We've come a long way at Baseball Prospectus since Baseball Prospectus 1996 hit a few dozen mailboxes across America and left readers–especially St. Louis Cardinals fans–wanting more. I joined BP in the summer of 1996, when Gary Huckabay wanted a website to support his new book. We were lucky enough to be online during the infancy of the World Wide Web–a term that has gone from cutting-edge to quaintly archaic during our tenure–and thanks to our Premium subscribers, we have been able to build a business around thinking and writing about baseball. Despite a shifting lineup of features and talent over the years, one thing has remained consistent: We've always put interesting and enlightening baseball content–stuff we'd want to read–over everything else.
Today, I'm excited to announce the next step in the development of Baseball Prospectus. Over the past few months, we've been in discussions with a group of baseball enthusiasts who think the same way we do about putting quality content at the top of the list. Late last week, we completed the sale of the company to this group, which is led by Jim Walsh.
Our discussions with Jim and company weren't the first we've had about selling to an outside party. But these talks differed in a lot of ways from the previous discussions; Jim and his partners were readers of the Annual and subscribers to the website from way back (we checked), and they knew what we were about. We didn't have to introduce our operation or explain our vision to them.
The new management team has a lot of experience, enthusiasm, and ideas, and you'll be hearing about all of that soon. But it's also important to highlight the things that will not be changing here at Baseball Prospectus. You've still got the same crack team of writers, editors, and researchers doing their best to occupy your free time. Sam Miller, Harry Pavlidis, Rob McQuown, Daniel Rathman, Russell A. Carleton, Doug Thorburn, the prospect team, the fantasy team, the podcasts, the transaction analyses, and everything else you love about this product will remain intact. We'll be working from the same playbook.
On behalf of everyone here at Baseball Prospectus, I want to thank you again for your readership and support over the years. It has been nearly 20 years (!!) since we started, and we've done some things none of us would have dreamed possible back then, and it is all due to you. I'm really looking forward to seeing what we do in the next 20.
Thank you for reading
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BTW, the Jim Walsh link just leads back to the BP front page. Was there something else you wanted to put there?
Not sure if this changes anything but I can't imagine it would.
Seriously, this is great news for all of you.
Does anyone with an ID in the single-digits post anymore?
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/i/7
(Congrats BP!)
And wow, I knew i'd been here a long time, but didn't realize just how long!
I guess.
Now if, as a fan living in Asia, I could get an e-version of this year's book I'd be set ;)
BP has meant so much to me over the years, from the beginning when I would eagerly read Sheehan, Kahrl, Huckabay, Jazayerli, Davenport, Woolner, Wolverton et al, to the 4 years I was lucky enough to spend with this esteemed group, to seeing the next generation--Miller, Anderson, Lindbergh, many others--come up.
Doubt I'll ever work with a more brilliant group of people than I did at Prospectus.
A million mazel tovs to all.
Will a "Meet Jim Walsh" article arrive soon? Curious to see if the investment results in a site redesign or other additions to BP.