Why I Left MLBlogs

    I’ve resisted doing this, but the actions of the MLBlogs administration
has forced me into a detailed list of reasons that I took my work to my
own website. It’s one thing to be rationally self-absorbed; it’s
another to unilaterally erase someone as if they’ve been cast out
completely because they made a conscious choice to leave. In
yesterday’s posting of the MLBlogosphere community blog, the “rankings” were again listed. My blog, Prince Of New York, which is still on MLBlogs despite my posting of nothing but notes and links to my new home, PaulLebowitz.com,
has received enough hits to be at least in the top 15 of their
rankings. In what can only be seen as a decision based on my departure,
it was omitted completely as if it never existed and doesn’t count in
their rankings. I haven’t wanted to do this; haven’t wanted to let my
longstanding feelings known about the way the MLBlogs site is handled because there wasn’t really a point, but if this is the vindictive way
in which the administration is going to run things, I have no choice
but to state my case and let readers come to their own conclusion.

• The site is handled unprofessionally and promoted cluelessly:

     If you Google the terms “baseball blogs”, you’ll notice that the “official affiliate/unofficial opinions” outlet directly connected to MLB.com comes out ninth.
     Think about that for a second. Ninth.
    
Would the NFL, if they had a site for fans to blog, allow whoever’s in
charge of that site to remain in their current position if there was
such a lack of knowledge of its existence? If they spent so much time
and money creating the site, working on it, using it to promote and
sell items and then allow it to be such a non-factor on the web? Say
what you want about the cold and ruthless way the NFL does business;
about how it’s a cutthroat entity with inordinate power that wears out
their assets and dispatches them; but they have their house in order;
and if something’s not working or living up to expectations, it’s
fixed. Can that be said about Major League Baseball and their
affiliates?
     Do you have any idea how many people who are now
regular readers of my work have said to me (in various different
presentations of the same theme): “I only recently found your blog and
would’ve been reading it all along had I known it existed”? I was
writing on that site for almost three years and I’ve developed a loyal
following of readers, but to be completely honest, nowhere near as many
as the work itself deserves. That’s fact, and it’s a clear problem with
the way MLBlogs is run.
     Do they not realize that the site can be used for selling Alyssa Milano’s hoodies and promoting the MLB Network and being
a spot for qualified analysts to have their work shown and read? Do
they not understand that with their selfish and random ignorance that
they’re not administering to their clientele? Are the bosses at MLB
even paying attention to what’s going on?
     Last year, the site
publisher was changed from Typepad to Movable Type; fair enough. Maybe
it was a business decision or an honest attempt to improve; but the
change was made not in January or February when traffic was probably at
its lowest; no, it was made on opening weekend of the 2008 season. This isn’t just an accident of circumstance, it was pure stupidity and incompetence.
    
The act itself was the final straw for some longtime and hardworking
bloggers who’d been with MLBlogs since the very beginning and were the
lifeblood of its existence. Matt at Diamondhacks; Michael at Some Ballyard; and Russell at Arizona via Slough
all left after that debacle and started their sites elsewhere. I
hedged; I started a duplicate site at Blogspot, but maintained my
presence at MLBlogs. For awhile, late last year, it looked like it
would pay off. My blog was heavily promoted on the front page of
MLB.com and on the homepage of MLBlogs; then it all just stopped.
     The site was once a paid service of $50 a year; then, like that commercial for The Ladders,
it went free and everyone and anyone started a blog. The quality work
was caught up in people trying to sell stuff; starting a blog on whim
and never contributing anything; ignorant fan rants; or just colossal
self-promoting wastes of time. Just like that, the entire site was
saturated and it diminished the quality even further.
     For a
brief while late last year, it appeared as if quality was being
promoted intentionally by the administrators of the site. My blog,
along with Jeff and Allen at Red State Blue State and Jane at Confessions of a She-Fan
were featured regularly on the MLB front page and on the front page of
the blogsite; then after the new year it became a free-for-all with
random blogs who weren’t putting in the time or the work to warrant the
attention. The importance of promoting the selling of items or that
interminable MLB Network took precedence over pure baseball talk and
the result was the lack of traffic to qualified blogs such as mine and
then led to my departure.

• The rankings:

    
Whether or not you realize it, the rankings are twisted, manipulated
and skewered. Certain blogs that make “stunning leaps” into the top ten
are only there because they spent a week or so sitting on the front
page of the MLB site. And just having web hits doesn’t mean there’s
anyone actually reading the
blogs. I haven’t posted anything of note there in almost two weeks and
my traffic is cut in about half from what it was. The people who read
what I was writing came to my new site along with me. The other hits
are either people who are looking for tickets to the Artist once again
known as Prince performing in New York; want to find a photo of some player or
person I’ve embedded into one of my postings; need information about
Tim Lincecum’s mechanics; or are googling some random person I happened
to mention. Many times they’re on the site for too short a period for
them to register as having been on for any amount of time at all…but
it’s still a web hit.
    The spammer blog known as The Rumor Mill was a prime example of this phenomenon.The Rumor Mill deserved
credit for one thing: coming up with a clever, hittable title to draw
traffic, but that doesn’t mean there was anyone reading it, because
there was nothing to read other than links to betting sites; ticket
exchanges and other crap, but until recently, he was always at the top
of the rankings because he got a lot of hits whether he was posting
anything or not. If there are those who sit around and post comments
all day on other blogs and Twitter; who are poring over the rankings to
boost their own numbers for some kind of ego boost to be “number one”,
they either don’t know or care that no one’s reading the thing. And
that’s fact.

• It was a losing proposition in which I was getting almost nothing of consequence from my participation:

    
After being a member in good standing (with the daily postings to prove
it) for three years, it was easier to stay than it was to start my own
site. I’ve owned the name PaulLebowitz.com since I got my publishing
contract for my novel in 2000. I never did anything with it in the
eight years since; but in looking at the traffic and who was reading my
work, there was no reason for me to stay at MLBlogs if there wasn’t
going to be any promotion done for my work. No reason to sit there and
waste my time when I could just let my loyal readers know where I was
going and have them follow me. The most offensive thing to me was that after three years of work, no one even cared that I was considering leaving; they didn’t even give one word of appreciation that I contributed; nothing. What I got was the dictatorial elimination of my mere presence in their rankings and it wouldn’t be a surprise if they took steps to eliminate my blog entirely following this posting. (I’d advise them not to do that.)
     What kind of an organization is
so inept that they just let good people leave? The same organization that lets big news pass without promoting those that
are discussing it? There are of course the huge stories like ARod and
steroids that warrant their attention and a link from the front page of
the blogsite, but do you know how many times I had to let them know
that something big was happening in baseball and they needed to mention
it on the front page?
    When Willie Randolph was fired from the Mets in
the middle of the night, half of the next day had a series of links
promoting “hot interleague matchups”; the manager of a huge market team
had just been fired clumsily and this was what they were interested in
promoting. That’s either a case of people being asleep at the switch or
just not caring about what they’re doing; of looking forward to some
other avenue for their career without paying attention to where they
currently are and doing the best they can and letting the future take care of itself; and just like eliminating my
justified spot in the rankings, that’s a self-centered and embarrassing
way to conduct oneself and if that’s how they want to be perceived, as flunkies who are looking for a way out, then fine. But until MLBlogs gets
it’s house in order from the top, there’s never going to be anything
more than what there is now, whatever “it” is.