You don’t have much time left if you’re going to enter BP Idol. Tomorrow’s deadline is fast approaching, but CK, KG and I have been digging into the giant pile of submissions already. More than expected, you ask? Yes, perhaps a bit, with the quality all over the map. There’s been an amazing amount of work, thought, and research put in, with wildly varying results. Some people have really nailed it while others, well, they’ll get the modern equivalent of the participation ribbon.
I wish I could go into more detail, but I don’t want to give anything away. I will let you know that I’m scoring each submission on a 1-10 scale as well as making comments on each and every submission. To make my final ten, someone would need to score an 8 or better. While I don’t have any 10’s yet, I do have three 9’s. The bar is set pretty high and I can’t wait to see what KG and CK think, but even more, I can’t wait to see what you think. Just like American Idol, we’re relying on you to pick the next winner with your votes.
1’s? Oh yeah, we’ve got some 1’s too.
So if you’re considering entering, you should. What do you have to lose? Well, I guess if you can’t handle the truth or if you don’t think you meet the high standards of the competition, you can always wonder if you might have been good enough.
Pretty highly. Given a chance to submit one article, I think most here would be able to get 9's or even 10's. I'm probably the weakest of the bunch because I write in a niche and in a function-over-form style.
I'd be interested to know what areas of baseball were newly covered, not normally seen on BP and elsewhere. Not because, I'd hope anyone would steal someone's ideas for a cool column, but because I'd be interested if anyone had some of the same ideas I've had too, be it the baseball memorabilia industry (which I think BP's advanced stats could help savvy collectors) or the players (or other staff) schedule and work ethics of baseball to religion and baseball. There's a whole truck load of stuff out there related to advanced stats and baseball.
Although several (if not most) of BP writers certainly inject humor on occasion, this is definitely an area which has been lacking since Zumsteg left and took his Breaking Balls with him. On a side note, his articles don't seem to be archived anymore.
Will or Kevin - assuming your diamond in the rough from the Atlantic League works out well, do you anticipate this being an annual (or even semi-annual) "prospect hunt"? I would have loved to have taken some swings in the cage for you guys, but thought the deadline was 4/15. Not likely to have something in the next day either.
Possibly asking you to get ahead of yourselves here, but curious.
I try to recommend to anyone and everyone that they avoid my addiction to the dependent clause; it's like habit-forming goulash, if lighter on the paprika. On the other hand, at least one BP contributor (who shall remain nameless) was virtually Hemingway-esque in his player comments in annuals from a long, long time ago, and reading "He sucks" about every backup catcher or utility infielder wasn't exactly what we were looking for, then or now.
I'm the sort of person who has both kinds in my spice rack (make of that what you will), although I use California-grown sweet that I pick up from Penzey's.
I have the traditional Hungarian Paprika as well as the hot. I'm not aware of the Cali Grown Sweet. I'll have to check that out.
I have never heard of goulash with Lawrys, or any other brand of seasoned salt. Interesting as well.
Can you tell that I like to cook as well as eat? I'm not a big guy though, so save the fat jokes for a few years from now. I am also much better looking in person than in my head shot...
From my creative writing studies, authors note that it is harder to write short stories than novels since it requires more efficiency of word usage to get plot, setting and characterization across to the reader.
If you're scoring and writing comments on each one, do we (necessarily) want to hear them? It'd be great to hear that you just missed the cut, but does anyone want to find out that they're a 1? And should I be worried that you're "going to have a lot of fun with it. Good and Bad?"
I think you can safely assume that the BP writers have enough maturity not to release the names of the "1s". We might see snippets of articles, but it's not like were going see Will say something like "and this here submission proves that Sjstraub does not have the capacity to tie his own shoes, much less write a complete sentence."
Yeah that's my concern with saying I'd put them all out there for the world to see. I've rated some very low because they simply didn't meet the standards I had going in.
Man was it a relief to see that you guys are operating out of the Pacific Time Zone! I'd mistakenly thought that the 1,500 word limit was a minimum, so when I read here in the comments that it was actually a maximum (which is obvious, in retrospect), I went hacking paragraphs out of the bastard like Halladay taking down Twins.
The three-hour difference saved me from being a DNQ.
I tried to do a timeframe-dependent article. I went to the Rockies Opening Day game which was a Friday and posted by Sunday... though at that time, it was still a bit unclear to me whether the deadline was the 15th or not. We'll see how it goes.
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Out of curiosity, how would you rate BP writers' work on your 1-10 scale?
Pretty highly. Given a chance to submit one article, I think most here would be able to get 9's or even 10's. I'm probably the weakest of the bunch because I write in a niche and in a function-over-form style.