At the end of the award voting, I decided that since the Baseball Bloggers Alliance had come along so quickly, it might be nice to get an idea of who was actually in the group. To that end, I’m working through the roster and asking ten questions of each member. The first five are standard, while the last five are a little more personalized. Hopefully this will help us get a feel for our fellow members. So, here’s entry fourteen in a recurring series.
Parker Hageman
Website: Over The Baggy
BBA #22
Personal info: Parker Hageman is a founding member of TwinsCentric. He has contributed to the TwinsCentric GM Handbook, The Hardball Times 2009 and 2010 Season Previews, GameDay’s Dugout Splinters and is a consulting writer for Inside Edge. A graduate of St Cloud State University, the 28-year-old lives in Chanhassen, Minnesota with his girlfriend Heather and their beautiful three-and-a-half year old daughter Avery.
Question 1: How and why did you get into blogging?
As a former j-schooler who wound up switching to a business-oriented degree, I still had a hankering for writing and a deep passion for baseball. After retiring from the diamond in 2007, I started to study game theories, scouting techniques, pitchFX and other tendencies and applied that knowledge to the Twins – mostly to satisfy my own curiosity about how the team is managed. To be honest, I do not abide by the “consider your audience” mantra for bloggers. When I first started blogging, it was mostly to do research on questions that I had about a player, team, transaction, whatever and I never thought I’d have an audience. In 2008 I started to develop a fairly consistent following through word-of-mouth and had seen the number of visitors increase exponentially. Apparently others began to take notice of what I was providing. Knowing there are people interested in the same questions is a good motivating factor to continue to produce well-thought out, informative pieces but I would probably do the same even if it was for my eyes only.
Question 2: Do you have any blogging projects planned for the off-season?
Several other Twins bloggers (Seth Stohs, another member of the BBA, is one of the partners) and myself started a group called TwinsCentric in the middle of 2009. We saw a niche market in which we could produce collaborative eBooks for Twins fans. We started with an in-season Trade Deadline Primer and just released the more extensive Twins GM Offseason Handbook. The Twins organization has been extremely helpful in our endeavors and for the most part, the books were well received (although, there is always going to be a contingency of readers that are appalled when bloggers attempt to monetize their offerings). Shortly after that, Maple Street Press contacted our group and asked us to create the Twins Annual with them (which will be available this spring). In this partnership, we can just focus on the writing and editing instead of the design, distribution and marketing which was new to us in the two other instances. In addition to the TwinsCentric projects, I just completed the Twins’ portion of the Hardball Times Season Preview…so I’ve been busy. My personal blog gets updated in a more reactionary fashion in the winter but I do take the time to upload a post or two a week.
Question 3: What’s been your most enjoyable experience as a blogger (particularly well-received post, a high-profile link, a connection you wouldn’t have had otherwise, etc.)?
The most satisfying experience as a blogger has to have been when we received our finished hard copy of the Twins GM Offseason Handbook. Although creating things in a dead-tree medium is outdated, holding something tangible with your name on it that took so much work to produce was worth all the headaches involved in its creation.
Question 4: How did you find out about the BBA and what attracted you to the group?
I believe I was recommended to the BBA by Seth Stohs. Personally, I love the concept as it makes a little more sense of the blogosphere chaos and perhaps leads to more accountability. This was precisely the reason we formed the TwinsCentric group. It is a great resource for like-minded people with similar goals to communicate and share experiences. Unfortunately, I have not been the best participating member of the BBA.
Question 5: What do you want to see out of the BBA in the coming year?
I would like to see the BBA continue to grow in members and forward the brand identity. For me personally, I’d like to make sure I am involved more.
Question 6: Any plans for a blog name change now that the Twins are moving?
You can tell how short-sighted I was when I first started the blog in ’07. At the time I wasn’t certain if I would do this for two weeks or two years. I had looked into getting some professional web design/branding assistance for a makeover but the cost is fairly high compared to the monthly pittance the site actually brings in through ad revenues. It still may happen before opening day.
Question 7: Are the concerns about an open-air stadium overblown?
I do believe that the Twins run-producing will be low in the first month of the season as cold weather typically mutes offense but, in general, the open-air stadium concerns are overblown. Sure it’s Minnesota, but it’s not Siberia. They’ll be early season games cancelled by snow and fall games that dip into the teens. Aprils can be miserable up here yet they certainly put up with them before 1982 when the local sports world was covered by a Teflon tarp. I’d like to think that those 27 years indoors did not make us fans soft.
Question 8: What was the best part of last season for you?
Obviously Game 163 will be the most cited contest in 2009 for Twins fans as the best moment of the year. With the privileged of being at the Dome, I cannot argue against that; it was surreal. By the end of the night, I was hoarse and had bruised palms from all the high-fiving.
Question 9: You have a Twitter account. Has that made the offseason more interesting for you?
Twitter is to the hot stove what crack was to cocaine – it has amped it up that much more. If you are a blogger, you almost have to have a Twitter account now. During the GM Meetings, I was constantly refreshing my browser for new information or reports. It is interesting to watch this new medium develop too. In essences, blogging is a trickle down effect of information and Twitter has increased the stream of info from dial-up to cable broadband. Bloggers would have to wait for a few hours after a writer/reporter hears of a potential rumor to post it on his site before bloggers could comment on the proposed transaction. Now, the writer/reporter can overhear a rumor in the lobby and BOOM, that’s uploaded to the world instantly. Along with an unbridled medium, there also comes a new level of accountability. Those that follow some of the mainstream reporters might recall the moment during the meetings in which Ed Price reported that the Mets had traded for Edwin Jackson which ultimately proved unfounded (or perhaps just idol speculation by a Mets employee). Tim Diekes at MLBTradeRumors took the opportunity to deride Price (and his fellow journalists) via Twitter that they should treat their tweets with the same level of accountability that they would their write-ups. For the next few days, Price’s tweets were met with apprehension because of his previous reports. It is democratized credibility.
Question 10: Is ownership cheap or smart with their money, in the opinion of most Twins fans?
I think the current ownership is savvy by their own rules. Because the Twins have had historically tightfisted ownership, that stigma follows them to this day, but this is just a misconception. In the late 70s and early 80s Calvin Griffith attempted to run a baseball team as a dying-breed of family ownership whose sole entity was owning a baseball team while conglomerates were buying up other organizations across the country. He was a dinosaur attempting to operate in a new world, one with free agency and skyrocketing payrolls. With a tight budget and the stubborn insistence on keeping the family business, Griffith was forced to purge the higher-paid players regularly and drew the fan’s scorn. He flipped players because he literally could not afford them. Eventually, the financial realities forced Griffith to sell his team to billionaire Carl Pohlad. Pohlad’s Twins did well in the pre-strike era as homegrown players from the Griffith ownership (Hrbek, Puckett, Viola) came into their prime years but the aftermath of the strike triggered a salary spike that the Twins were not equipped to compete with. Additionally, the front office failed to develop any talent through the farm system in the mid-to-late 1990s to compensate for the inability to sign high-priced free agents. The Twins secure solid personnel to find talent and have had success in the 2000s however they still avoided signing any high-priced free agents. While some will say this is the front office being cheap, the Twins have avoided signing those players who are past their prime years to multi-year contracts – ones who have a high likilihood of decline on the backend of the contracts. Instead have focused on locking in players like Morneau, Baker, Mauer and Cuddyer. The new stadium will provide a new revenue stream but it might all go towards retaining Joe Mauer for his natural born life.
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