Here on the eve of Opening Day, I wanted take a moment and give a brief welcome to the new visitors to the site. March 2008 has seen more visits than any other month except October 2006. Also, I’ve been doing some tweaking to the site over the last month that I wanted to share with long time readers.
Continue reading DTW Orientation
Category Archives: Site News
DTW Downtime
A late note, DTW will be down for at least a couple hours starting at midnight tonight. This downtime could be at least 12 hours though. I wish I could say it was to do a big honkin’ upgrade with all kinds of new features. Sadly it is my web host doing some stuff that will probably make things better on some level – but not on any level you’ll probably notice.
I full expect this downtime to coincide with some big breaking news.
DTW upgrades and such
You may have noticed some tweaks around the site. I’m in the process of fixing some stuff that’s been bugging me for awhile. The changes aren’t done, but I wanted to point out what has happened in case I broke something along the way. I know enough about CSS to screw stuff up, but not enough to be able to make stuff pretty.
Here’s what I’ve done so far:
Continue reading DTW upgrades and such
Detroit Tigers Weblog 2007 Year in Review
A look back at the year that was 2007 here at the Detroit Tigers Weblog…
January
- The Tigers inked Timo Perez and Bobby Seay. Seay would turn out to be pretty good while who could have fathomed the consternation Timo would cause.
- I began writing more than most cared to know about first pitch swinging and other stuff about plate appearances.
- Tigerfest is a sell out, and really cold.
- Jim Leyland calls out Neifi Perez, in what would be the beginning of a tumultuous year.
The Hardball Times Annual
Every week leading up to Christmas I’m going to have a post that details a terrific gift idea. Okay, not really. But I am going to plug the 2008 Hardball Times Baseball Annual!. Every year it is an incredible blend of commentary and hard core number crunching, so it has something for everyone – or at least baseball fans.
This year there is a little extra incentive for Tigers fans because there is an in depth profile of Detroit General Manager and President Dave Dombrowski. Oh yeah, and I wrote it so you better buy it.
But seriously, there is a ton of great stuff and Dave ‘studes’ Studeman runs it all down in the link above. There are pieces by Will Leitch, MGL, Tangotiger, Bill James, John Dewan, Dave Cameron, Brian Gunn, and the list goes on and on.
And when I look at the list I can’t figure out how the hell I got in there, but I’m flattered and honored to be included with such an wonderful group. So thanks to Studes and Brian for inviting me to contribute.
As for how to get the book, you can pre-order it from Acta Sports. This method actually generates the most revenue for the Hardball Times site, which is a good thing. The guys aren’t getting rich off of this. They have to pay the authors, and all those stats that they present for free actually cost money. This helps in a big way to fund the site. Of course if you don’t want to buy the book, or want to get it from Amazon
Thanks for allowing me this brief commercial. I now return you to your regularly scheduled Kenny Rogers speculation (the team and Rogers are negotiating again).
DTW in the offseason
Just a quick note of thanks to everyone here. Thanks to everyone who participated in the comments which kept the site going when I was too worn out too. Thanks to all of the readers and subscribers who kept coming back day in and day out. The site averaged over 1000 visitors a day throughout the season, and there are now over 700 subscribers to the RSS feed. So thanks for visiting, reading, participating, and telling your friends.
As for the site in the offseason, things won’t stop around here. There will be plenty of news and I’ll do my best to be on top of it. I’ll also be slicing and dicing the past season a number of different ways including a detailed look at many of the key players from 2007. I also have a database full of enhanced gameday data to work with and hopefully I’ll dig up something interesting.
I also hope to do some organizational analysis, and will be keeping tabs on the fall and winter leagues. And as I have the past couple offseasons I’ll try and arrange an interview or two.
So keep coming back this winter, and I encourage you to subscribe so you won’t miss anything new.
Now with all that said, this coming week will be light as I finish up another project. But I do have one site enhancement already in place. I’m compiling a “Best of” page with links to some of my favorite posts. So yes, I’m pitching re-runs to you.
Site upgrade
A couple of site tidbits I wanted to make you aware of.
First, I upgraded the site this evening to WordPress 2.3. Everything went pretty smooth…I think. If you come across funky-ness or broken stuff, please let me know. And this of course would be the reason the site was unreachable or serving up a bunch of error messages tonight.
Second, I made the site more mobile friendly through the use of a handy plug-in. So if you access it through a cell phone, blackberry, pda, etc. you’ll only get the content know. And by content I mean posts and comments. No waiting for a header or sidebar to load and no excessive scrolling.
I also have a couple of enhancements planned for the offseason, but those will have to wait for the time being.
Blogger night at the ballpark
On September 11th Comerica Park will be overrun by bloggers. Okay, so maybe the park won’t be overrun, but one or two rows in the the pavilion will be chuck full of us. Myself, Ian from Bless You Boys, Eric from D-Town Baseball, Samara from Roar of the Tigers, Greg Eno from several places, Matt Wallace from Take 75 North, and Brian from Tigerblog will be crashing the back end of the doubleheader and there’s room for you.
Due to lukewarm demand when I raised the question around the all star break, I’ve only held a small block of tickets and those will be first come first serve. If we have lots more DTW readers interested in coming, let me know and we can try and increase our ticket numbers.
The cost is $15 and that gets you a pavilion ticket. The actual cost of the ticket is $13 due to a group discount, but with a stamp, an envelope, and paypal fees it comes in somewhere between $14 and 15 and I just rounded up. The extra spare change will be my handling charge and maybe we can scrape together enough to send Rod Allen some pink cotton candy.
If you’re interested, use the contact form or email me. I’ll respond with payment instructions. I’ll have the tickets in hand on Tuesday or Wednesday and will promptly mail them out when I get a)the tickets and b)your payment.
Hope you can make it, and hope I don’t get stuck holding any unused tickets.
Happy Birthday to DTW
Is it okay to refer to DTW in the third person? I know it’s not really a person, but after 6 years it feels like it has a life of it’s own. That’s right, today marks the 6th birthday of the blog.
I’m not going to say a whole lot since I just did a “site news” post. But six years in the blog-o-sphere is a pretty good run and I’m quite proud of what the site has become.
Let’s talk about me
With no baseball today, I wanted to do a little housekeeping and update you with some site news.
Tweaking the look
First of all I made a small tweak in the template. The content use to size down for an 800×600 resolution. This was kind of a pain in terms of the stylesheet and getting things to display properly. And today I noticed that in IE 6 the display was broken due to my post last night (but I can’t quite figure out why). So I checked my site stats and less than 5% of visitors are on monitors that small. So resizing is no more. You’re at a fixed width now which looks okay for 1024×768 resolutions and up. It will allow me to make the charts and tables a little bigger and easier to see. I hope I haven’t put anyone out by doing this.
Paying the bills
Second, I’ve added a couple more advertisements. I’m going to tweak the placements and watch performance. I don’t want to clutter the site too much with that stuff, and if there isn’t a worthwhile payout I’ll just take them down. But if you are in the market for tickets to sold out games, feel free to use the StubHub link or purchase from one of the sponsors on the side.
You wanna hang out?
Third, I was pondering a DTW and all other Tiger blog get together at Comerica Park. Many of us bloggers got together last year and had a great time. But I was wondering if there’s interest on the part of the readership here to do such a thing. If you’re interested leave a comment or use the contact form. You’re not committing to anything at this time, I just want to get a ballpark number of people interested in going to the ballpark.
Delicious Links
Fourth, for the last month or so you have probably noticed the link posts that come up a couple days a week. I’m using del.icio.us to help me out with it. When I see something I find interesting, I can quickly bookmark it. Then once a day del.icio.us will take all those bookmarks and create a post. I don’t get to provide a lot of context, but it is a really quick way for me to share stuff that I think you might find interesting. Plus, all those bookmarks are then available for everyone to view or search at del.icio.us/detroittigersweblog.
You talkin’ to me?
Finally I wanted to give a shout out to the most frequent commentors here. Your top 10 (not counting me of course):
- Adam (479)
- Kathy (473)
- Mike R (455)
- Anne (260)
- Joey C. (180)
- stephen (173)
- Kyle J (142)
- Dave Wagner (132)
- Kevin in Austin (126)
- David (124)
Thanks to not only the top 10 here, but to everyone who helps keep the discussion flowing here. It’s a big help and motivation to me to have this much participation. While we don’t always agree, I appreciate the discussions and the fact that we can keep it civil. So thank you.
Stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere
You may have noticed I’ve been doing a little something different with link posts. I’ve been posting things to del.icio.us throughout the day, and then del.icio.us will dump them all into a blog post. It’s nice and convenient for me, but I don’t have as much room to comment. So tonight I’ll go old school.
Schedule Changes
The Tigers have had a couple start times change, and had a couple of their rainout make ups added. The May 26th game against Cleveland and the June 23rd game against the Braves have been moved from 7:00pm to 3:55pm and are now part of the Fox National package. The June 16th game originally scheduled for 3:55 on Fox was moved to 7:00pm and will be on FSN Plus.
The Toronto rain out/cold out will be made up on September 10th at 7:00pm and will be televised on FSN Detroit.
The White Sox rain out will be made up as part of a day-night doubleheader with a 2:00pm first pitch on July 24th. It’s in the middle of a string of 16 consecutive games without and off day, so an additional starter will need to be called up.
Bondo ready to return
Danny Knobler reports that Jeremy Bonderman looks likely to return to the rotation on Friday night. The Tigers are already doing enough mixing and matching with their arms, so getting things back to normal will be nice.
Infante to change at-bat music
From the same Knobler piece, we find out Placido Polanco’s and Omar Infante’s at-bat music. I’ve long said that my favorite at-bat music for any Tiger is Infante’s so finding out artist (Tono Rosario) was great. But finding out that Infante planned to change it was disappointing to say the least.
Granderson doesn’t need no stinkin’ batting average
Beyond the Boxscore has been handing out weekly awards and last week Curtis Granderson won the Batting Average is For Wussies award on the strength of a 975 OPS despite a meager 250 batting average. That’s been par for the season for Granderson. Curtis is 7th in slugging and tied for 2nd in extra base hits. What’s new is that he’s started to walk. After only 6 walks in April, he’s already at 7 in May.
Final Cut DVD Winner
Now that everything has shaken out with the roster, I’m happy to announce that Lee Panas is winner of the Tigers World Series DVD in the Final Cut contest.
There were 19 people who guessed a “correct” answer. When the Tigers cut the roster down on Monday to 28, any of the 11 players let go were eligible for the drawing. The remaining 3 (Campusano, Colon, Giarratano) were placed on the DL which doesn’t count as a cut.
I “drew” (when I say drew I actually typed all the responses into Excel and used the rand() function) Lee’s name, and trust me that it is just coincidence that Lee is a fellow blogger at Detroit Tiger Tales.
Thanks to all who entered. If you didn’t win, you can still order one through the A & E Store.