It is our privilege to present the slate of competitors in the first-ever edition of Prospectus Idol. The objective of this competition is to find a new Baseball Prospectus columnist, but it is also an exercise in learning, from the authors for the benefit of the audience (ideally), as well as by the authors and judges from one another. As Kevin Goldstein initially laid out in his introducing the competition and explaining the basic rules for entry, this also represents a potential gateway to work within the baseball industry itself, given the increasing number of former contributors who have already landed jobs with the various clubs.
Clearly, there’s the potential for plenty to be at stake for the contestants; there’s also going to be a lot of opportunities for Baseball Prospectus subscribers in general to make a significant difference. By using your power as the voting public to evaluate and vote for the competitors themselves, you will help shape the future content on the site. In the weeks to come, starting with next week’s first round of competition, we want to encourage you, the voters, to participate actively by commenting on the articles themselves, making a case for which ones you like and why, and helping sustain a debate on the questions these articles will inevitably raise.
Among the hundreds upon hundreds of entries which we ended up reading, there was surprisingly easy agreement on a slate of competitors. However, that is not to say that the process didn’t lead to at least one complication: Jeremy Greenhouse withdrew from the competition due to a previous commitment, the outcome of which he was not aware of when he entered. The Tufts student’s work was deserving and an early pick of the panel of judges, so we felt he was deserving of seeing his work and getting the title of “Finalist.” Greenhouse will not be continuing on in the competition and was replaced in the field (although we’re declining to publicly identify the alternate). We want to congratulate Jeremy and wish him the best of luck with that other things he’s doing
Without more ado, here are the initial competitors, with a little information about them, as well as their winning entries. [Ed. Note: As with all of subsequent Idol articles, these are published with nothing more than formatting of the tables and graphics, but without any corrections or editing.]
Brian Cartwright
Bio and Entry: “Major League Equivalencies”
Jeff Euston
Bio and Entry: “Payroll by Position”
Ken Funck
Bio and Entry: “Seeing is Believing”
Brittany Ghiroli
Bio and Entry: “Rays Relish First Taste of October”
Jeremy Greenhouse
Bio and Entry: “Derek Hollandaise Sauce”
Tyler Hissey
Bio and Entry: “Ibanez Contract Analysis”
Matthew Knight
Bio and Entry: “Back of the Envelope”
Tim Kniker
Bio and Entry: “Does Organizational Depth Really Matter?”
Byron Lescroart
Bio and Entry: “To Pronk, or not to Pronk? That is the Fantasy Question”
Brian Oakchunas
Bio and Entry: “The Gibbons Conundrum”
Matt Swartz
Bio and Entry: “Why Teams Do Not Spend More on the Draft”
Finally, having picked our slate of finalists, we communicated the rules for their first competition:
Greetings finalists! Again, congrats on being one of the final ten. Now, the real work begins. You have to prove yourself to the judges and the voters week in, week out. The winner will have done it ten times, so push yourself, do your best work, and leave it all on the page.
Each week will have a “theme” much like American Idol. We’ll have mentors, guest judges, and some twists that will prove you deserve to stand beside the rest of us at BP. We’ll have your winning entries posted at BP on Sunday, but this is just a “get to know you,” there won’t be voting. We want people to see why we selected you.
This week’s theme is “The Basics.” A couple years ago, we ran a series of “BP Basics” that attempted to explain what we do at BP to some of our newer readers. You’ll be doing the same thing. Craft an article around one statistic or concept and explain it. Use examples. Don’t be condescending, but make it so that your average baseball fan isn’t going to lose it in the calculations. Please limit these to 1500 words, though this is a “soft” limit-you can go a bit over or use graphics without penalty. Use some sense; 1600 words is pushing it, 2000 is going to get sent back.
This article will be due in no later than noon on Friday, and will be posted for reading and voting on Sunday. We’ll announce who’s been voted off on Tuesday afternoon, at which time you’ll get your next assignment. That will then be due the following Friday, and so on.
So … there’s your assignment. Use the tools you have, be creative and good luck.
Thank you for reading
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Most of these guys never had a prime."
- Major League
Just kidding, congratulations everyone!
Guess it doesn't matter, but still something I'm curious about.
I'm not disappointed I wasn't picked...preparing for an upcoming wedding made it a bad time for me anyway. I was not happy with the quality of my submission, or even the topic I chose. Big congrats to the ten above!
I know that when I was in college I was able to spend hours of my day posting in message boards. With a more than full-time job and trying to keep my dog from chewing my shoes, I'd rather spend my time on my baseball blog or writing actual articles than providing comments that 90% of the BP community never reads anyway.
At the chance to become a professional baseball writer, I would make more than enough time to produce quality articles. I would not make that same time to comment dozens of times per week on others unless I really had something to say.
I don't care as much about the frequency of past pre-Idol postings. There are many avid fans who rarely, if ever comment. Whether any of the current finalists fall into that category, that I have no idea. But I would like to have seen some activity from them.
The thing is that BP writers don't just write articles, but reply to subscriptions/customers/us with our questions. The BP writers are not like writers on some other sports sites who are not directly reachable. BP writers are held accountable for what they write, receive feedback, and are very prompt in posting their replies. While I can vote based on article quality and not on comments, I definitely want the winner of this BP Idol contest to be a person as responsive in comments as the other writers here. Those who entered the contest and are familiar with BP and the community should realize a lot of work outside of article-writing is involved. Those who entered BP Idol but hadn't heard about BP before might not be used to the interactive feedback the BP community has required.
(Peanut gallery member formerly known as Oleoay)
That's ok, I've learned for the next time there's a competition like this. I imagine others have too, so the next competition should be fun :)
So I learn for next time, and no sour grapes in the meantime. And hey, there are still honorable mentions possibilities.
The quipper formerly known as Oleoay
(Btw what does PEV mean?)
Maybe it should be Prospectibles... kind of like mandibles, but less chewy.
As an aside, if this is ever repeated, either offering a little more time for creating the qualifying article or disqualifying previously published work would be helpful.
But I definitely know much better for next time and instead of an experience narrative, I'll do a piece which is more analytical/research/reporting based.
Having a winner who was published on mlb.com for writing a team article is kind of like American idol, which I do not watch, let Papelbon on the show to do an Irish dance. It's all good though.
It should be fun, a very diverse group.
This means 1 contestant does an article that does not get published, but they get a vote that is more meaningful. Of course, there may be other considerations I am not aware of.
Though, there is a problem in that we're not voting for which articles to keep, but who should be voted off first... so it's possible that articles perceived as grossly incorrect or flawed might get voted off before the merely boring articles...
So, let the gratuitous article titling begin.
And yeah, I really enjoyed two of them as well(though I still have one or two left to read). Just like Idol though, we'll have to see what comes next.
yes, we will have some honorable mentions up at some point in the near future.
Unfortunately, "interesting" is not something that can be universally quantified and is purely subjective.
That's a good thing. It allows for sites like BP to exist along with other more sites where they focus on human interest stories and everything in between.
I'm a pretty smart guy, but my brain fades as I read numbers over time. My BP Annual is read in small chunks over the course of a month, rather than at one sitting. I hope (and doubt) you have a headline order randomizer, because my experience this week is likely to be my experience every week: The first few articles were very enjoyable, I had to work at the next few, and the last few were more work than I'm used to doing as I read.
yeah, I am disappointed I was not picked.
the one suggestion I would make to BP is that they should have sent an email STATING they received a submission.
that would have been not only courteou but would have left no doubt it was received. as it is, we were left to wonder whether they receieved it. yeah, there might have been a 99% chance they receveived, but they could have taken two seconds to respond ('email receieved').
I DID NOT expect a response to say we were not picked.
that WOULD have been irrelevant as we would know in time anyway.
If the unread (and more importantly the unwritten) articles are as good as the ones I've already scanned through, this will be a tremendous 10 weeks of entertaining and informative baseball writing.
Kudos.
Please, please, please get rid of the 500 word paragraphs that take up a dozen or more lines. Huge paragraphs on the Internet make reading a challenge and the last thing you want to do is make us not want to read your entries.
Stick to paragraphs of two to three sentences (depending on the length of your sentences), so that the paragraphs don't go past four, maybe five lines at most.
It also helps to organize your posts by utilizing headers to help break up the flow of your text.
Of course Baseball Prospectus itself doesn't help the readability of your entries, or any of its posts for that matter. Black text on white, 1.2 leading, huge measures, Arial? Not exactly a typographers dream.
I do not want to be digging through the archives to follow how this contest is going. Have an intern create a sidebar on the main page or something!