Top Ten Baseball Blogs

by Dex on Mar 26, 2007 8:53 AM PDT in News Comment 15 comments

As part of my day job, I do online analysis for sports teams, players, firms, all that good stuff. One side product of the work is attempting to find out what sports blogs are the most influential. Taking into account all kinds of different factors, here's what analysts (me with some help from the boys) at Sports Media Challenge have identified as the Top 10 Baseball Blogs on the internets right now...

Let me just say that it's kind of a pain in the butt to rank this sort of thing. These rankings weigh active community really heavily. It's not just a straight traffic ranking or subjective review, though all that was included. We also tried to get a good idea of what blogs had active communities and not just in terms of number of comments, but number of unique commentators versus how much back and forth the commentary there was. Like if you have a site that gets tons and tons of comments, then that's great, but if we're detecting that most of the comments are one off types of comments with little give and take, then that doesn't count as much as fewer commentators who are actively communicating with each other. Sites with Open Game threads thus got maybe a larger boost than what some might seem reasonable, but we're always trying to improve what we're doing.

What do you think? Is there something that I just completely missed? Just to let you guys know, Aaron Gleeman, Beyond the Box Score, Fire Joe Morgan, and Detroit Tigers Weblog where blogs that were just outside of the Top 10.

Also, I tried a bunch of different weights to see what it would take to get Gaslamp Ball in the top 10 and the only thing I could do to get us in among the top dogs was if I really graded hair posts, Canseco non-baseball posts and unicorn baseball posts heavily. Cest la vie. Maybe the world isn't ready for us yet.

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Hmmm...

How does one interpret a blog's influence? It wouldn't occur to me that most of these blogs listed are influencinging any one. They're mostly just collecting news about certain subjects and highlighting the most interesting stories. Basically it's the same news with slightly different commentary.

Whereas a blog like firejoemorgan, is actively offering a different type of analysis that's not readily available anywhere else. I'm surprised it wasn't higher.

by pjbno4 on Mar 26, 2007 11:18 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Fire Joe Morgan and Influence

When we're looking at "influence" we're looking at influence among other sports and baseball blogs. So we factor in how much a site gets linked to by other sites, how it factors with existing influence measurements. Basically, what we're trying to capture is sites that don't just highlight the news, but get linked to as a news source option.

Fire Joe Morgan is great and scored really well in terms of quality, but was one of the sites that didn't have as strong a community. That's not to say that people aren't reading it and don't consider themselves members of the "Fire Joe Morgan Community", just that it's not as active or evident as other communities.

All that being said, it's not a perfect system, but I'm hoping it's better than what's out there, which is usually either straight traffic numbers, purely subjective lists or online polls.

by Dex on Mar 26, 2007 1:10 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

of course...

...it's hard to foster a sense of "community" when you don't allow people to add their own comments. We can't be members, only observers.

by pjbno4 on Mar 26, 2007 2:14 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I am not surprised at tha A's site

Given my slight (ahem) obsession with Piazza, I have been over there a few times now and was just floored with the activity! Shoot, their first open game thread for Spring Training drew over 200 comments!! We only got close to that during Dodger games in September!!

Christina

by Christina on Mar 26, 2007 11:48 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Subjective stuff like this

is always difficult. I think, other than Fire Joe Morgan, no other blog makes me laugh more than Gaslamp. That's something there.

Viva El Birdos is a great blog too, but it's definitely a more serious gathering spot. Gaslamp is perfect for the semi-serious/casual baseball fan.

by thenerdhater on Mar 26, 2007 12:23 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

You're definitely right

I wouldn't necessarily want to give up on the sorts of stuff we do at Gaslamp just to try to get onto lists like this. That's not to say that the blogs on the list aren't excellent... Just that Jbox and I are primarily doing this for our own enjoyment and we'd lose some of that if we tried to do all of the things that a "good" baseball blog was "supposed" to do.

by Dex on Mar 26, 2007 1:26 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

you'd better not give-up/sell out.

In my opinion, this is exactly what a good baseball blog should be. It doesn't really miss any real news, posts articles that foster discussion (over/under, etc), and has an atmosphere where peopel feel comfortable posting diaries entitled "non-naked giles bros article."

If this site were strictly serious, I'd have no use for it.

by pjbno4 on Mar 26, 2007 2:21 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Ditto!

I mean - where else could a 10 year old be accepted and welcomed and even AWARDED ;-> ?

Seriously though - the best part of this place is that you guys DON'T take yourselves too seriously.

Christina

by Christina on Mar 26, 2007 2:57 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Have you ever thought

that we are trying to be real serious and we're just idiots? It's worth thinking about.

by jbox on Mar 26, 2007 3:21 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

No, but...

...I have had that exact same thought about the Naked Giles Boys.

by Winfield's Ghost on Mar 26, 2007 4:07 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Totally

"Seriously though - the best part of this place is that you guys DON'T take yourselves too seriously."

100% agreed. If you guys start giving us hard hitting news and stop referencing the unicorn, I am outta here...

by Winfield's Ghost on Mar 26, 2007 4:04 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Exactly...

If I want non-unicorn related news, well, I can get that almost anywhere.

by pjbno4 on Mar 26, 2007 5:06 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

exactly and totally

Don't ever change. Where else can you get a picture of K Greene with Vulcan ears?

Nowhere, baby . .. nowhere!

I'm thinking the Vulcan's going to do some damage this year. He may hit .350 without drawing a single walk!

by Nick G on Mar 26, 2007 5:12 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Hmm

The Reds never get love. :( I mean, Red Reporter got over 300 comments on a game thread for a Spring Training game this year. Regular game threads spillover into two or three threads (as over 300 comments slows the threads so we start new ones.) We've had five threads before and spilled over onto other teams' sites as well. We even had to start a Wiki for the blog so the world knew what we were talking about. We go to games together, too, even those of us who are displaced and live somewhere other than SW Ohio.

Come worship at the Church of Baseball with Sister Daedalus!

by Daedalus on Mar 27, 2007 8:45 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs