Housekeeping and such

I’m planning on doing a bit of an overhaul to WHYGAVS over the next few days/weekend. Unlike WHYGAVS Past, this does not mean that you’ll wake up on Monday to a bright yellow background that will assault your eyes for four months. Instead, I’m planning on adding to the menu bar on the site. Where you currently see “Home — Forum — Archives — About,” I will have hopefully added “Prospects,” “Glossary,” and “WHYGAVS Mark I” in the next few days. As I add those things, I’ll post to let you know, but if the actual posting on the main page is slow, it’s because I’m behind the curtain pulling strings and pressing pedals. Flimsy rationalization for lack of posts aside, there will be a Top 5 this afternoon.

Of course, this is all possible because of the platform given to me by Bloguin, which just hit its first birthday. About 11 months ago, Derek Hanson approached me about moving WHYGAVS from Blogger to Bloguin. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but I knew that WHYGAVS needed to grow from its Blogspot roots and while I didn’t know much about Derek or his operation, he really seemed dedicated to helping bloggers and advancing Bloguin. I was maybe the fourth or fifth blog to join, and in doing so I made a bit of a leap of faith. Bloguin just passed its first birthday, and we’re over 100 blogs now. Derek (and now the Bloguin team that’s grown to include Dave and Ben) has delivered on everything that was initially promised to me and more. In celebration of the first birthday of the network, they’ve nominated various bloggers for “Bloguin Awards,” and WHYGAVS has been nominated for Best Baseball Blog and Blog of the Year, while I’ve been nominated for Blogger of the Year. With the number of quality writers that the network has grown to include in the 11 months I’ve been here, I’m honestly quite honored just to be recognized with them. That being said, if you wanted to click on this link and vote for me and maybe even for my fellow Pittsburgh-based nominees PSAMP and The Pensblog (or any other Bloguin blog that you enjoy), I’d be OK with that, too.

I’ve also begun the process of revamping my links in the sidebar. If I’ve deleted you, it’s because you stopped posting regularly. If you begin posting regularly again (for a considerable amount of time), I’ll re-add you. Please don’t take it personally. I would like to point you to a few new links, though. On the Pirates blog side of things, there’s Rum Bunter and then there’s the Pirates’ site at Fan Huddle. That’s run by Nate Rose, who’s done a great job blogging about the Pirates and basetball at Sixty Feet, Six Inches. Check both sites out. On a larger scale, I’ve also included links to two of my favorite national writers. One is obvious; I’ve linked to Joe Posnanski countless times on WHYGAVS. He’s the best sportswriter in America and it’s an unforgiveable oversight that he’s not in the sidebar. He is now. The second is Jonah Keri, an Expos’ fan who used to write for ESPN’s Page 2 and who’s got a very unique perspective on life and baseball.

I wanted to do a links post, but then I realized this post was rather unwieldy on its own and I didn’t have any hugely compelling links to share. Let’s close on something else instead.

Remember when the Pirates could’ve had Cliff Lee and people like me lead the charge in saying that that would be a terrible idea? I’m never going to be a GM for a reason, I guess.