Tomorrow marks the start of the 2012 minor league season in earnest and hence the “regular” season of Future Redbirds as well. We’re still gearing up but we’ll back to Daily Farm Reports and Probable Starters each day.  In the afternoon, you’ll find a more free form piece on topics pertaining to the minors. We do have a couple of changes this year.

First of all, I’d be remiss in not thanking Hardcore Legend and Pierce for all the great work they’ve done on DFRs here. Hardcore has been around since 2009 and Pierce came on board last year to write DFRs twice a week. I still hope to drag them both back into this blog thing in a modified role but, on the off chance that doesn’t materialize, I want to sincerely thank them for their time and effort. I couldn’t do this alone and they’ve been important in the coverage we’ve provided here.

Of course, that means you’ll see some new faces. Andy Beard, late of Gas House Graphs, will be writing DFRs for Wednesday and Thursday games. Purple_Haze, a regular Viva El Birdos commenter, will be covering Sunday’s DFRs.  You’ll remember t7rick from last year who is moving off the weekend shift to Mondays and Tuesdays. I’ll be returning to DFRs for the time being writing Fridays and Saturdays.

One thing in particular that I wanted to incorporate more of this year is draft talk. It’s something that I haven’t facilitated well in the past and now, once a week, Purple_Haze will have an afternoon post for everyone to speculate and discuss various aspects of the upcoming draft. It’s a big year for the Cardinals with a plethora of first round picks and I hope that the additional draft coverage will reflect that. As usual, Jeff and I will still be posting during the afternoons as well.

The more things change the more they stay the same. My goal is still, as always, to bring comprehensive coverage of the minor leagues with an emphasis on realistic, intelligent analysis and statistics. I’m not shy about the fact that Future Redbirds is unique and I want to expand on what’s proven to be a winning formula for us.

To the commenters, thank you all for your input and participation. I felt like the level of discourse was raised last year as was the level of civility. I hope that can continue. The rules for commenting are simple. Be reasonable, don’t curse at one another and be civil — and no politics/religion. I’m not narcissistic enough to believe that we are writing all of this for ourselves so at the end of the day, I hope that I can make changes that improve your experience on Future Redbirds.

So here is to a new season. May it be as brilliant as the last.

-azruavatar

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.