A New Beginning...

We promised to let you guys know soon about any changes going on at The Platoon Advantage. Today is one such day, though there will be others to follow soon. We're excited to announce that, beginning this morning, you can find our work on Baseball Prospectus once a week for the rest of 2012, and, if we don't burn the place down, hopefully more often after that. We all have been reading BPro for years, love the strong writing and analysis that they do, and were incredibly flattered when they asked us to come on board.

Today Bill starts us off by writing about allowing baseball fandom to trump numbers, and allowing those numbers to complement baseball fandom. A fitting introduction to our general philosophy here on TPA.

As for TPA, it's not going away. Our work is going to continue to appear here regularly, and will coninue to be the strong mix of history, stats, and current events, covered with the passion and irreverence that you've come to expect. And we'll keep reveling in the minutia that makes the game we love so special. Thanks to all of you for reading.

Peter Abraham Is Not a Plagiarist, But He Is An Insufferable Douchebag

By The Common Man

Douchebag

One last navel-gazing post this week, before we get back to business here on The Platoon Advantage. Some of you have asked who the writer is who, through his threats and general complaints, got us removed from the SweetSpot Network, despite the fact that seemingly everyone (including several writers at ESPN) thought our Bagwell and “plagiarism” series was excellent.  As Bill said earlier, we don't want to personally attack writers for their baseball opinions.  But when a writer reveals himself to be a jackass through his words and actions, we feel somewhat differently about the whole thing.

So, at the urging of at least one national writer, who referred to our culprit as “a complete asshole” and revealed that “even people who work with him/by him…loathe him,” we’re happy to announce that, when you see us all driving shiny new Camaros over the next few months (our swift departure from ESPN has revealed a great deal of interest in our services and our blog, as it turns out), you have The Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham to thank for it.

Goodbye SweetSpot Network, Hello Big Scary World

By The Common Man and Bill

The eagle-eyed  reader may have noticed that the ESPN banner no longer appears above, or that The Platoon Advantage is no longer found on the ESPN’s roster of SweetSpot Network blogs. Indeed, TPA’s affiliation with the WWL has come to an end. ESPN has always been particularly sensitive to media criticism, and our ongoing series of posts regarding Jeff Bagwell and the Hall of Fame were sort of the last straw for the editors, who pulled the plug on us.

Eh, these things happen. We had a very nice almost-18 month run at the Network, during which time we accomplished a lot as a blog, posting daily recaps of new material from around the network, organizing a network-wide Expansion Draft, and providing content for the ESPN SweetSpot Blog (which we did for free, by the way).  We also added two terrific writers to our staff, in Mark Smith and Jason Wojciechowski.  We are incredibly proud of the high quality work that we’ve put out in that time, and marginally proud of the ‘meh’ quality work we did.  But still and all, for the most part, it was a positive experience.

Housecleaning

First of all, The Common Man and Bill want to offer our hearty congratulations to the San Francisco Giants and all of their fans. Having lived through a couple World Championships of our own, TCM and Bill remember the euphoria that comes in the afterglow, and don’t begrudge anyone that.  Go nuts.

So ends the first season for us at The Platoon Advantage. And, frankly, it’s been a rousing success. Traffic is up. The SweetSpot Network has made important strides. We've made terrific friends, including our euphoric Giants blogger pals at Bay City Ball and 8th Inning Weirdness, our pal Jason Rosenberg and his band of merry bloggers at It's About the Money, Stupid, our fellow Twins-wonk Nick Nelson and the terrific Nick's Twins Blog, and all the other terrific guys on the SweetSpot Network (including our proud papa and benefactor, Rob Neyer). 

And the content has been, if we may say so, excellent. We've expanded the site, posting more often about more topics.  We've branched out into podcasting with our good friend Larry Granillo, of Wezenball.com.  And we've debuted new features that have generated a lot of excitement on excellent sites like Rob Neyer's Sweetspot blog, HardballTalk.com,  Baseball Think Factory, and others.  We are proud of the work we’ve done, and plan to keep providing you with excellent analysis of baseball’s past, present, and future on a regular basis. We’re going to keep posting, so we hope that you’ll keep visiting.

There is one quick programming note for this offseason that is important to keep in mind, however. We’re scaling back The SweetSpot Roundups until Pitchers and Catchers report. Reflecting what we think will be fewer posts around the Network, starting next week we’re cutting back from five days a week to two, with an option to increase to three if it looks like we’re missing things. This will make our wives happy, for one thing. For now, the Roundups will occur on Tuesdays and Fridays.

We have a lot of thanking that we'll want to do individually for all the success, but most of all we want to thank the readers who have continued to visit The Platoon Advantage for the fresh, reasoned perspective, historical context, and occasionally obnoxious third-person rambling that it brings.  We built this thing they call blog because we wanted to connect with smart, funny, and active readers, and I think we've done that.  We hope to do it a lot more this offseason and all through the 2011 season and we want you to be with us the whole way.  So if you have suggestions for improving the site, we're all ears.  Send us an email or a tweet, and we'll look into it, steal your idea, and maybe give you credit if we're feeling generous (though we'll definitely each send you a personalized thank you email that you can print out, frame, and put on your wall).

In the meantime, sit yourselves down around the old Hot Stove, because we’ve got at least 142 free agents to pour through, and God knows how many trades to make fun of over the next four months.  Everybody back to work!

Fanning the Flames

First off, The Common Man is incredibly honored to play a small role in today's AaronGleeman.com posting. The Common Man thanks Aaron profusely, and welcomes any and all who meandered over from AG.com, one of the gold standards of personal blogging. For those who are new to the area, The Common Man.com is a site dedicated to men and to manliness. Here, The Common Man espouses on sports, culture, politics, beer, family, and other things that men should care about. Explosions are few and far between, but always a possibility:



See? Anyway, The Common Man has a deep deep affinity for all things Twins-related and can often be found blogging about baseball. For instance, check out his book review of Chris Aschburner's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Heart-Pounding, Jaw-Dropping, and Gut-Wrenching Moments from Minnesota Twins History, his treatise on young Jericho Wright and little league baseball, and his discussion of heroes and George Brett. And please, come back for the rest. The Common Man is a gracious host and looks forward to getting to know all of you.

State of the Blog

The Common Man is celebrating tonight, even though the Twins aren't in first place. Yesterday, The Common Man was part of the weekly Manival, a carnival of blogs by, for, and/or about men at Discovering Dad.com. It was an honor to be included, and The Common Man tips his hat to the other fine men who made this week's list. The day saw a huge uptick in traffic here, and The Common Man is grateful for each and every new reader. He invites you to come back often, as he updates the site with new material daily (and sometimes more than that).

For you newbies, this is a site about men and the things men should care about. The Common Man is tired of Hollywood and Fox News and French make-up designers telling him what manliness is. No, in true manly style, The Common Man, a real man if there ever was one, will tell you what manliness is. And what men should do. And watch. And say. And how they should feel (numb is good, or at least faking numbness and fear that you're not stifling your emotions enough).

It's a place where you'll find posts about family, beer, stupid things men do (because to do things without thinking is manly), sports, film, tv, politics, and, of course, explosions. Big ones. The Common Man looks forward to interacting with each and every one of you. So surf around a while. Read some stuff. And come back soon. And thanks for making your way here in the first place.

Rodney: The Century Mark

Hey everybody!

Rodney here, The Common Man's official web lackey. I just had to take a break from my morning man meditation when I heard the news. I am so pleased to announce to you all that The Common Man.com has reached an important milestone. As of this morning, we've had 100 unique visitors come to read the wisdom of The Common Man. I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty good start considering that we've been doing this for about two weeks. I told the boss about it, and he seemed pleased. He may have even smiled. But don't tell him I told you, since, as he taught me, real men are stoic above all things.

Anyway, I'm sure he would want me to thank everyone who's visited so far and to encourage you to keep coming back every day for more new content and more deep insight into the mind of the ultimate man. And tell your friends, and neighbors, and neighbors friends and friends neighbors all about us...er, him.

The boss himself will be back this afternoon to deliver his review of Batman. I hope it's good. He won't let me see it before him, because he doesn't want to hear any spoilers, and I just can't stop my yammerin', as he told me yesterday (he wants to make me into the strong, silent type). Anyway, I'm going to get back to my meditation. Today, I'm contemplating an important question: If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, how fast must the majestic, manly lumberjack who cut it down with one swing of his mighty axe have been to get far enough away?