Good morning crew! After a good night’s sleep, reading the thread, and talking with both Matt and Alex, I want to try something new:
First off, content drives new viewership. There’s just no way around it. If we as a group want this blog to stay around, we have to grow. Unfortunately, the regulars here are getting old. I’m 44 and likely on the younger side of Braves Journal viewers. That’s ok. Our regulars are amazing and I’m grateful to all of you for sticking around. So, here’s the plan:
- For all of our posts that are not Game threads or recaps, we will disable comments and channel all those conversations to “The Bar”. I’m not giving up on the Bar just yet. I think it’s a great concept, but I do believe a 3-ish day limit will suffice before putting up another bar (As stated earlier, the Bar has been inconsistent because of me, not anyone else. today, I’ll put up a new bar, but that bar will be utilized like I’ve discussed above.
- I’ll talk with Matt about the comments. If you all prefer to see the latest comment first, he can fix that to where, when you open the thread, it goes to the bottom.
So…pretty easy. Game threads and recaps will be open to comments. All other pieces will be channeled to the Bar. We will try this and reconvene in another week to chat about how everything is working.
Thanks for your continued patience. I’ll continue to try my best to do 2 things:
- Grow the blog
- Appease the locals.
Comments are open here if you want to say anything else.
Thanks for all your work Ryan.
Wouldn’t tagging concluded threads for search engine optimization (SEO) contribute as much (if not more) to your goal of increasing viewership?
That and cross posting, yes. Working with an SEO person now.
It’s a hard balance to strike, Ryan, and I think you’re doing a great job. I’ve thought in the past that I wish Braves Journal was simply a message board like in the olden days of the internet, but I know that doesn’t bring in the new viewers that every website needs to be successful and keep going. I’ve really enjoyed this rare community here ever since I was a wee lad, and I support any idea that further attempts to foster that community.
In other news, I always knew that when I got my first dog, I would name him Chipper. Chipper, of course, was my favorite baseball player, and I always knew that I would be so blessed to have a “chipper” dog. I basically thought, “If I name him Chipper, I’m sure he will be chipper!” And I got lucky because he was. And he lived up to his namesake. He was clutch. He was always there for me whenever I needed him the way only a dog can. Every day was a walk-off homer to my heart. He was athletic. He loved chasing the baseballs and tennis balls. He was a dude’s dog like Chipper Jones was a dude’s dude.
Chipper the dog got cancer, and he finally started showing symptoms this past Saturday. I took him in on Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning, he was gone. I have his Atlanta Braves collar on my desk along with a baseball he would chew on every now and then. I’ll watch the game today on my couch with my other dog remembering that Chipper loved sitting on the couch with me as I watched Braves baseball. They really are man’s best friend, aren’t they?
Beautiful, Rob. I’m sorry for your loss.
That’s tough.
If possible, can entries into areas where comments reside “remember” where last you entered and return each party individually to there? I know sometimes programming is easy, and sometimes hard. The longer the thread, the more important that is.
I will talk with Matt and let you know.
All I want for this team going forward is a crooked number in every first inning. Doesn’t seem so hard so far.
Yeah, whoever decided to score fast and first deserves a promotion!
Hibernation mode doesn’t seem as bad as long as they keep holding on.
Good job on the site, gentlemen
I’ll gripe about the site layout/functions every day if it means we play like this. Yeah, there’s probably no causal relationship here that is making the Braves play well – but you can’t prove that there isn’t! Lol. Thanks to everyone working on the blog to make it better. I don’t want to complain, I want to provide constructive feedback – sometimes that’s a fine line.
Matty O!
They just showed the replay of the throw from Acuna, apparently The runner is sitting today because not enough effort on the play. That is terrible managing. The runner was not jogging, plenty of effort, and got thrown out by a lot.
He should have never been sent and I don’t think the runner expected to be sent.
Yeah, completely unnecessary for the manager to call him out publicly. He wasn’t dogging it. That is just not something a new manager can do if he wants to be successful.
There are pretty much 3 reasons why you would do that publicly.
1. You’ve been calling him out privately, and it isn’t working.
2. You want to send a message to the whole team.
3. You’re an ass.
He got thrown out by a lot on a base hit to the OF with 2 outs. If you don’t score there it’s because you forgot how many outs there were and didn’t get a huge secondary lead and run on contact. I’d bench him too. Plus said runner seems like a giant douche, so I’d bench him for that too.
I wonder if Marmol will criticise Goldy for that play at the plate.
what was that play?
As has been said… sometimes it’s not who you play, but when you play them. Glad we’re playing the Cardinals right now.
I could be wrong, but I can’t imagine they’ll look this bad (or fundamentally dysfunctional) for the entire season.
Stomp ’em while the stompin’s good & rack up the W’s.
First, thanks for keeping the place growing and keeping up with the masses at the same time, Ryan. The game threads and recap threads really are the thing that drives readership/views. I think the hybrid approach should work well enough.
Second, so sorry to hear about your Chipper, Rob. When we own pets, we always make a bargain assuming we will outlive them but it never makes it easier. My boy Max is 14 and a half right now and starting to show signs of slowing down. I’m not ready for that day but I know it will come.
Finally, yes this scoring lots and early seems to be working out well for us. Let’s keep it up! Plus Elder seems to be making a case for himself today. Nice.
Thank you, AL. I got 9 1/2 years out of him. He was German Shepherd/Terrier mix. He certainly would have had a few to several more years if the cancer never came for him, so it’s hard not to feel a little short-changed. I can live with outliving my dog, but it’s hard to know that he didn’t quite meet his life expectancy. Thank you for the kind words.
How about Elder?
ububba said it well that this team is definitely dysfunctional, but it also doesn’t hurt that we’re getting good pitching and Olson is red hot right now. Olson is singlehandedly buying us a liiiiittle more time to decide what the hell to do with Ozuna. If he’s not gonna walk like Kevin Youkilis and all of his hits are home runs, then he better hit a lot of home runs and he ain’t gonna do that.
A website question for the admins and regulars: I have the box checked to save my name and email, but I keep having to re-enter it. I deleted cookies for the site. Any ideas? Did anyone else have this problem and were able to fix it?
Same here, it doesn’t remember
Tried everything, have to re-enter as well.
Y’all, Mr. Michael Harris II just made ONE HELL of a catch on Paul Goldschmidt at the wall.
I’m sure glad Michael Harris is on our team. Wotta catch.
Rob,
Same issue w/ me.
Same. I’ve tried it on multiple devices, both PC and mobile.
I am once again calling for Marcell Ozuna to be launched into the sun.
Yep, same issue. Launch him.
Luplow got claimed by the Jays. That whole series of transactions is just so baffling to me. Why give him guaranteed money if you’re just going to give up on him after two weeks to run the corpse of Kevin Pillar out there instead?
I mean, we’re not paying the guaranteed money anymore, the Jays are. We paid him the guaranteed money to try to stop people from claiming him when we sent him down.
Mets bite the dust again, get swept in Milwaukee on a walk-off HR.
I’d say our mid-week Midwestern series worked out a little better.
recapped