July 17th marked the 9th anniversary for this little old website. It has been a huge part of my life for nearly a decade which is what makes any decision to step away both a liberating and heartbreaking exercise.

I started to have these pangs in the offseason, and took some time away from the blog to sort things out. When the season started I gave it my all, but in the last couple months there just hasn’t been any passion on my part to go through the daily grind of maintaining the site on a regular basis.

I’ve been pressed for time lately, but I’ve been pressed for time before. I just always chose to make time for the blog in the past, but the energy just isn’t there anymore. My labor of love became purely labor and that is my primary reason for largely stepping aside. The first iteration of this post was titled “The End” and had me shutting down the site completely. I can’t bring myself to do it though so we’ll call it a semi-retirement. I will likely still post things on occasion, but it will be on my schedule and on topics that I want to explore. I’m not going to be beholden to the Tigers schedule or the baseball news cycle.

The future of the site is undetermined at this point, but it isn’t going away. “Kevin in Dallas” is going to start posting game threads for the time being. I greatly appreciate his willingness to step up and keep the community together. Beyond that we’ll play it by ear as I don’t want to over promise anything and certainly don’t want to speak for Kevin.

It has been a great ride and I’m thankful for so much. I’m proud of what this humble little website became and it has served as a tremendous growth experience for me. Over the years I think my analysis skills improved, my data mining skills developed, I learned about web development and servers and php and mysql and css and it even led to a web job.

Along the way I hope that I helped to advance the notion that a blog could be a credible source of information and analysis, and that I helped in  some small way to dispel the notion that bloggers are guys working out of their parents basement. I tried to do this with a focus on being right, responsible, and respectful. I think I did okay on this front.

I had opportunities to write for real books. I had the chance to go in the Fox Sports production truck and to see batting practice from the field. I’ve been interviewed as a Tigers expert. I mingled with Hall of Famers at The Henry Ford, interviewed a Michigan treasure, and got to connect with so many class individuals associated with the Tigers organization. Not bad for a guy who started a website on a whim with no knowledge of web development.

Most importantly I had the opportunity through DTW to meet so many wonderful online friends. Whether it is my fellow Tigers bloggers and DIBS members, or other long time bloggers like Geoff Young or Seth Stohs, or those of you who took the time to comment or email, thanks so much for making this a fulfilling experience.

Thanks to all of you who came here on a regular basis. Thank you to those who donated money. Thank you to those who donated their time. I’m flattered and humbled that you made the site a part of your lives as well.

Thank you to Roger DeWitt and Wendy Smith who were responsible for so many of the pictures that appeared on this site, royalty free.

Thanks to everyone who told their friends about the site and invited them aboard.  Thanks to all the bloggers and writers who have linked to my site or posts over the years.

Thanks to the Tigers organization who always treated me with respect and let me interview the CEO, President, and GM back when blog was still a dirty word.

Thanks to everyone who passed me information so that I could look smart a time or two.

Thank you to Dan Dickerson, Rod Allen, Curtis Granderson, Adam Wilk, James Robbins, Dave Dombrowski, and Ernie Harwell who were so gracious with their time.

Thank you to the mainstream media folks who helped promote the site. You helped make it relevant and credible.

Finally, thank you to Mrs. Billfer and the kids for all of your patience while “daddy needed to work on his dot com.” I love you guys.

Please join myself and a significant chunk of the Tigers blogosphere for a live chat today at 3 p.m. It looks like we’ll have a dozen (or more, the responses keep coming in) bloggers and Tigers writers stopping by in the hour leading up to the first pitch of the Detroit Tigers’ 2010 season. You may remember we did this once before at the trade deadline and despite the chaos and moderating challenges, it was also a lot of fun.

If you happen to be in the metro Detroit area this morning around 9 a.m. flip your radio dial over to WDFN 1130 AM. I’ll be talking Tigers with Sean Baligian and Tom “Killer” Kowalski. If you’re not in the Detroit area you can catch the stream at http://detroitsportstalkradio.com.

If you missed the segment, here is a link to the podcast. We talked about the Nate Robertson trade, the back of the rotation, and the potential of the offense. Thanks to Sean and Killer for having me on.

You have probably noticed things have been very quiet around here. I normally find ways to generate a number of posts even when the news cycle lulls. That hasn’t happened here since the winter meetings. I’m not sure when that is going to change. I know you don’t come here to read about me, you come to read about and discuss the Tigers, so I’ll keep this short. But I feel I owe all of you an explanation.

The winter meetings and most importantly the blockbuster trade hit me hard. As a fan I was quite frankly bummed out and as a blogger I was worn out. Put the two together and the last thing I wanted to do was talk about baseball and the Tigers. This was a new sensation. This freed up at least 8-10 hours a week that I backfilled by spending more time with my family, and taking a much more active role as husband and father. It turns out I really like those roles.

My family sacrifices quite a bit to this blog. We take vacations only where there is wireless. I rush putting the kids to bed during the season so I can watch the game and moderate comments. I don’t have a lot of meaningful conversations in the evening with my wife during the summer months. Throw in the fact that I end up sleeping only 4-5 hours a night and stop working out completely and it isn’t a healthy lifestyle.

Now that the focus is on the 2010 season, the juices are starting to flow again. But the time still isn’t there. My day job has taken a turn where that is consuming more hours than ever before, and now that I want to write I have even less time to do it.

What I’m saying is that I need to figure out where this blog fits into my life while keeping the things most important to me in the forefront. It will be a work in progress. You will likely see more posts in the coming weeks than you have in the past month. I don’t want to overpromise anything, but considering how dead things have been the goal isn’t that lofty.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

As a baseball blogger, this week is one of the most exciting of the year. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your team is, news is likely to break and rumors will abound as every team tries to improve. Here at Detroit Tigers Weblog we’ll have the meetings thoroughly covered.

I had intended to attend the meetings in Indianapolis but that didn’t work out. That’s the bad news, the good news is that I had already taken the time off from the day job so I’ll be tethered to the computer, listening to the radio, and watching TV to hopefully catch anything that happens quickly.

Mentioning every rumor isn’t the normal M.O. here at DTW, but this week will be different. So expect more posts than usual, and many will be in shorter form. Of course any moves that take place will be covered in depth as well.

My intention will be to do some live chats, both text and video, throughout the week and that schedule will be forthcoming.

To best follow the goings on here at DTW there are a few options:

• If you haven’t already subscribe to the RSS feed. While an email option is available, that only sends out a daily digest. The regular feed is the way to go for quick updates
• Follow me on Twitter @billfer. Info will be cross posted there as well and you may actually see things there first via re-tweets. Also, you may want to follow @TweetingTigers which aggregates new content from 20+ Tigers news sources.
• Become a fan of Detroit Tigers Weblog on Facebook. Yes, I’ve had a Facebook fan page for the site for quite some time, but haven’t done much with it. But now might be the time to get some value from it.
• I’ll also try and keep the payroll spreadsheet up to date as moves are made.
• If you’re away from your computer, you can still reach DTW via a myriad of smart phones. If you bring the page up on a mobile device and it isn’t mobile optimized, let me know and we’ll try to get that taken care of.

With the season over there are a few things I need  to say and I wanted to share my plans for the coming offseason:

1. First things first I want to say thank you to everybody who read the site this year. Welcome to those of you who found it for the first time, we’ll have more stuff in the offseason (more on this in a minute) so don’t go to far. To my long time readers, I’m honored that you keep coming back and thank you for telling your friends about it.
2. A special thank you to everybody who comments on the site, or posts articles on facebook, or tweets articles. It helps tremendously to build the community. It helps to keep things interesting and it makes it easier for me to a)step away a little bit because you all keep things fresh b)keep the site current because many of you post links to breaking news before I can get to the site c)makes it a hell of a lot of fun.
3. I also want to say You’re Welcome to everybody who expresses their appreciation in the comments from last night. I was overwhelmed by your sentiments and I’m flattered to say that responding to each one would have put additional stress on an overtaxed server.
4. As for donations, this part makes me feel a little weird. It’s something I don’t solicit because I’m frankly not that comfortable doing it. But many asked for a way to donate. I don’t want anyone to feel obligated because it certainly isn’t necessary and I hope nobody is offended by this. But if you were one of the ones asking, here is how to donate via Paypal.

What’s on deck?

Things will slow down a little bit without the daily rythym of the baseball regular season setting the pace. There probably won’t be daily posts but you’re likely to see something 4-5 days per week. Some posts will be short and others will be more involved analysis. Some of the things I’m planning for the offseason:

• Covering the Arizona Fall League which is just about ready to get underway
• Breaking down the team in a number of ways and looking at offense, defense, and pitching
• An analysis of the hitters under Lloyd McClendon
• Some pitch f/x work
• Roster analysis, who should stay, who should go, who will be offered arbitration, who should be protected in the rule 5 draft
• Interviews. I’m planning to speak to a few Tigers prospects. I’d like to work in some Q & A’s with others involved with the team as well.
• Winter Meetings coverage. This year’s winter meetings are in Indianapolis, and while plans could certainly change, as of now I’m planning on being on hand for a couple of days.
• Video chats maybe? I did a few of these last offseason and they were fun. Those might be coming back.
• And of course if there are trades or big announcements they’ll be covered here one way or another.

So that’s what the very rough plan is. If you have specific studies you’d like me to do, let me know. I won’t make promises and if I don’t do one of your ideas please don’t take it personally. The reason I wouldn’t do the study is more likely my limitations (time, skill, availability of data, etc.) than the quality of the request.

In summary, keep coming back please. Keep commenting please. And use one of the subscribing options at the top of the page so you know when knew stuff is here.

The upgrade didn’t happen Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. It should happen Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Thanks for your patience.

You know how when something really big happens, like Kevin Youkilis is a weenie and charges our prized rookie, or when the Tigers trade for a left handed bat with some positional versatility, or the Tigers announce some roster moves, and you come to the site and then it crashes? I’m not such a fan of that, and I’m sure you aren’t either. And with the team in a pennant race (and hopefully playing well into October) there will likely be increased attention which could lead to more crashes. To rememdy the situation (hopefully) I’m increasing my server capacity. This will take place tonight after 1 am and should take a couple of hours. It means new hardware which means some downtime. Here’s a heads up.

As an aside, this stuff ain’t cheap and ad revenues aren’t what they were. I’m not broke or hard up for money or anything, but if you could tell all your friends how great the site is and how much you enjoy coming here and how they should come here too, I’d appreciate it. Or if you were in the mood to buy something, anything really, you could head over to Amazon (using that link of course) and shop ’til the cows come home.

Maybe you’d want to preorder a book I’m quoted in. Or maybe you were thinking about getting a nice warm Tigers hat for those October games. Or maybe you want to watch all the action on a sexy new display and if you’re out of town and you don’t have access to MLB Extra Innings you could get MLB.tv and hook up your new laptop with an HDMI cable. Or maybe you’ve been thinking about getting the Roku Digital Video Player
which also can stream MLB games, or anything else from Amazon Video On Demand. Just some thoughts…

(Kind of a neat trick where I tell you the site is unavailable, and then ask for money huh…)

A look back at the year that was here at Detroit Tigers Weblog:

January

• Debunking the theory that long grass helped Trammell’s defense
• Curtis Granderson stops by for an interview
• Talking Tigers prospects with Jonathan Mayo
• Nate Robertson gets 3 year deal
• Miguel Cabrera becomes very rich
• Jose Canseco is scum ball, Ordonez gets implicated
• A look at the best defensive seasons ever – for Tigers
• Stuff about Brandon Inge

February

• Multi year deals continue to flow, this one for Grandy
• We scout Dontrelle Willis with pitch f/x
• I question why Santiago is a lock for the team. Santiago later responds with career year.
• Rick Porcello makes his debut

March

• People are going crazy for Tigers tickets
• More stuff about Brandon Inge
• Tigers linked to crappy relievers
• What was your best day in baseball?
• Do Jeremy Bonderman’s pitches fool umpires?
• Tigers set roster
• Game On!

April

• And there was much losing and a lack of highlights
• Francisco Cruceta finally allowed to immigrate
• The Yorman Bazardo era ends before it got started.
• Dontrelle’s knee does weird bendy thing
• Jim Leyland has seen enough
• And musical positions starts with Miggy and Guillen switching
• Granderson returns
• Verlander has arm angle issues
• Jason Grilli traded!

May

• Patience is a virtue and a technique
• The Jacque Jones era ends, unfortunately after it started
• Remember when Sheffield became the full time left fielder? Or when Guillen was, the first time?
• Leyland exercises his intentional walk fetish

June

• Can you believe that Casey Fossum was with the team since the begining of June?
• Tigers draft Ryan Perry and every college reliever available.
• Other scouts on the Tigers
• Bonderman is toast
• And the Tigers start winning
• Inge and Pudge platoon
• Dontrelle Willis gets optioned to A ball
• Rodney gets activated and shelled
• Inge wrestles pillow, loses

July

• Guillen is the only All Star
• Tigers use rally kitten to beat Indians
• Tiger Stadium starts to fall
• Candidate 1 for worst game of the season
• Todd Jones out as closer
• Pudge traded for Farnsworth

August

• Candidate 2 for worst game of the year
• Candidate 3 for worst game of the year
• Tigers sign Freddy Garcia
• Verlander and pitch counts
• Hey, Zumaya is injured
• Robertson kicked from rotation

September

• The 09 schedule comes out (yeah, September was a slow month)
• Jonesy retires
• Chuck Hernandez is fired
• Cale Iorg is going to be an All Star

October

• Leyland talks about stuff
• Rick Knapp is the new pitching coach
• A look at strike throwing

November

• Tigers increase ticket prices
• The Tigers defense and PMR
• DTW gets a redesign
• BA’s top 10 Tiger prospects
• Tigers set 40 man roster and leave Skelton unprotected

December

• Tigers almost trade for Jack Wilson, but don’t
• DTW Live debuts
• Tigers get Gerald Laird and Adam Everett
• Tigers trade kitten rescuer for Edwin Jackson
• Tigers WAR projections

Site Info

It’s nice that every year I get to write about how the site is growing. This year saw 395,316 unique visits to the site with 728,073 page views. This included the one millionth visitor in November and the 2 millionth page view will be served up in January.

I made 650 posts this year, which is way too much for you guys to have to read. This year also marked the debut of live chats and streaming video. Both are features I’d like to continue.

On those 650 posts, all you left 29,999 comments (for real, as of 5:27 ET). Three games topped the 500 comment mark, two heart breakers against the White Sox (both were candidates for worst game of the year) and a dramatic tilt against the Indians.

As for the most prolific commentor? That would be Sean C in Illinois, aka Smoking Loon. Combining his totals across his name amounts to 3405 comments. That is more than Mark in Chicago and Dave BW combined, and they were second and third respectively.

So thanks for everyone’s support this year. Thanks to Sean Baligian and Jamie Samuelson for the repeated mentions on the WDFN airwaves and the opportunity to participate in your discussions. Thanks to the other bloggers who linked here and provided inspiration for me to write on topics I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Thanks to everyone who participated in the comments, and for those that just stopped by and read either on the site or in your feed reader. Have a great 2009.

I just wanted to give a quick heads up that at some point over the next 24-48 hours you may experience some DTW downtime. I’m moving my site to a new hosting company and that would be the root cause. I could either break something (frighteningly likely) or there could be some funniness as the change propagates through DNS. Also, if you leave a comment between now and the move it may disappear. I’m not deleting it, but if the comment hits the old server instead of the new one, well, it will just be gone.

If you are having problems, drop me a note on twitter (@billfer). I’ll also post updates with problems/status there as well.

I’m doing this now because traffic and news usually dip around this time of year. Hopefully it won’t be too disruptive.

Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: It appears that everything is moved over and complete. Hopefully this speeds things up on the site a little bit, and resolves the downtime that the site has been experiencing. My former host said I had outgrown their site, and DTW was the site crashing their servers. I don’t get that exactly, especially on low volume days, but I’ve moved up from shared hosting to a virtual private server so let’s hope this works.

In an effort to enhance the site, I’ll be trying something new. I’m calling it Detroit Tigers Weblog Live, which is me streaming on ustream.tv. I’ve never done this before, so that’s why I’m calling it the pilot.

Friday at 11 a.m. I’ll be “on the air” talking about the Tigers offseason and this whole Jack Wilson business. If you go to the ustream.tv site you’ll see the video and a chat box where you can mock me and ask questions. If things go as planned I’ll have the show recorded and I’ll post it later.

Hopefully you can tune in. Hopefully it works. Hopefully I don’t suck.

Every offseason I realize that after looking at this site for a whole year I’m tired of it. I need to freshen things up a little. I also discover there are some functional things that I’m not really happy with, and so I try to fix those as well. So every year about this time I break out the toolbox and start hammering away behind the scenes. With that I present DTW 2009. I’d go with version numbers but I can’t keep track anymore.

I kept things fairly similar to what has been here in the past appearance wise with a few tweaks to hopefully improve readability. But below the surface everything has been gutted thanks to the wonderful Thesis theme. It’s a highly customizable and somewhat sexy wordpress theme that should allow me even great flexibility to make changes in the future. It is also much more sound structurally than my former theme which actually started out as Kubrick at one point and was heavily modified into its current state (if the last few sentences mean nothing to you, just know that the new stuff is better).

Also, older stuff can sometimes break and I don’t have the inclination to go through 3000 posts and see if they all still look okay. So if you see broken stuff please let me know. This is most helpful if you provide the page, the problem, and your browser. Thanks!

The only functional change at this time is Gravatar support. Gravatars are those little pictures by your names in the comments. To get one go that Gravatar link, and when you comment here just use the same email address that you did to sign up for the Gravatar.

I do have some more changes coming to the comment area, and that should happen with the release of WordPress 2.7 which should be soon. In the meantime let me know what you think of the new look. I’m still building out the sidebars with the links from the old site, it’ll just take me some time because I’m going to do it right. And I’ll probably still make a few tweaks here and there.

If you’re a Twitter user, I created a new profile that just tracks Detroit Tigers news.  It is @TweetingTigers. I’ve set it up to pull in the RSS feeds from all Tigers blogs (well, I’m working towards all and plan to get there) and I’m planning to add in the Tiger related feeds from the big dailies as well. The result, you get notified whenever a Tigers blogger or another traditional Tigers source posts a story.

As an aside, if you’re interested in following my updates you can do so @billfer.

As a further aside, or what should probably be a precursor, Twitter is a microblogging service. Think of it as a cross between blogging and instant messaging. If you’re interested in learning more Twitter has a how-to video and Darren Rowse recently launched a blog of called TwiTip.

Detroit Tigers Weblog (as well as my other sites) were hacked this week. Thanks to those of you who contacted me via email and Twitter to give the heads up.

For those of you coming directly to the site you probably didn’t notice anything different. But for those who come from Google or Yahoo, you were being redirected to another site. This appears to be a pretty widespread problem for blogs powered by WordPress at the moment.

I have everything corrected now, but I don’t know how to ensure it doesn’t happen again. So if you see more of the weirdness, don’t hesitate to contact me. Sorry for any confusion and frustration this may have caused.

I’ll be on the It Is What It Is show with Sean Baligian on WDFN 1130 this morning. I’m slated to be on at 10:35 so if you’re interested you can catch the stream. If the audio is available I will post that later today.

UPDATE: Here’s the audio from today: Download audio file (bill.mp3?CPROG=PCAST&MARKET=DETROIT-MI&NG_FORMAT=sports&SITE_ID=1128&STATION_ID=WDFN-AM&PCAST_AUTHOR=Sports_Radio_1130_WDFN&PCAST_CAT=sports&PCAST_TITLE=WDFN_-_Sean_Baligian)
or you can download it.

I’ll be on WDET 101.9 FM talking about the Tigers and their losing ways at 10:40 this morning. If you’re so inclined you can flip the dial there, or hit a preset, or get the stream from WDET.org

UPDATE: Here’s the audio. I’m on about 45 minutes in.
Download audio file (FRI_full_show_5-16.MP3)