THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Did you look two inches to the left of the MLB Blogs column? His new, terribly renamed blog has its own box.

They gave him his own special blog - the Sweetspot. (http://myespn.go.com/blogs/sweetspot)

He says he’s trying to post more often and respond to things quicker (he no longer has someone reviewing his posts before they’re posted to the public)

It is also nice that the entire text now comes through in the RSS feed.  Although, they have crapped up Neyer’s content with other non-Neyer stuff at the Sweetspot.

I book marked Neyer’s blog a while ago because ESPN is impossible to navigate:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=neyer_rob

The new blog name is horrible, and merging blogs is an even worse idea.  If Neyer and whoever else posts in that blog actually engaged each other, or shared a common theme, that’s one thing.  Otherwise, it’s a terrible idea.

What is wrong with the name “SweetSpot”?  And how can something called “The Book Blog” throw out such an accusation?

If you use a reader, only Neyer’s posts will come through the feed if you are subscribed.

SweetSpot. Sounds like he’ll be writing about golf and tennis, too.

Actually, this place is not called “The Book Blog”.  That’s what others call it.  You’ll note that the name in this blog is only “The Book” or “THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball”, which is the name of the book.

And, if I were to call it “The Book Blog” it would be for an obvious reason.  You say “The Book Blog”, and we know who it’s written by.

“Sweetspot”?  I can’t believe Neyer would have chosen that name.

Since the URL of this site is Inside the Book, I have this blog in my bookmarks as Inside the Blog (think Inside: the Blog).  Which would be a dumb name, but the URL makes me think of it that way.

SweetSpot… kinda has a familiar ring to it… not entirely sure where I’ve heard something like it before…

Did you look two inches to the left of the MLB Blogs column?

What do ya know?  That is what a web site gets (people missing things, especially when they change the layout) when it is terribly overcrowded, confusing, and constantly changing its layout.  That goes for BP (which is horrible) and B-R.

So I click on Neyer’s blog and the first thing I see at the top are 2 posts by “Claire Smith”.  If I didn’t know from this thread that there were “other people” on the blog, I would have assumed I got taken to the wrong blog. 

So if a blog entry has NO byline at the top, it is Rob’s and if it does, then it is not.  Everyone is supposed to know that?  One of my pet peeves with all blogs is when there is a blog entry and the author is not prominently displayed at the top of the entry.  I don’t know how many times I have gone to a blog of which I am not a regular reader, read an entry, and I really want to know who wrote the damn thing.  So I have to hunt around the blog site to figure out who the blog author is and hope that it is only one person.  And even then, sometimes all you get is something like, “A 34-year old lifelong Angels fan...”

And yes, “Sweetspot” is a terrible name, if only because it is a term that is rarely used in baseball. I agree that it would be 100 times more appropriate for a golf blog. Of all the colorful expressions you hear all the time in baseball, “Sweetspot?” Seriously, who came up with that?

But, I can excuse ESPN for all these foibles.  After all, they are only a multi-billion dollar corporation…

The blog’s name could have been worse. Imagine:

“Rob Neyer’s SweetSpot”

And I have no idea why they’re putting newsfeed/wire story items, which could easily appear in the regular news headlines box at the top right of the page, in Neyer’s blog. It’s a terrible idea. They must be there for the sake of having filler in the hours Rob isn’t posting.

I feel like that should be the name of a space on Candy Land or something.  At least break up the words - “sweetspot” isn’t actually a word.  The ideal part of the bat for hitting is the “sweet spot”.

ESPN is pretty bad at understanding what it’s audience wants.  Bill Simmons had some big issues with them over the fact that so many people would enter “sports guy” or “bill simmons” into the ESPN site search to find his stuff.  He reasoned that, if he was that popular, and people couldn’t find his stuff easily, there was kind of a disconnect.  Of course, he was right.  And this is pretty much Site Analytics 101, but it took ESPN over a year to fix the problem and put links to his articles in a more prominent, stable slot.  So yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me if their site isn’t all that user-friendly.

Well, just because ESPN is a multi-billion dollar corporation doesn’t mean they have any more of an idea than anyone else on how to make money from blogging.

I’m willing to forgive them a little experimentation in this brave new world, and give them some time to work out the kinks.  I don’t think this is a terrible idea; there’s a certain data-driven logic to at least trying this.

If you look at the very most successful blogs, quality matters, but there’s also a strong correlation between quantity and success:  you want a new post roughly once an hour to keep people constantly coming back.  Rob alone probably can’t create that kind of quantity, so I’m guessing they’re trying to supplement his stuff to get to that point.

In other words, I think this change is an attempt to hit that “sweet spot” where quantity and quality meet.  Maybe it won’t work, but an experiment isn’t necessarily a failure just because it doesn’t work.

sweetspot may not have been my first choice but i hardly find it offensive.  and i concur that, no offensive, its still better than the name (or lack thereof) for this blog.