Community Blog Update

Yesterday, we debuted our newest writer here on FanGraphs, as Albert Lyu joined the staff. Albert had been writing at his blog for several months, and after we launched the Community Blog, he began submitting pieces for publication. We liked his work so much that we offered him a job.

The Community Blog has been a great addition to the site. When it went live in mid-May, we weren’t really sure what to expect, honestly. We knew a lot of you guys had some interesting things to say, and we wanted to give you a platform to have your voice heard on a scale that it probably wouldn’t be otherwise. There was so much initial interest that we were overwhelmed with entries, and had a large backlog of quality pieces to publish. Sometimes, they’d be a bit out of date by the time we were able to publish them, simply because there were so many good articles to go through. Then, late July hit, we all got swamped with our own writing, and the Community Blog didn’t receive the attention it needed.

If you submitted something to the Community Blog in late July, consider this an official apology – we dropped the ball on keeping it updated. However, we’ve got a system in place now to ensure that doesn’t happen again, and we’re going to stay on top of things over there going forward. We’re going to make sure that the great submissions you guys are turning in get published in a timely fashion, and we’re going to increase their visibility on the main site. As 2:00 Eastern today, we’ll feature an article from the Community Blog on the FanGraphs home page, and this will become a regular feature of the blog. We want to give these high quality pieces the exposure they deserve, and so we’ll regularly run articles from the Community Blog on the FanGraphs home page, where the amount of eyes that see your work will grow exponentially.

We really want the blog to be a podium for good ideas and interesting research. I think most of us would agree that Albert’s pieces are pretty fascinating stuff, and they bring something new to the table. You don’t have to know how to publish heat maps from R, but I will say that our tendency is going to be to publish topics that have not already been covered. It doesn’t have to original content, as Albert’s posts were copies of things he’d already published on his blog, but the best work comes from original ideas, and that’s really what we’re hoping to shine a spotlight on.

A few of my favorite posts from the Community Blog to date, to kind of give you an idea of what we’d like to see in future submissions:

A New Old Idea For The KC Royals

Dusty Baker And Pitch Counts

Interview: Jed Hoyer

Revisiting A Blown Call From The 2009 Playoffs

The Nationals Unique FanBase

Liberating Liberated Fandom

There’s a wide spectrum of topics in there, and all were handled differently. The key was that they were all original ideas. With the Community Blog, we want to feature the creative ideas that you guys have, and we’re going to work to make sure that they get the exposure they deserve. So, keep those submissions coming, and we’ll keep featuring the best articles right here on FanGraphs.