Hey, White Sox fans,
Happy Opening Day! A few thoughts as we plunge into the season together.
Today, and theoretically for any important White Sox games (as of now, that’s Opening Day, the home opener, and ... ) I’m going to experiment with a bit of a live blog gamethread. The Gamethread will begin normally, but progress into updates as we near game time and into the game. It won’t replace a recap proper, but given extra interest in the game, it could be fun. Feel free to tell me I’m wrong.
You’ve noticed a number of departments introduced in the past couple of months, including South Side Snap, Flashback, Card of the Week and Game I’ll Never Forget. The intent is to run those as weekly pieces in the offseason (GNF will be monthly), but in-season publishing of those will be spotty.
We will, however, be publishing a number of new in-season features. Each week, we’ll be looking back at an anniversary year (1918, 1958, 1968, 2008), a month at a time. So this coming Sunday, we’ll run a look back at April 1918, the beginning of the disappointing season between White Sox World Series appearances.
You’ve just seen the first Digits article today. In lockstep with that will be Franchise Facts, a trivia-laden look at our coming opponent. Homesickalien will be writing up a monthly summary of the 2018 season, and Darren Jackson will be writing weekly and monthly farm updates (the daily minor league updates are still being published as well).
KenWo will be tackling the South Side Hall of Fame “plaques,” which will be posts that will live in the Hall of Fame section of the site permanently. Given the number of categories, those monthly posts could stretch the entire year, until next year’s second SSS White Sox Hall of Fame voting, which will take place after the general SSS Baseball Hall of Fame vote.
Today or tomorrow will also introduce a community prospect vote, where we’ll spend a month voting on the top 30 White Sox prospects.
Finally, each gamer on the site will include a separate post sidebar, Six Pack of Stats. It’s a deeper dive into some advanced stats, where you’ll find leverage information, pitching game scores, and other win probability information. It stems from work I did beginning eight years ago on the beat, and feel it has a place here on site as well. Again, you’re free to tell me I am wrong.
There will also be some gamethread and/or recap writing for big minor league games. Offhand, perhaps the Charlotte Knights opener, or something like Eloy’s first AAA game once he’s presumably advanced after like six Birmingham games. Stuff like that. We’ll see. But presuming there’s interest, we’ll cover it beyond just nightly Minor League Updates and such.
We even have a couple of writers still to unveil, familiar names to SSS faithful.
Generally — not to make anyone break out in hives — but there should be new stories filling all five slots “above the fold” on the site, each day. That’s not driven by some SB Nation metric or my own obsessive-compulsive disorder, just what seems like the right amount of daily in-season content for hungry White Sox fans.
There’s likely something else I’m forgetting, so this could be updated more than once. But for now, I’m carrying the mail on this busy day, compadres, so now it’s off to an early gamethread!