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As usual, it’s full of good stuff.

This edition contains all the advanced metrics and performance data that a sabermetric fan wants to see in an annual. And, this includes all the granular stuff which is the latest craze. But, it also has some very entertaining essays that any baseball fan can enjoy – such as Anna McDonald’s “A Perfect Summer Dream” and Craig Wright’s “A Gentleman Remembered.”

Oh, and, if you’re into fielding stats, it has an entire section on “The Future of Fielding” with everything that you need to know about FIELDf/x.

Heck, you can even get little morsels of information within the essays that jump out at you. For example, in Chris Jaffe’s “The Best and Worst Benches of All Time,” we see that the Yankees bench in 2005 was the 5th worst in baseball history. And, in “The Leaders of 2011,” we see that “Oliver” (which is The Hardball Times projection system) predicts that Alex Rodriguez will not hit 29 homeruns in 2011.

There are essays in The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2011 by a lot of the names that you know from around the internet. These include, but are not limited to, Geoff Young, John Beamer, Steve Treder, Craig Calcaterra, Dave Studenmund, Richard Barbieri, Brian Borawski, Vince Gennaro, Dave Cameron, John Dewan, Rob Neyer, Jon Daly, Sean Smith, John Walsh, Tom Tango, Greg Rybarczyk and the aforementioned Jaffe and Wright.

On sale now, The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2011 is a great hot stove companion for baseball fans of all levels. It gets your attention, makes you think, and teaches you a thing or two in the process.

WasWatching.com

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Keeping Score: Spurs’ Recipe for Success

This should appear in the print version as well.

Basketball-Reference.com Blog

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In the ongoing saga that is The Times online and its red headed stepchild that is the paywall, some concrete numbers are starting to emerge pertaining to the overall success of the experiment.

First, the good news. According to TechCrunch, The Times online signed up 105,000 paying subscribers plus another 100,000 who were already long time print subscribers during the recent switch. Those are decent numbers for a venture everyone said would fail, but there is a downside to the initial subscription reports.

Now that we know how much The Times were able to gain from June, how many readers fled once the paywall was implemented? According to comSource, The Times lost 4 million unique viewers, or a decline of 62%. Individual page views also saw a steep decline from May, 2010 through September, 2010 dropping an estimated 90% over the summer (that’s 41 million down to 4 million).

For those just skimming the numbers, one wouldn’t be remiss in thinking that the paywall was an epic disaster after reading the site lost 4 million readers. The error in that line of thinking is that those 4 million readers weren’t paying to read articles on the site. So sure, there are less eyes looking at the site, but the ace up the sleeve for The Times online is that even though they lost a large portion of their audience, a fate they surely knew they’d encounter, the readers that remain are now paying a subscription fee to fund the site.

One only needs to crunch the numbers to see whether or not the subscription fees outweigh those of online ads that were viewed by some 4 million more readers before the paywall. In simple terms, what generates more money, online ads to a large number of readers or subscription fees paid by a much smaller audience?

May I warn those against the idea of the paywall that it’s highly likely, at least initially, that The Times online will make more money WITH the paywall than before when articles were free, even with far less people visiting the site. Whether or not you believe the amount of revenue generated to be the only determining factor in The Times‘ success may be left up to you. As I reported in early September, there are other factors to consider.

For the geeks, here’s how the numbers and $ $ $ break down:

• First off, let’s say that the 105,000 new subscribers The Times gained in the summer are splt up between full subscribers and ‘pay as you go’ subscribers which pay $ 1.60 for a days access to the site (full subscribers pay $ 3.20 per week or $ 12.80 per month). With those numbers, we can assume The Times generates approximately $ 7,680,000 per year from its elite group of readers, the full subscribers.
• 50,000 (readers) x $ 12.80 = $ 640,000 x 12 months = 7,680,000

We must also add to that number the casual readers who only ‘pay as you go’, or randomly purchase a days worth of reading on the weekend. This is where it gets tricky, so we’ll take a guess. For the sake of our example, I’ll use Erick Schonfeld’s (TechCrunch) example where he assumes two days a month per person would generate another $ 160,000 in monthly revenue for a total of $ 9.6 million per year (there, we added the $ 7,680,000 to the revenue generated from the ‘pay as you go’ customers).

That $ 9.6 million is a pretty impressive figure as long as it outweighs what The Times were receiving from online ads when they were free (and remember, the 100,000 we talked about earlier were already print subscribers and thus get free access to the online site simply by activating their online account – so for the sake of the example, we don’t need to include them).

Before we finish, we must first define a CPM, or cost per thousand impression. CPM is a term used to measure the cost or worth of an online ad appearing at a website. For example, businesses who wish to advertise on a site purchase ad space at a predetermined rate or CPM which is driven by the amount of traffic to the site. An average CPM could run around $ 5. If we continue the example with that rate, it proves that The Times online paywall should be generating more revenue than when it was free.

41 million estimated page views (/1000 because of the cost per thousand impression) x $ 5 CPM = $ 205,000 in monthly revenue. Multiply that by 12 months ($ 2,460,000) and The Times should be doing two to four times better than they were before the pay wall. Another point to consider is that with a subscription needed to view the site, The Times doesn’t necessarily have to have that many readers to turn a major profit. In their case, a major decline in eyes wouldn’t have bothered them, at least initially.

I briefly touched on the definition of a success or failure earlier, but it’s also important to consider. Is a financial gain the sole variable we should look at when considering if the paywall is succeeding or not? Or, should we factor in the amount of people leaving the site and say the paywall was only slightly successful or a borderline failure? Will writers and journalists soon start to leave knowing their work can only be read by a limited number of people each month?

Ultimately, those questions are for you to decide for yourself. For now at least, it seems as if The Times online paywall has done its job in making money through subscriptions. They’ll only hope they have a plan in mind for when their customer subscription peaks, or when subscribers tire of the fees and leave for the free news elsewhere.

Related posts:

1. The Times Online Pay-Wall Mistake
2. The Times Closes Door On Online Soccer Coverage
3. Days of Free Football Articles on The Times Coming to an End

EPL Talk

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It was simple: Clemens testified he never used illegal performance-enhancing drugs. McNamee said Clemens did. The court of public opinion apparently didn’t believe Clemens, and it looks like Congress didn’t, either.

According to the New York Times’ Michael Schmidt (not that one), we can expect an announcement on the charges later today. We’ll update with details about that statement as they become available. All we can say now is we’re not looking forward to this latest steroids ordeal.

UPDATE 2: From the statement officially announcing the charges:

“Americans have a right to expect that witnesses who testify under oath before Congress will tell the truth,” United States Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said in a statement announcing the indictment. “Our government can not function if witnesses are not held accountable for false statements made before Congress. Today the message is clear: if a witness makes a choice to ignore his or her obligation to testify honestly, there will be consequences.”

The framing is just as Schmidt suspected: “Don’t mess with Congress.” Is it safe to say that, at this point, Clemens wishes he never requested a day in court?

UPDATE: SportsCenter has understandably been talking about this news on their program today. Video of Schmidt discussing the story with ESPN below. He echoes what we already thought: it’s not a shock that yet more people think Clemens was lying.

Schmidt also said he thinks the goal of the charges is to “try and protect Congress.” Essentially, if they think someone’s lying to them and do nothing about it…well, then they’re pushovers. So, they better do something so people can’t get away with falsehoods, because if there’s anything Congress doesn’t need, it’s ANOTHER reason for people to view it negatively. Makes sense to us. Clip:

Photo via

SportsGrid

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