Round Five of Prospectus Idol was a bit of a departure. Rather than giving our contestants a specific topic, we had them cast their gaze upon the history of baseball and write about a topic of their choosing. Selected comments from our judges:
“Informative and an interesting starting point, the sort of essay that invites further work.” — Christina Kahrl, on Brian Cartwright
“Points for concept for sure, but the execution just kind of failed me.” — Kevin Goldstein, on Matt Swartz
“I really like how easily Brian broke down some really heavy statistical concepts into chunks.” — Will Carroll, on Brian Oakchunas
“Choosing to use Win Shares is a problem, not because the utility of Win Shares is debatable, but because Tim felt obligated to spend over 400 words of what was supposed to be a 2000-word piece defending that choice.” — Steven Goldman, on Tim Kniker
“Very few (and probably zero BP readers) think W-L records are indicative of anything, so why do the research to prove it?” — Goldstein, on Matthew Knight
“This seems really, really long and again, I think it’s the structure. Going decade by decade really lost me.” — Carroll, on Ken Funck
Overall, our judges left the impression that this was a disappointing week given the control the contestants had over the direction of their pieces, and there were a few commenters that echoed that sentiment. According to our voters, though, the weak link in the History Week chain was clear, and Matthew Knight leaves the competition this week. Matthew, it’s been a pleasure, and we hope we haven’t seen the last of your writing.
I met Christina at a Nationals ballpark event a few years ago and asked her how one goes about writing for BP. She told me that "BP is a meritocracy. If you think you have something good to say, write it up and send it to us. If it's good enough, we'll publish it." So to all the BP staff, thanks for doing this competition and giving a few of us a chance to have our voices heard. It was a huge honor and I had a lot of fun. Best of luck to the final five.
This leaves us with five authors I've quite liked throughout the competition. I really didn't like Matt Swartz's initial entry article, but since then they've all rested consistently above the median on my scorecard.
I feel like I'm out too, Matt was my favourite, consistently good all along. I don't know if I can get into another favourite at this stage of the game. Matt, there's got to be a place for your approach somewhere.
I just looked over the box scores of the games played on Thursday. I could see a couple of story ideas. I wonder if any of the contestants will see the same things? If they do, I'm curious to see if they actually work as story ideas.
It is kind of cool having such a narrow topic. As a reader I can sort of play along.
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I met Christina at a Nationals ballpark event a few years ago and asked her how one goes about writing for BP. She told me that "BP is a meritocracy. If you think you have something good to say, write it up and send it to us. If it's good enough, we'll publish it." So to all the BP staff, thanks for doing this competition and giving a few of us a chance to have our voices heard. It was a huge honor and I had a lot of fun. Best of luck to the final five.