The State of Things

People who follow the Dodgers Digest authors on Twitter have probably noticed a few changes in the last few days. Chad started writing articles for The Athletic LA a few weeks ago, and published this good piece on Clayton Kershaw‘s fastball and slider yesterday. My first article for The Athletic LA went up this morning, detailing how a significant change in Kenta Maeda‘s pitch arsenal might reduce the massive platoon splits he posted last year. Additionally, Dustin ran his first post at True Blue LA yesterday, telling people to stop trying to move Maeda to the bullpen. Understandably, we’ve received a few questions about what this means for the future of this site, so it’s worth taking a minute to address those questions here.

The most important thing to note is that Chad, Dustin, and myself are not actually leaving Dodgers Digest. My post on JT Chargois from Monday morning would not have been a good fit at The Athletic, and neither is the one I’m workshopping in my head about why you should be afraid of Josh Fields. Also, let’s be real: other than the occasional game thread, I didn’t really post much here last year to begin with. Chad is still working on recaps and editing (and updating us on what’s happening on Maeda’s Instagram account). Some of Dustin’s content moving is a more significant loss, but he was saddled with some unfair expectations last year. There were periods where he put the site on his back and was writing almost every day, something which we were trying to avoid when we founded the site four years ago. That said, we’ll still have some great Dustin Digest content going forward.

We’ve never wanted to restrict writing on other platforms since this site began. Mike wrote for FanGraphs and ESPN while writing here. Stacie, Sarah, Dustin, and myself have all had work published in The Hardball Times in the past, with the first three even producing content for their Annual. Branching out is a positive thing, it gives our authors more reach and further builds this site’s credibility. Just look at how Baseball Prospectus and Crashburn Alley have done while having a high rate of attrition. Those sites have thrived while their authors have gained bigger opportunities, and are a good example of why we feel good about this site going forward. Another reason to feel good is the quality of work Alex and Allan have been producing so far. That should not go unnoticed.

So, overall, these are big recent changes for some of our authors. However, we’re all passionate about what we’ve built here and are going to keep building it. Hopefully this helps ease any recent concerns. And as always, thank you for reading.