My writing has been more scarce here over the last few years, and especially in the last year.
Constant migraines, heavily related to the weather, make my schedule unpredictable. Declining health, due to the stress and workload of the job, in addition to those migraines, didn’t help. And my mental health had gone unaddressed for the first 35 years of my life because I was too smart and self sufficient to be considered mentally ill, but too poor to be able to seek out any help from a doctor.
I stepped away and focused on my mental health. I focused on the migraines, and started charting trends that I believe could be useful in advancing our knowledge of why migraines happen.
I started focusing on my actual health, and lost 70 pounds in a year. I did this in a very unconventional way, not with an expensive treadmill and a gimmick diet, but with a focus on posture, yoga, flexibility, and scheduled eating.
I didn’t just go away due to health concerns. I went away because I didn’t know where to go with this site.
When I started this site, there was no one else providing the type of prospect coverage we provided. Eventually, you could find some of that coverage for free elsewhere.
I found something that no one else was doing, even in the Pittsburgh media, in 2009. My next challenge would be finding something that no one else was doing, even in the Pittsburgh media, in 2019. That’s how Pittsburgh Baseball Network was born.
But I didn’t know how to return as a writer. I didn’t know what I could provide that no one else could provide.
And I knew the reality of how business works in America: You’re either Blockbuster or you are Netflix.
I was Netflix in 2009.
I had become Blockbuster.
I wanted to create the next Netflix.
But how?
In the process of my health journey, I started noticing trends between what I was doing, and what MLB pitchers and players were doing. I also started noticing that some of the stuff I was studying explained why certain things might be working for baseball players, either during the game, during their post-game recovery, or in their general progression through the minors.
I got to a point where I was comfortable taking that first step to the next version of Pirates Prospects.
So what can you expect from the new Pirates Prospects?
Eventually, we’ll have stats and analytics more heavily incorporated into the site. That will probably debut in 2021, when there are actual minor league stats to cover. The player pages will return at that point, and will be much more involved than they were in the past.
Until then, expect a lot of discussions and debates that you might not see regularly around baseball. I’ll have a new column, called Baseball Theory, discussing things like the Imposter syndrome and Dunning-Kruger in relation to player development. You can check out the first article, already posted to the site.
In future articles I’ll even touch on the central nervous system, the impact of proper hydration, and we’ll have mechanical breakdown videos to give a deeper insight into the game on the field.
I hope you enjoy what’s to come. And I hope you subscribe to Pittsburgh Baseball Network to keep this thing going for another decade-plus.
