Jon Shepherd: Voices in the stands

In 2007, I was where you are. I voraciously read about the Orioles and participated on message boards. My thoughts and discussions about baseball were largely limited to reacting to written pieces or the dizzying pace at the old Baltimore Sun Orioles forum. Perhaps different from you, I was becoming more and more a message board hero armed with a set of sabermetric concepts, but without much understanding of the underlying data science. As I became aware of my path to be an internet stereotype, I took a step back and decided to found the blog, Camden Depot. There, I would slow the pace of conversation down and try to truly challenge my preconceived notions. I would ask questions that interested me and would use my training in science to answer those questions with defensible methodology. My goal changed from winning arguments to finding truth. Back then, I did not realize where my journey would take me. I never thought that Tony Gwynn would find the site and share it with others. I never thought that I would write a piece that would slowly, but surely take hold on the data science main stage like I did when I noted how defensive metrics were perhaps misreporting the Orioles as having a poor outfield defense at home and a solid one abroad. I never thought I would publish a major piece at a renowned baseball site like Baseball Prospectus. I never thought that ESPN would reach out to us for inclusion in their Sweetspot Sports network and that I would write several pieces for them as well as cover games in the press box. Nor did I think that I would write for the Huffington Post or MASNsports.com. I also never thought that my writing on chikungunya and amateur baseball would be highlighted by the journal, Science, in their magazine, which is something my research has never accomplished. Now, I am leaving the blog that I started and joining the ranks of Baseball Prospectus to do analytical work for them. What the above paragraph sounds like is a long-winded brag, but that is not my intention. My intention is this. The journey I had is one that you can experience as well. The key is to turn this crazy obsession about one set of laundry controlling a ball over another set of laundry into one where you can gain a wider experience with this game. As I head out of the local scene, there are holes that need to be filled. First, where is all of the minor league coverage? The Orioles have done us a great favor by having all of their teams so close to one another. During my time, I have only noticed a solid Bowie blog that went defunct a few years ago and a solid Norfolk one that I absorbed into Camden Depot. With HD video and Youtube making it so easy to record and catalog prospects, we should be seeing a lot more blogs focused on specific minor league clubs. Us hardcore fans should be readily familiar with every single player who shows up in Baltimore for his first game. We have that ability. Second, where are our financial fans? In case you missed it, baseball is more and more being taken out of the hands of traditional baseball men and being placed into the hands of folks who work on financial markets. I know for a fact that we have solid, well-informed fans from places like T. Rowe Price. These fans have an understanding of markets and how commodities are valued. That kind of knowledge is directly impacting baseball. Where are those kinds of sites? Those two areas are of great need to be filled. Camden Depot will continue to help fill the analytical niche in the local scene as we have been for years. I am handing over the reins to the accomplished Matt Kremnitzer. He will also be taking over my assignments here at MASNsports.com. I want to thank all of you who have read my work here as well as those of you who can go back to having first read my work back in 2007. I have appreciated the company. Take care, and let's go O's! Jon Shepherd blogs about the Orioles at Camden Depot. Follow him on Twitter: @CamdenDepot. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.