Lefty Specialist

They're standard team sites. Articles, analysis, I'm sure there's a game preview and re-cap in season. They look to be clean and well-run. Yes, there are ads, but they don't seem overly intrusive. The forums are....eh. Of course, what can you talk about if you're a Marlins fan? We could probably provide a little je ne sais quoi if we were the Wal-Mart greeters at the new forum. It's inevitable that the CPFishness would get diluted over time. That's life.

I'm glad I taped it. I fast forwarded until there was a hit. So I was done in about 5 minutes.

I belong to a very esoteric collectors organization. They have a website and had a forum that had grown moribund after a few years. I'm also a member of a forum run by an outside group who was a little more 'out there' than the organization. Over time, the organization realized the worth of them and brought them into the tent. The forum link from the main organization's page linked to the outsider forum as they got far more traffic/engagement. It was a win-win for both. The organization didn't have to run the forum, and the outside group benefited from more eyeballs. The outsider group retained their name and you can access them totally separate from the organization. Now I can pretty much guess the answer here, but is that a possibility in this circumstance? Name changing would probably be neccessary, but does this kind of hybrid solution work?

I think BatMags chased away more than a few people all by himself over the years. Just saying.

Ben Rortvedt. Ahead of Senger on the depth chart and Alvarez and Torrens are bound to be hurt at some point in the season. Plus, I chuckle at the thought of Ralph Kiner trying to pronounce his name.

It's a fair point about growth. How does that happen? How did it work with TalkSox, and especially the Padre site you stood up from scratch? Do you staple fliers to telephone poles over faded pictures of lost cats? Or is there a process for stable growth? It's one thing to build a nice, shiny site, but it's another to populate it. The 40 or less of us will not keep the clicks coming. You seem willing to lose money on the site at least initially, so I gotta ask, who are your 'angel investors'? Online media is a money losing business, generally speaking. I know of sites much larger than DiomondCentric that are constantly begging for money or hiding things behind a subscriber wall. Now if you're doing this all on your own, kudos. But usually there's somebody with deep pockets somewhere. Again, no disrespect intended. But you're asking us to move from our old comfortable house where the plumbing leaks on occasion and the sidewalk is cracked to a new over-55 community that promises pickleball and a nice clubhouse. We wonder about the Homeowner's Assocoation and where the hidden pitfalls are.

Brock, you would have loved BatMags (not). I share some of Cowtipper's concerns. We've tried over the years to increase our numbers with little to no success. But giving control over to someone, no matter how well-intentioned, whose aim is to drastically increase the numbers necessarily means that the few dozen or so of us will be drowned out. You mentioned TalkSox as a comparison. They have an off-season discussion that goes for 165 pages. I mean, that's great engagement but it's an awful lot. I understand it's a business, but for us that's like going from a swimming pool to the Atlantic Ocean. It's still water, and you can still swim in it, but it's orders of magnitude bigger. Ben Grimm and Edgy are far too modest. This place would have died long ago without them. And yeah, pretty much anything is tolerated, but we're all adults here and we self-regulate pretty well. There are no teenagers or mouth-breathers here because they wouldn't be able to keep up with the bon mots and witty banter. That said, I'm not overly concerned about mods and admins, as long as they're not on Trump's payroll. However, every year our numbers do get a little smaller. I'm fully aware that it's not sustainable forever. I'm just not sure what's better; slow death by attrition or marching into something that can't be 'ours' by any definition. I'd probably go there if it comes to that but I also expect I'd eventually drift away because it just won't be the same.

Looked at some of the other sites including TalkSox and Fish on First, and I have a few questions. There's obviously a lot of articles being written on a daily or almost-daily basis. I know we have a couple of talented writers on this site, but that's a lotta work. Where would those articles (and videos) come from? I see that some general baseball articles appear on multiple forums, which is stretching your content wisely. I assume you're paying your contributors (and no, I'm not looking for a job). Does Raptive give you the ability to fund this site or are you eventually going to have subscriptions to access all content? I saw an uncomfortable number of Dulcolax ads, but at least they're not pop-ups that obscure content. You mentioned that the Blue Jays site is a revenue drag. Any thoughts of shutting it down? Are you willing to tolerate relentless snarky comments about 'Building the Ultimate Baseball Team with Anime Characters'? Because, dude, seriously... Back in the day I was on Mets Online. It got taken over by MLB, which turned it into one of its cookie-cutter sites and all the good people fled. I've also been on a Mets site that started promisingly but gradually withered away as fewer and fewer people participated. This site in its current incarnation has lasted a really long time- I've been here 15 years and I'm a noob. Folding it into something bigger (or using it as a base for something bigger) would inevitably dilute what we have here. Maybe if we all put asterisks next to our usernames we could find each other in the bigger Pool. So I don't know what the right answer is. Might just be my inbreeding.

So I took a stroll over to Brewersfanatic.com. It's a nice clean professional site, well laid out with articles and forums and such. There's advertising, but that's to be expected. The look and feel are very similar to Amazin' Avenue, an SBNation site I glance at occasionally. I guess my question is, what do you want with US? This is a small forum of 'inbred hill people' Met fans. You could probably stand up a Mets site on your own without our help. Just curious. Are there other groups of inbred hill people you're looking to merge us with? In something with 4000 visitors daily, we'd quickly be swallowed up. Sounds like a (Butch) Hobson's choice, either this forum withers away or becomes a part of MegaMetfans.com. If I'm reading any of this wrong, let me know. Not looking to bruise any feelings, just trying to figure out exactly what's going on.

Love the security guy with a well-chewed stogie.

This is a rather small community. I think that people here would like it to be larger, but not sure there's a lot of sentiment to turn it into a team-specific super-community. Just my .02. How many active users do these sites have?

Baseball captains are kinda dumb. So I have no problem with this.

Lindor plays through pain, as we well know, so this had to be pretty disabling. I'm betting he'll be back on or ahead of schedule.

Kimbrel won't make it out of spring training. He's done.

Colser? Williams, with Weaaver as the backup if he falters, just like the Yanx last year. I'm definitely in the 6-starter camp. Plus you know someone will get injured, making the point moot. I think Benge starts in Syracuse, even with a hot spring training. If he's tearing it up in Syracuse he'll be up, but I think he needs to prove himself at that level first. Baty is the Opening Day right fielder, with heavy doses of Taylor (unfortunately). Semien's your leadoff guy in Lindor's absence. Bichette has to protect Soto. What'll be more interesting is who plays shortstop every day? I would guess they don't want to move Bichette of third while he's still adapting to the position.

Completely purged from my memory banks.

Soto's not a good outfielder, so having him in left is better than having him in right. I would suspect Baty will get most of the time in RF if Benge isn't ready.

I wouldn't have minded Ozuma as the full-time DH, but you would have had to trade Vientos to make that work.

Benge has to start the season at Syracuse. He was promoted fast last year and hadn't mastered that level. Granted, it was a short stint, so all the more reason to keep him there and let him fight his way to the majors. Mauricio, as mentioned they went out of their way not to burn that last option in 2025 so they could use it in 2026. He really needs regular playing time, and '25 was a lost year for him. The way things have shaken out you have to think Baty starts the season in left with Taylor as the defensive caddy and Vientos is the DH. Not sure how well this is going to work out, but that seems to be the plan. Melendez doesn't seem to be that good defensively and he can't hit, so .... Morabito, Brujan and Young are pocket lint. This is a bad bench, and it only improves if Benge or Williams fight their way onto the roster.

Seems to play the outfield, which I guess is where they'll put him. Another head-scratcher from Stearns.

I saw GKR in a forum in Morristown last night. They were great, as you would expect. They talk together so easily it was almost like watching a game. The moderator (an admitted Red Sox fan) would ask a question and they would just go on and on. In 90 minutes she asked like 5 questions. Ron and Keith worship the ground Gary walks on. They hated the way the '25 season ended, night after night of bad pitching. They are cautiously optimistic about 26 but think the Braves will be better. They think the Phillies have taken a step back. They were all surprised the Diaz deal didn't get done. Keith lamented the loss of Alonso, Gary thought they were never going to re-sign him. They all love the Bichette signing. They all like the pitch clock and hate the extra-inning rules. (Join the club.) They said they had to change the way they do a game because of the reduced time between pitches. And when asked about Pete Rose, Keith and Ron chose their words carefully but think he should be in. Gary seemed a pretty firm no. A lot of fun, and a reminder that P & C are two weeks away....

Considering Stearns wanted a defense-forward team, 3 players (Bichette/Baty/Polanco) will be playing positions they have never or barely ever played. That's concerning. I admire the optimism. Wish I could share it.

Wilmer played a lot of first base for the Giants. Just saying.

No-risk signing. Anything he can give you is a bonus.

Or Jarred Kelenics.