LET THE OFFSEASON BEGIN!

posted 10/30/11 8:24 AM PST
by Jason Martinez

It's that time of year again when teams start to take apart the puzzle pieces and begin to slowly put them back together again in time for Opening Day. My job is to help you keep track every step of the way. I've already finished up Offseason Previews/Team Pages for all 30 teams. Free Agent lists sorted in a few different ways will be out starting today and continue throughout this week. Minor League roster projections should be done in the near future. This offseason will be more exciting than ever for MLBDepthCharts with the digital magazine and website re-design both set to launch as early as January 2, 2012.

While the goal of the re-design is to create a professional-looking website that is easy to navigate, the best part is that it would allow for the displaying of statistics along with plenty of other unique features. The plan is to include 2011 stats on the team pages and player pages through the end of Spring Training. Updated stats and splits for major league players would be displayed during the regular season. Adding updated minor league stats during the season is a possibility, although 2013 is a more realistic timetable. But you never know. If I can sell enough magazine subscriptions and the site gets enough traffic before the start of the season, it could very well happen.

The hope is that 2012 will be a breakout year for MLBDepthCharts. I'll be doing whatever I can to make it happen. One of my favorite quotes comes from a guy named Charles Gwynn, Sr. You may have heard of his son, Tony. He just happens to be a Hall of Famer and my favorite baseball player of all-time. Tony's dad once told him, "If you work hard, good things will happen." Maybe he wasn't the first person to ever say it but those words coming out of his mouth had a huge impact on his son. Tony was blessed with plenty of talent but he was also one of the hardest workers around. That quote is engraved on his statue at Petco Park (pictured).

So much hard work has gone into this website and it has already resulted in many good things happening. MLBDepthCharts is closing in on 5300 Twitter followers and it recently surpassed the 3,000,000 page view mark, according to SiteMeter. Hundreds of readers have contacted me just to let me know that they enjoy the site and to say 'thanks'. For a longtime baseball junkie like myself, it's been such a great experience. I'm not gonna stop working hard and I expect more great things to happen in the future. Tell your friends and let's make sure that 2012 is the year that MLBDepthCharts becomes a must-visit for all baseball fans. Thanks for reading!