When Nate Silver walked away from the corner office at Baseball Prospectus to focus on his rock star career in the realm of politics, I stepped in to fill the void left as Managing Partner. I always saw it as a temporary thing, designed to hold down the fort until we found someone better.
That took some time, but I'm happy to announce that I'll be stepping down as Managing Partner, effective immediately, with Joe Hamrahi taking the helm. This will allow me to focus more on creating content (which I'm better at) and allow Joe to focus on running the company (which he's better at). Joe has served as our CFO for some time now, while also serving in the same capacity for a major public relations firm in Manhattan. During his time with us, he's already played a crucial role in several business arrangements for our company, Prospectus Entertainment Ventures, and is also the man behind our incredibly successful ballpark events in Tampa, Kansas City and New York, as well as our parternship and involvement in SABR day.
I'm thrilled to make this announcement of Joe as the new Managing Partner and President/CEO of PEV. It's a time-consuming job that often cut into my ability to provide as much content as I want to you, the readers and subscribers, while at the same time, Joe has already begun some new initiatives that will help to make our future even brighter. So while I take a deep breath, a big word of both congratulations and appreciation to Joe for taking over the helm. I'm more excited for our future than ever, and much of that is because I know that the company is in better hands than it was.
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And I say I hope, because I'd like things to settle down a bit with Baseball Prospectus's brand. There've been a lot of people "stepping back" over the year. In addition, the "Wayback Machines" 3xweek, Baseball ProGUESTUs articles and the "A version of this story appeared on ESPN" makes me wonder how much of what I'm paying for is an _exclusive_ part of the BP brand.
From my point of view, I love Jaffe and KG's articles. New-stuff-wise, I love Mike Fast's work and the discussions it's brought about. But I guess I'm concerned that I'm seeing a bit less BP-exclusive variety. I can't honestly tell who is still an active writer or not for BP or is in seclusion working on either the annual or the sequel to "Between the Numbers"
So I ask myself things like: Should I just buy an ESPN Insider account (*shivers*)? Should I just use the free access to the archives? Buy the sequel to "Between the Numbers?" instead of having a subscription? What am I paying for?
Granted, we're only talking $35 a year and not something real expensive like a smartphone contract and at this point I'm not serious about cancelling my subscription, but I thought I'd raise the concern anyway.
Richard...your points are well received, and I assure you, Kevin is and will remain a huge part of Baseball Prospectus. Remember that in addition to writing regularly, Kevin also spends hours each week recording and perfecting the Up & In podcast while also appearing for 3 hours each week on MLB Roundtrip with Baseball Prospectus on SiriusXM.
We'll have more about our 2012 content soon, but you can rest assured that Kevin, Jay, Steven, Mike Fast, etc. will continue to be integral parts of BP. We'll also look to add some bright new minds as we've done in the past...people like Jason Parks and Derek Carty who have made huge contributions to the site this year.
Like I said, we'll have more to talk about later, but get ready for some new features, cool new wrinkles, and plenty of baseball analysis. However, if you ever, ever want to share your thoughts or concerns or make any suggestions, please email me at jhamrahi at baseballprospectus.com. I promise I answer every email I receive, and I truly value customer feedback. I'll be happy to discuss this and any other issue with you.
I will pass along here my number one request: the ability to search the comments. I've asked for this for ages and Dave Pease and others tell me it's in the pipeline but it never happens.
The comment section is a wonderful feature but I sure can't remember when I posted comments, and without the search feature, it blunts the ability to have a dialog. I'd love to see who responded to my comments, if anyone, and maybe follow up.
Thanks!
Bigger picture: Yes, some very good writers have left over time, and are missed. Still, if I were stumbling upon this site for the first time, with no sense of its history, I would be very impressed with the product, for both its width and its depth.
Congrats, Joe. You have the rare advantage of inheriting a good team. I look forward to seeing even more progress.
I wish I could give you a better answer. I will tell you that I'm looking forward to the challenge and pumped up to give Kevin more opportunities to do the things he loves most.
= this will make BP a better product