Breaking Blue: Toronto Blue Jays Blog is live

[Angrioter]

It's Robson dumbass!!

 

Thanks, hermafrodita cara de culo.

[Angrioter]

lol

 

I've a great advantage over all of you......Canadian dogs!!!

[Dylan]

Site looks great! Well done!

[Angrioter]

That is what exactly Ang, humour me?

 

you're my man and you know it lol

[theblujay]

Looks awesome. So are you planning on connecting it to this site with a link on both? Or are you going to merge the forums into that site. It would be cool to be able to comment on the blog with our accounts on here.

[admin]

Good initial work! I've been finding out the hard way how difficult it is to properly get a site up for the first time, especially the responsive menu system.

 

In terms of constructive criticism, it feels like the color scheme is a little off, and the content on the front page feels a little cramped (not sure if the two are related). Some of the mouse-over stuff may also be a little over the top and be distracting for people.

 

On the article pages, I would personally choose a different font and maybe increase the line and word spacing a little. I've been playing with the Google font 'open sans' and quite like it, although there's lots of other choices to pick from. The text column should probably be made a little narrower on the full screen desktop setting. I've seen some reports that suggest no more than 10 to 12 words per line (although I think that might be a tad low), as going beyond that affects people's concentration due to being forced to move their heads while reading. If you look at a site like Sportsnet.ca along with many of the news sites, that seems to be how they do it as well.

 

It might also be a good idea to either use a different font or font weight for the block quotes, or put them in italics to help them stand out better. The color of blue in the links on the content could probably be a little darker, maybe closer to the block quote blue bar.

 

Interested to hear what you think on some of the ideas, as I'm trying to improve my skills as well (non sports related sites) so hearing from various sources and opinions is helpful.

 

The design is a bit cramped, but it's because I didn't want it to just look like a typical blog, content and side bar. Want it to look kinda like torontosun.com, different modules through out the front page.

I dont think the mouseover is over the top since it's only active on mouse over. If it was a constant animation I could see so, but as long as you're not circling your mouse around, I don't think it's too much.

 

Yeah the title in the posts isn't quite what we went, it was more so to get something temporary. We had to do a bunch of custom work there to remove an image at the top. I'll play around with it a bit. Before the title was white with blue backdrop that looked much better.

 

I liked the font because it was something different. Open sans is nice too, but a lot of people use it, so I wanted something different. I changed it to open sans right now, let me know what you, and the rest of you guys here think.

Open sans is nice and clean though, which is nice. I used it on my most recent site as well.

 

Text width is something we can look at. Personally I hate narrow articles, especially if they are long, seems like you're scrolling forever.

 

And for the blockquotes, we switched to a new quote, not sure why it wasn't implemented on the latest article. The new one looks much better and stands out more.

And I will darken text links if they are too light, but only if I have to. I think the blue isn't too light that it needs to be adjusted.

[admin]

Okay I'll darken it a bit. Looks okay on my end.

[z3r0s]

Glossary and welcome/introduction is up! Check it out!

 

little error -"ERA has been is the main pitching statistic used in baseball"

[z3r0s]

not being a dink, just reading... I found one more

 

"1B is much harder to play than SS"

[admin]

That would be cool, we even have a star rating system in place where you can give it a rating out of 5.

[Abomination]

The design is a bit cramped, but it's because I didn't want it to just look like a typical blog, content and side bar. Want it to look kinda like torontosun.com, different modules through out the front page.

I dont think the mouseover is over the top since it's only active on mouse over. If it was a constant animation I could see so, but as long as you're not circling your mouse around, I don't think it's too much.

 

Yeah the title in the posts isn't quite what we went, it was more so to get something temporary. We had to do a bunch of custom work there to remove an image at the top. I'll play around with it a bit. Before the title was white with blue backdrop that looked much better.

 

I liked the font because it was something different. Open sans is nice too, but a lot of people use it, so I wanted something different. I changed it to open sans right now, let me know what you, and the rest of you guys here think.

Open sans is nice and clean though, which is nice. I used it on my most recent site as well.

 

Text width is something we can look at. Personally I hate narrow articles, especially if they are long, seems like you're scrolling forever.

 

And for the blockquotes, we switched to a new quote, not sure why it wasn't implemented on the latest article. The new one looks much better and stands out more.

And I will darken text links if they are too light, but only if I have to. I think the blue isn't too light that it needs to be adjusted.

 

The font change looks much much better imo. Under the sabremetrics article, I'd suggest setting the actual sections (hitting, pitching, base running, etc) to be formatted as headers, made slightly larger, and with some padding above them. It should make it a little easier to read, and make Google happier in being able to categorize the content.

 

You might also want to make "non blog" articles like this one (which I'm assuming you'll make in some way sticky or permanent) have more defined urls (don't include the posted date for them in the url), so maybe make it breakingblue.ca/analysis/welcome-to-breaking-blue-and-sabremetrics/ or something similar. I'd also suggest getting rid of "category" in the url for other pages.

[admin]

Good idea about the headers.

The post is just a post though, doesn't matter if there' sa date on it. It's an intro to the site,

[Abomination]

Good idea about the headers.

The post is just a post though, doesn't matter if there' sa date on it. It's an intro to the site,

 

I meant with the url, not the post itself. The date on the post is fine.

[admin]

I know the URL, but it's not really a big deal.

[Nox]

New article!

 

This is handy.

 

As I said before, I'm pretty surprised how optimistic Steamer is on the Jays but I'm inclined to trust it over my own intuition.

 

It will be interesting to see how ZIPs sees things. I think Szymborski said the other day that 2014 ZIPs projections will be released around Dec. 1.

[ace3113]

My first article is up. Enjoy!

 

http://www.breakingblue.ca/2013/11/20/the-other-guys-part-i/

[TRM]

One small typo. Wil Myers name was spelt incorrectly. Great article though, making my way through it right now

[ace3113]

Tweeted the article to Dejong and Kukuk

 

[8D]

Nice 'chops!

[Laika]

Tweeted the article to Dejong and Kukuk

 

 

Chase didn't seem exactly pleased by your criticism, haha.

[ace3113]

Chase didn't seem exactly pleased by your criticism, haha.

 

He seemed fine by it. The guy JaysFanAway seemed more rankled. If Chase reads the article, he'll realize it was full of glowing praise. I think I added a touch of criticism at the end (fair criticism mind you), so that it didn't seem like a homerish love fest. The original draft was almost unqualified praise, as he's one of my favourite Jays prospects like I said, but the tone didn't seem right.

[DuckDuckGose]

My first article is up. Enjoy!

 

http://www.breakingblue.ca/2013/11/20/the-other-guys-part-i/

 

Good read ace, keep 'em coming.

[DuckDuckGose]

He seemed fine by it. The guy JaysFanAway seemed more rankled. If Chase reads the article, he'll realize it was full of glowing praise. I think I added a touch of criticism at the end (fair criticism mind you), so that it didn't seem like a homerish love fest. The original draft was almost unqualified praise, as he's one of my favourite Jays prospects like I said, but the tone didn't seem right.

 

If you read;

 

DeJong is certainly not without his warts. He can be a little too hittable at times, and his fastball is pretty straight despite the good plane he imparts. He also has not developed a true swing-and-miss offering, despite the high strikeout numbers.

 

without,

 

That being said, the best part about DeJong has always been that you can envision him being a whole lot better in a few years for a variety of reasons, and yet he’s already pretty good right now.

 

it sounds kind of harsh.

[Laika]

He seemed fine by it. The guy JaysFanAway seemed more rankled. If Chase reads the article, he'll realize it was full of glowing praise. I think I added a touch of criticism at the end (fair criticism mind you), so that it didn't seem like a homerish love fest. The original draft was almost unqualified praise, as he's one of my favourite Jays prospects like I said, but the tone didn't seem right.

 

If you've seen him pitch and you don't think he has a real strong swing-and-miss offering, then it's probably a fair criticism.

 

It's probably entirely possible to get swings and misses in rookie ball by simply being smart and sequencing your pitches well. It also looks like he does get a high% of looking strikes, according to MLC, which may or may not mean something.

[Angrioter]

Tweeted the article to Dejong and Kukuk

 

 

Thanks man. Excelente trabajo; sigue alimentando nuestras mentes hambrientas +1000000

[ace3113]

It also looks like he does get a high% of looking strikes, according to MLC, which may or may not mean something.

 

I should have checked out those stats. That's pretty much what I've seen. His bb isn't a nasty swing and miss pitch like Stroman's slider for instance. It surprises you because he throws it from the same arm slot as his fastball, and you recognize it too late and can't do anything so you just stand there an take the strike.

[Laika]

I should have checked out those stats. That's pretty much what I've seen. His bb isn't a nasty swing and miss pitch like Stroman's slider for instance. It surprises you because he throws it from the same arm slot as his fastball, and you recognize it too late and can't do anything so you just stand there an take the strike.

 

For Appy league pitchers with at least 20 IP, he was THIRD out of 127 in looking K%, 54th out of 127 in swinging K%, and his swinging to looking K ratio (KS/KL) was the 7th lowest in the league (out of 127).

 

He lead the league in looking strikeouts, and he had the 11th lowest BB% in the league (min 20 IP).

 

So yeah, a very high relative percentage of his strikeouts were of the looking variety. Pounds teh zoneeeeeee

[ace3113]

For Appy league pitchers with at least 20 IP, he was THIRD out of 127 in looking K%, 54th out of 127 in swinging K%, and his swinging to looking K ratio (KS/KL) was the 7th lowest in the league (out of 127).

 

He lead the league in looking strikeouts, and he had the 11th lowest BB% in the league (min 20 IP).

 

So yeah, a very high relative percentage of his strikeouts were of the looking variety. Pounds teh zoneeeeeee

 

Hey, I hope you don't mind but I'm going to tweet those numbers.

[DuckDuckGose]

Ask him what he thinks about the numbers? I wonder why he gets a lot of K's looking...

[Orgfiller]

Site looks tremendous, currently reading the Welcome to Breaking Blue, will be reading the rest, but so far very good job, props to everyone involved.