March 21, 2005
Revving the Engines
Lost in all the exciting NCAA Tournament action (my bracket is already such a mess that I'm ashamed to have wasted time filling it out) is the fact that Opening Day is right around the corner. In preparation for the glorious end of yet another far-too-long baseball offseason, we are turning it up a notch over at The Hardball Times. As the great Izzy Mandelbaum once said, "It's go time!"
It's not that we haven't been busy during the offseason -- we've had at least one new article each weekday since Doug Mientkiewicz caught the final out of the World Series and I have personally written three dozen columns during that time -- but we are now really getting back into the in-season groove.
Starting today, we are publishing in-depth previews for all 30 teams. I'll be penning the Twins preview, of course, and my fellow THT authors Studes, Steve Treder, Tom Meagher, Larry Mahnken, Ben Jacobs, Brian Gunn, Craig Burley, Brian Borawski, and John Brattain are covering teams between now and Opening Day as well. Plus, we have some great "guest" writers lined up for various teams, beginning with Bradford Doolittle of the Kansas City Star previewing the Royals today.
Also starting today is my third annual Top 50 Prospects series. I'll be counting down from #50 to #1 this week, ranking and discussing 10 prospects each day, culminating with my Top 10 prospects on Friday. Today's installment covers prospects 41-50 and leads off with a certain injured Twins outfielder. The Twins are fairly well represented in the top 50, although not quite as well as in past years.
Last Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of The Hardball Times. On March 15, 2004 Matthew Namee and I welcomed everyone to a new baseball website, introduced THT as "a place where you can come to find great writing about baseball," and promised that we'd "have new content each and every weekday." In the year since, we've published over 1,000 articles and two books, and have seen our daily readership surpass even my most optimistic expectations.
I thought about writing a column about our first year, thanking the readers and everyone else who made it possible, but I decided that a better way to say thank you would be to simply do it all over again for another season. So if you don't already, consider making THT part of your daily reading routine as we unofficially kick off our second year today. We have four articles for you to enjoy, covering a wide variety of topics, and we'll have a whole new set of articles for you tomorrow.
Today at The Hardball Times:
- Top 50 Prospects of 2005: 41-50 (by Aaron Gleeman)
- Five Questions: Kansas City Royals (by Bradford Doolittle)
- Roberto Alomar: A Forgotten Legend? (by Matthew Namee)
- Fantasy: Third Base Rankings (by Ben Jacobs)
