock a homer out of the park.
    These bobbleheads are limited to just 125 units standing proudly at 9.5 inches tall. Like every FOCO bobblehead, each piece is hand-crafted and painted so that no two pieces look exactly the same.  Make sure to click on any one of the links in this article to grab yourself a Chicago Cubs Snoopy Peanuts Batter Up Bighead Bobblehead and cheer on your Cubbie Blues to victory this season! GO CUBBIES!!!

  4. Brock Beauchamp
    Every offseason, we offer our You’re The GM! tool (formerly the Payroll Blueprint) to build your ideal Cubs roster. This year, we’ve updated and streamlined the tool a bit to improve the experience.
    The idea behind this feature is to give fans a chance to play the role of General Manager (or CBO or PoBO… you get the idea) for their favorite team, the Chicago Cubs. It’s meant to give fans the opportunity to discuss (and, let’s be honest, argue) how they would approach the long, dark MLB offseason.
    This tool is intended to be informal and fun, so we’ve left it as open as possible. There is a payroll “budget” that loosely resembles the Cubs' 2024 payroll, but there is no penalty for going over that number. It’s a guideline, nothing more. Second, you can submit as many blueprints as you like throughout the offseason. As the offseason landscape changes, users often return multiple times over the winter and create new blueprints.
    Before we get into the breakdown of the tool, you can save your blueprint and come back to it at any time. The only restriction is that you must register an account on the site to create a blueprint (so we can save a draft for you and also post the blueprint for others to discuss).
    Let’s get into the tool itself. It has four quadrants that work best if addressed in a counter-clockwise order (this tool works much better on desktops due to its complexity but will work on mobile devices if need be).
    Top Left: The 26-man Roster
    We have created a rough guideline of what the Cubs 26-man roster looks like today. The roster is flexible; any player can be added or removed as you see fit. We’ve also included either guaranteed salaries or, in the case of arbitration and contract options, the recommendations of MLB Trade Rumors. This section is where you build your roster and make changes based on the following two sections. As you make changes to players and salaries, the total payroll number (right side of the screen) will change, allowing you to track your budget on the fly.
    The bottom field in both columns is for any dead money you assume during the course of your offseason. Acquiring dead money should be rather uncommon but we want to present users the opportunity to take on dead salary if it suits their purposes.
    Bottom Left: Arbitration & Trade Decisions
    Here, you will find a selection of arbitration options and internal options (usually from the 40-man roster or minor leagues) to assist in building your offseason roster. On the right-hand side of this column, you will see Trade Candidates, a list of the 35 players most likely to be traded this offseason, per MLB Trade Rumors. To help you get up to speed with these candidates, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on trade candidates.
    Bottom Right: Free Agents
    Here, you will find the top 50 free agents, again per MLB Trade Rumors. These are sorted by position to facilitate quickly finding your desired free agent and include the recommended salary for that player. Because this is a blueprint for a single year, we only include their projected salary for the coming season, not the number of years or anything else. To help you get up to speed with these free agents, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on the best 50 free agents available this winter.
    Top Right: Dead Money, Your Total Payroll, & Commentary
    The only unalterable field on the page is Dead Money; it is players to which the team has committed money but has no reasonable way to get out of the contract. Below that, you will see the recommended budget, your current total, and the percentage you are over or under that budget. Again, keep in mind the budget is only a guideline, and you can go above it as much as you like…
    But defend your choices, coward! The following field is Title, which gives other users an idea of what to expect with your blueprint (e.g. Sign Juan Soto, Damn the Consequences). When your blueprint posts for other users, it will read “Your Username’s 2025 Payroll Blueprint: Sign Juan Soto, Damn the Consequences”.
    The following field is Your Comments & Explanation, a long-form field meant to type out the rationale behind your decisions. Here is the place to fully explain your trades (including which players are leaving the Cubs to bring in new players), why you targeted specific free agents, and, any promotions from the minors you advocate or any options you declined to extend to a specific player. This is often multiple paragraphs, you can write up as much detail as you desire.
    That’s it, you’re done! At this point, you can either publish your blueprint to the forums or save it for later if you feel it’s incomplete.
    Thank you for joining us at North Side Baseball. I hope you enjoy playing the role of general manager, at least for a moment!
    Start Your Payroll Blueprint Now
  5. Brock Beauchamp

    Introducing The Chicago Cubs Players Project!

    By Brock Beauchamp,


    North Side Baseball Features
    North Side Baseball is proud to announce the release of the Chicago Cubs Players Project!
    This project endeavors to collect as much information about past and present Cubs as possible, giving fans a repository of high-quality data about their favorite players. This isn't meant to replicate the great work done at more staid publications like Wikipedia or Sabr. This project is meant to be by Cubs fans for Cubs fans. Have fun with it!
    This is a public, community-driven project… which means everyone is encouraged to participate!
    Like any public project, there are some ground rules to follow to ensure the Players Project remains accurate with quality information. Let’s run through the basics:
    You must have a North Side Baseball account to participate in the Players Project. Before creating a new player, please hit our Players Project index page, search for the player in question, and ensure he doesn’t already exist in the database. Any duplicate entries will be automatically deleted. Sorry, this project is first come, first serve. To edit an existing player, to the right of the player's name on the player page there is a button "Edit Player". Click that it brings you to the edit screen. While we encourage everyone to add unique information to existing players, do not delete others’ work. Feel free to add to their work and move elements of the content around if you add information, but refrain from deleting previous work unless it is inaccurate. If you see something that violates our guidelines below, scroll below the player’s information and look for a small grey “Report Player” button. Click that and let our moderation team know about the issue, and we’ll take it from there. If you upload images, please limit yourself to only high-quality imagery. Any uploaded photo should be at least 600 pixels wide. When adding personal experiences, please keep them short. Write no more than one paragraph, and after the paragraph, hit return and add your name (real name or screen name, whatever you’re comfortable sharing). We are not averse to sharing negative information on a player but reserve the right to curate any inappropriate or unsubstantiated content. Please be as accurate as possible and cite references where possible. When adding to a bio, please use the hyperlink tool to insert your reference links into the biography. If you have questions about what to enter in a field, there is small grey text under each field explaining how to use each field and what to add to it. Unless you are a Players Project moderator, you do not have the option to upload the primary player image. If you create a new player, feel free to add any relevant information and a moderator will loop back and add the featured player image for you. Moderators: when uploading a featured player image, the format MUST be 1:1 (square) and a minimum of 800 by 800 pixels. Please choose the highest-quality image of the player you can find. That’s everything you need to know! If you have questions about the project, please private message me anytime!
    Players Project Moderators: if your account has access to moderating the Players Project, you can view all recent revisions created by users using the ModeratorCP, accessed by clicking your name at the top of every page. On the left, you will see Database Revisions, which brings you to the Players Project's recent revisions. Or click here.
  6. Brock Beauchamp
    FOCO is a partner with North Side Baseball and support of their products helps support this site; 100% of the funds/materials received from these promotions go directly to our users in the form of prizes and gifts.
    An all time Chicago Cubs great is now a part of FOCO’s illustrious Chicago Cubs bobblehead collection.  Most will look at this man as one of or the greatest defensive second baseman of his time in the majors as he recorded history securing nine total gold glove awards as well another astonishing accomplishment as this man holds the most consecutive errorless games and most home runs by any second baseman in MLB history.  A 10-time all-star and former National League MVP and of course, a hall of famer and beloved Cub for life, Ryne Sandberg, is ready to make his way to your bobblehead collection with a little twist on it.

    This morning, our friends at FOCO have just released a Ryne Sandberg Chicago Cubs Magnetic Stadium Base Bobblehead.  FOCO wants to make sure us Cubs fans are paying tribute to a true legend of the game while also paying respects to maybe the most well-know ball park in MLB history, Wrigley Field.  The concept of this bobblehead is really cool as the base is a detachable magnet that displays Wrigley Field on the inside of the detachable magnet.  Sandberg is repping his home white home Cubs uniform standing in an action pose on top of the detachable magnetic base as he salutes with his hat to the Wrigley faithful.
    As most of FOCO’s bobbleheads are, this is a limited-edition piece with only 124 units being made standing proudly at 7 inches tall set a retail price of $80.  Like all FOCO bobbleheads, each one is hand crafted and painted so that no two bobbleheads look exactly alike creating a unique and diverse presence to every collectible FOCO creates.
    Make sure to click on any one of the links in this article to grab a Ryne Sandberg Chicago Cubs Magnetic Stadium Base Bobblehead for your own or for a friend before they are all gone and cheer on your Cubs in style!
  7. Brock Beauchamp
    FOCO is a partner with North Side Baseball and support of their products helps support this site; 100% of the funds/materials received from these promotions go directly to our users in the form of prizes and gifts.
    For Cubs fans looking to shake up their Cubbies game day fits with a blend of relaxation, fashion, and team spirit, the latest big hit product from FOCO hits a moon shot out of the park. The Chicago Cubs Pinstripe Bib Overalls are not just a piece of clothing; they're a statement of unwavering support for the Chicago Cubs, designed to make you stand out in a crowd full of Cubs fans, whether you're at the game or enjoying your Cubs from anywhere around the world.
    Their all-over team-colored design comes in the official Chicago Cubs colors that captures the essence of the team spirit, making it a must-have for any devoted Cubs  fan. Prominently featuring a large Cubs logo on the front, there's no questioning where your allegiance lies. The inclusion of a bib pocket is not just for aesthetics but makes for a practical addition that allows for easy storage of essentials like your phone, wallet, or game day tickets. With a buckle closure and adjustable bib shoulder straps, these shortalls promise a custom fit that's both comfortable and flattering. The combination of the polyester woven canvas and short pant legs further enhance airflow, ensuring you stay cool and comfortable, no matter how intense the game gets.
    The versatility of the Minnesota Twins Pinstripe Bib Overalls by FOCO is unmatched. Ideal for game days, these shortalls ensure you're dressed for victory. They're also the perfect choice for tailgating events, where comfort meets style. And when it comes to concerts or festivals, these shortalls allow you to enjoy the music and atmosphere while proudly showcasing your team spirit.
    Whether you're cheering from the stands or celebrating with friends at a tailgate, the Chicago Cubs Pinstripe Bib Shortalls are the ultimate fan gear. Combining functionality with style, they're a must-have for any diehard Cubs  fan looking to show their team pride in a unique and fashionable way. Get ready to turn heads and make a statement at your next game day or event by grabbing a pair here!

  8. Brock Beauchamp
    FOCO is a partner with North Side Baseball and support of their products helps support this site; 100% of the funds/materials received from these promotions go directly to our users in the form of prizes and gifts.
    Every diehard Chicago Cubs fan remember the famous phrase, “Let’s Play Two,” from Ernie Banks that he used jokingly on a 100-degree day at Wrigley field when they were set to play a game in 1969.  The Cubs were so tired from the heat not even hours before the game they had to play had even begun and Ernie shouts out to his teammates: “Let’s Play Two.”  The phrase just stuck with reporters and they used it and the phrase became one of Ernie’s iconic phrases.
    Earlier this morning, our friends at FOCO has released a super cool bobblehead that they call the Ernie Banks Chicago Cubs Let’s Play Two Bobblehead.  The bobblehead features Ernie taking a knee in his home white Chicago Cubs uniform with a huge grin on his face with the four bats being held laying against his knee which is a famous pose of Ernie in the dugout next to his teammates.  Ernie is sitting on a round green grass-looking base with his name across the front decal of the bobblehead.

    This bobblehead goes for $80 retail standing proudly at 8 inches tall with 123 units available for preorder now on the FOCO website.  Like all FOCO bobbleheads, each one is hand-crafted and painted so that no two pieces look exactly the same creating a unique and diverse look to each bobblehead the company releases.  Make sure to pre-order your Ernie Banks Chicago Cubs Let’s Play Two Bobblehead now before this memorable collectible is all gone! Go Cubby Blues!!
  9. Brock Beauchamp
    There's a ton of chatter about the MLB postseason format and while I think it's blowing current issues out of proportion - we have all of two years of data from which to draw - I believe there is some merit to the criticisms. There's a relatively easy fix, though, and it can actually reduce the length of the postseason by a day should MLB wish to take that route.
    First, there are complaints about the number of teams in the postseason. I rather strongly disagree with this take; as a fan of multiple teams and a person who runs sites for several fanbases, it's simply more fun watching fans engage with their team until the end of September instead of losing interest in mid-August or earlier. The more engaged fanbases there are in the sport, the better the health of the sport overall. Plus, the postseason makes MLB buckets of money. Whether you like it or not, 12 postseason teams is going to be the standard moving forward.
    There is plenty of room to prioritize the regular season within this format. Here was the 2023 format:
    Oct 1: Game 162
    Oct 2: Off Day
    Oct 3-5: Wild Card Games 1-3
    Oct 6: Off Day
    Oct 7: Division Round Begins
    Most of the complaints of the current format revolve around two issues: prioritization of the best regular season teams and prolonged off-days for bye teams.
    As a response, I suggest removing off-days and stacking the Wild Card round even more in favor of the third division winner and the best wild card team (seed #4).
    Instead of a three game series, extend it to a five-game series with the home team receiving a "free win" going into the round. A similar format is used in the KBO (Korean Baseball Organization) and I think it's a good example to follow. This means the three and four seeds in the Wild Card - those two teams who host the round - have to win two games to win the "five game" series while the road team has to win three games to advance. This stacks the deck considerably against the lower-seeded teams, which is what most people seem in favor of doing. As a bonus, MLB might get more postseason games out of fourth Wild Card games.
    Secondly, get rid of the off-days, which impacts everyone in the Wild Card round. No longer do they have much hope in setting up their pitching and bullpen for the Division Series, they might back into that series having played as many as 7-8 games consecutively without a day off. If you add a potential game four and remove two off-days, this actually reduces the time off for the first and second-seeded bye teams by a day, reducing potential complaints about "rust" and "too much rest".
    Additionally, removing that first off-day after game 162 favors the Wild Card host teams, who are more likely to have sewn up a postseason spot days earlier, allowing them to enter the Wild Card round with their pitching set up for the postseason. My new format would have looked like this in 2023:
    Oct 1: Game 162
    Oct 2-5: Wild Card Games 1-4
    Oct 6: Division Round Begins
    Thoughts? What are your issues with the current postseason format and is this solution a good one?
  10. Brock Beauchamp

    Introducing Dark Mode!

    By Brock Beauchamp,


    North Side Baseball Features
    This is one of the most-requested features on communities we run and I'm happy to announce that Dark Mode is finally a thing you can use across the site! Dark Mode is a new way to use North Side Baseball, especially at night or in darkened rooms. Instead of the background being black text over white background, it's the inverse: white text over black background. Some people find sites easier to use and read in this inverted scheme and now it's really easy to toggle back and forth as needed.
    At the top right of each page, you will see four icons in the blue bar; the first icon is a half-filled circle. Click that to toggle back and forth from light to dark modes on the site. That's it!
    Now, the site has become quite sprawling and while I tried to check every aspect of how this renders on each page, I surely missed some things. Therefore, dear user, you are my quality assurance team. If you see anything that's hard to read, doesn't work right, or just plain looks weird, add a comment below and I'll get it fixed as soon as possible.
    For those of you who have been asking for this feature for so long, sorry it has taken this long. What seemed like a pretty simple feature actually turned into an overly-complex problem that I couldn't solve without quite a bit of effort.
    Please let me know if you experience any issues with this new mode!
  11. Brock Beauchamp
    Forgive the images, they're from Twins Daily but how the stream operates is identical.
    The new feed is pretty awesome and I suspect after reading this, some of you (particularly forum users) may set a custom feed as your North Side Baseball landing page. It's that useful. Instead of having to click through the (kinda insanely large now) NSBB site, you can tailor a feed to show basically whatever you want: select authors, topics you've followed, fellow users, unread content only... the list goes on.
    First, to find your personal feed, near the top right of the screen you will see a newspaper icon in the red bar below your user information.

    That brings you to the default view, which is Unread Content.

    Here you'll see a variety of options to tailor your custom stream to do almost anything you like on the site. I'll spare you going through each item in detail individually, as it's all quite self-explanatory. You can choose tagged content, type of content (news, forums, blogs, status updates, etc.), read/unread only, content you've participated in or started, followed content, and finally, how it's sorted.
    Depending what kind of device you're using, you can also choose Condensed or Expanded. Condensed just gives you the title and link while Expanded offers a truncated version of the content as a preview.
    Once you've decided on your changes, you can save this stream using the save prompt below. You're allowed to have multiple custom streams so name this new stream and it joins the others.
    Once you're done customizing your stream, Click Stream Options at the top right of the selection drop-down, and your choices become your default custom stream. Every time you click that newspaper or visit your stream, the selections you've made will remain in place.
    That's it, enjoy the new site!
  12. Brock Beauchamp
    North Side Baseball Tips & Tricks, Part One: Tables! With this series of blog entries, I'm going to try to cover some of the features of the new site in a few paragraphs.
    Using the old site, as I'm sure many of you are aware, tables were basically unusable. That has changed! I'll tackle B-Ref tables quickly in this post but you can do similar things with FanGraphs or other sites that use table data (which is how almost all stat sites display their content). First, pop on over to Marcus Stroman's B-Ref page:
    https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/stromma01.shtml
    I'm going to grab his 2021-2022 season stats. Just above his stat table, you'll see Share & Export. Click and then select Modify, Share, & Export Table. Boom, you can then select what stats you want to display and which you want to remove. I've removed all seasons except the last two. I also removed team and league because "duh". Then click the big X in the top right of the yellow square and you have your filtered table. Grab that table by moving your cursor to the top left of the table (just to the left of Year in this case) and while holding down the button of your mouse/trackpad, drag toward the bottom right of the table. The table will begin to highlight in yellow as you select the cells. Grab them all and let go of the mouse/trackpad. Then copy what has been selected (control+c on Windows, command+c on macOS). Pop over to Brewer Fanatic, start typing a comment, and paste your content (control+v on Windows, command+v on macOS).
    Year Age Tm Lg W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF ERA+ FIP WHIP H9 HR9 BB9 SO9 SO/W Awards 2021 30 NYM NL 10 13 .435 3.02 33 33 0 0 0 0 179.0 161 70 60 17 44 2 158 7 0 7 730 133 3.49 1.145 8.1 0.9 2.2 7.9 3.59   2022 31 CHC NL 6 7 .462 3.50 25 25 0 0 0 0 138.2 123 61 54 16 36 0 119 4 2 2 569 117 3.76 1.147 8.0 1.0 2.3 7.7 3.31 Note: you can use this method for most websites and spreadsheet data so whatever table data you have available you need to copy and paste, this method will likely suit your needs.
  13. Brock Beauchamp
    FOCO is a partner with North Side Baseball and support of their products helps support this site; 100% of the funds/materials received from these promotions go directly to our users in the form of prizes and gifts.
    A disappointing finish to the 2023 season indeed, however, a bright future ahead for the Cubbie Blues.  Finishing second in the National League Central and it was a positive season all in all as they posted their best 162-game regular season record since 2018, but not enough to surpass the NL Central champs, Milwaukee Brewers.  Quite a few names on the trade block this offseason including trade deadline acquisition third baseman, Jaimer Candelario, who absolutely tore it up as soon as he touched down in the Windy City.  Cody Bellinger, who has been linked potential trade talks to the New York Yankees or a potential return to the Cubs.  Cubbies have great young talent and potential superstars who broke out in a big way last season and we are hoping to drive the momentum into building for the future in 2024.
    Let’s take a second to celebrate the accomplishments of Dansby Swanson and Ian Happ on capturing a gold glove award this past season with their very own bobbleheads from FOCO to pay tribute to the star players.  These bobbleheads were released by FOCO earlier in the week and are labeled as blackout bobbleheads which means their warehouse is hard at work on creating the molds for these bobbleheads.  Blackout bobbleheads are FOCO’s way of staying in the moment with current events in sports including breakout games, hot market, etc.

    This bobblehead stands proudly at 8 inches tall with 123 units available currently for preorder at a retail price of 75$.  Like all FOCO bobbleheads, each one is handcrafted and painted so no two pieces look exactly the same creating a unique and diverse look to each bobble FOCO releases.  Make sure to click on any one of the links in this article to purchase your Ian Happ & Dansby Swanson Chicago Cubs 2023 Gold Glove Award Bobblehead before they sell out.  Go Cubbies and can’t wait to see these boys rock in 2024!
  14. Brock Beauchamp
    A few people have asked about traffic and I wanted to give a quick update on site activity. The site re-launched on March 26th of this year and all data goes through yesterday, June 21st. Some of these numbers might not look that impressive but keep in mind that for 11 days in early May, we lost the NSBB domain. Two of those days had zero traffic and nine more had roughly 50% normal traffic while we fought to regain control of the primary domain from an unresponsive domain registrar.
    Overall, things are going pretty well in my eyes. Losing those 10+ days kinda knee-capped us in the short-term but we're not in this for the short-term. We lost some really vital SEO priority, regular direct traffic, and social influence that will take time to rebuild. We're still not quite back to where we were just before the domain went FUBAR for those ten days but that will right itself over time if we just keep plugging along.
    Anyway, some numbers. We will be comparing the same time period (Mar 26-June 21) for 2023 and 2022.
    We've seen a significant uptick in users thanks to our outreach with social media, search engine optimization, and use of content aggregators. That has led to a +49.6% growth in users and a +55.4% growth in new user visits.
    Our registrations are lower than I'd like to see but we've seen 32 new registrations to the site compared to only 12 over the same period last year.
    Forum content has been really promising, especially factoring in those lost days of traffic. During that period of time we've seen 11,929 posts created in the forums compared to 10,976 posts over the same period of time last year.
    One of the ways this is happening is changing up how game threads are handled. I hope to return to letting users create them in the future but I need to figure out a better way to manage those before we can do that. It's wayyyyyyy easier for me to create the thread every morning than juggling who has today's thread and making sure it gets on the site in a timely fashion. Don't worry, this isn't permanent, I just need a little head space to re-evaluate how to manage it under the old "rules".
    Anyway, already in 2023 we've seen 30 game threads go over 50 replies. In the entire 2022 season, that happened only ten times. The new system is attracting a lot more commentary, we just need to work in the old flavor while maintaining that uptick in posting.
    That's about all I have right now! Thanks again to everyone who has helped me navigate all the bumps and bruises of the transition and if you ever have input on how to change or improve things, my door is always open!
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