As specified in the contest announcement, we’ll be featuring Ken’s work throughout the rest of the season, so look for that to start appearing at Baseball Prospectus soon. We also anticipate appearances by several other contestants, and will let you know what you can expect on that front as we get the details ironed out.
We’d like to thank finalists Brian Cartwright and Tim Kniker for their outstanding work throughout the competition, and thanks to all of our other competitors as well for their frequently excellent contributions. You’ve all been a pleasure to work with.
Most of all, though, I’d like to thank our subscribers for participating in the voting and commenting during the competition. You’ve given both our contestants and all of us here at PEV some valuable insight into what you’re looking for, and we’ll be doing our best to respond to your suggestions and requests. We hope you’ve enjoyed this process as much as we have!
A very hearty congratulations to Ken! I've enjoyed most of your work through the last few weeks, but that final article blew me away. I look forward to your regular contributions to BP!
Brian and Tim also did some excellent work as part of the competition, and I hope we haven't seen the last of either them on BP either.
Kudos, Ken - look forward to your forthcoming contributions - you've set yourself a very high bar, but I think you can live up to it!
And congratulations to all of the other contestants who have informed and entertained in great measure these last two months or so.
to all the other contestents, you turned in some fantastic work, and we'll look forward to seeing what you do next - i'm sure it won't be the last we hear from any of you.
Congrats, Ken, great stuff throughout the whole competition. Look forward to reading your stuff from here on out. I wasn't a big fan of this whole idea, but giving publicity to a bunch of writers many people weren't familiar with is a big positive.
Congratulations, Ken. Oustanding throughout the competition. Yours was one of the few others that I couldn't wait to read every week. I'm looking forward to reading you through October.
Also, I just wanted to say thank you to Will, Christina, and Kevin and the rest of the folks at BP. I had always wanted to do some baseball analytical writing, but just never could get myself to do it. With this contest and all the work they put into it, it definitely got my *** off the couch for this.
And finally thanks to all the readers and especially those who took the time to comment. I definitely think that I got a lot out of the comments and many always made me think even more deeply about the problems I was addressing.
Well, I gave you my one vote in the last round! Your unfiltered post in particular was outstanding. Best of luck; I hope you keep writing in some capacity.
Tim, you also did a fantastic job throughout the competition. From week one, I was hoping for a Funck - Kniker final, and after reading both of your final entries, I was not disappointed. I hope to find more of your writing out there in the future.
I hope you end up joining the BP staff, Tim. Also, remember to let me know if you need help with that Excel tutorial you talked about way back in Week 1.
Congratulations Ken. You've been one my favorites throughout and I'm glad I'll be able to read more of you!
Great job Brian, I better read more of you here at BP... and now that the competition's over, I look forward to going through some of the other material you've written :)
Tim, all around awesome job and I hope you also end up writing for BP. You've definitely got the chops to educate and inform an audience.
Great job everyone, and thanks to BP for coming up with a contest format, designing a voting engine, and giving us a peek into how what professional writers and editors look for among us aspiriing scribes!
Wow. What can I say? I'm humbled by the trust that so many of you have placed in me by voting me this honor, and I hope I'm able to live up to your expectations.
Especially amazing to me is that I've been chosen while in the company of such other terrific writer/analysts, and I'd like to join the cacophony saying that Tim, Brian, Matt, etc., all deserve the oppoturnity to continue to share their talent and insight on these pages. Had I not won this week's vote, my disappointment would have been significantly tempered by the knowledge that I would still be able to read Tim or Brian here each week.
Thanks of course to BP for running the contest, to the judges for their support and frank commentary, and most especially to the readers who have taken this competition so seriously throughout -- I hope you've enjoyed the additional content we've beeen given the opportunity to provide. And to those that have taken the time to comment on our work, especially those who were willing to share kind words of support, I'm eternally grateful.
I had you at the top of my scorecard the last three weeks running. Great job, and don't tone down the goofy style just because you're a professional now.
I thought Ken was the best choice because he was so multi faceted. Humor, analysis, and creative. He also connected with me on his topics. Great job, I am looking forward to more, especially the wit.
Mountainhawk, I appreciate both the compliment and your honest opinion -- and I totally understand why someone might prefer the exceptional work that Brian and Tim have done. I knew going into this that my writing style would appeal to some and not others, and I'll continue to work on finding a tone that contains the humor and asides that I enjoy adding in, and others have appreciated, without detracting from the analysis I'm trying to do or the story I'm trying to tell.
I think so... it was a fun contest that created a bit of an internet buzz, but the results are posted in a sidebar? Also, Unfiltered posts scroll off a bit faster on heavy news days/opinion days where the main page keeps a log of the previous three days regardless of activity. By Saturday, there's a chance this post could've scrolled off (missing weekend readers), where a main page post would still be around.
I don't think of Unfiltered as a sidebar -- tho I get why you might. It's the one place where we know everyone can read it, subscriber or not, and it stays on top.
We could have done either but the real problem is I don't have a good way for visitors to the site to get to static places of interest. A link to Prospectus Idol that never moves and is easy to find on the front page would make the method of announcing results totally insignificant.
I sort of assumed one of the other two would win, which would have been fine. But I've been voting for Ken pretty consistently through the contest, and am really pleased to see him win. He got my only vote the last round. I think he and Matt were the best pure writers in the contest. That, coupled with imaginative story ideas and solid research skills, makes him a really worthy winner. I look forward to reading his articles.
I do feel kind of badly for Brian and Tim. All three of the final articles were outstanding, and any of these these guys would have been credible winners. I hope we get the chance to read more of their work, too.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this. It's made for great reading.
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Congratulations Ken! Great piece...