Answering the Call to the Pen

Welcome to Call to the Pen, a site dedicated to covering the entire landscape of baseball as thoroughly as we can possibly manage.  As the flagship site of FanSided.com Sport Network’s baseball coverage we are committed to making this one of the best Major League Baseball blogs around.  We are dedicated to bringing you top-notch original content on a daily basis by way of our featured columnists.   In addition we will strive, year round, to provide team specific and general reaction to trades, signings, contract extensions, and other transaction news as it applies to all 30 major league teams.  I hope you will become a regular reader of this site and enjoy the original content and news that we provide.

Before you get an introduction to our staff I thought it would be a good idea to give you a sneak peek at our plans for content.  The backbone of this site will be the work of the featured columnists.  Each columnist will be writing one column per week which will be published on their regularly assigned day.  Further each columnist will be covering a topic that is in the wheelhouse of their respective baseball knowledge.  Mat’s wheelhouse, for example, is writing about prospects and lesser known players so every Tuesday his column will appear on that very topic.  Each of the seven columns will be introduced to you below as you meet our staff.

Call to the Pen will be more than just seven columns a week.  We will also be reporting and reacting to transaction news as it happens.  To cover this aspect of the writing for the site we will have two Transaction Reporters with one assigned to the National League and one assigned to the American League.  In addition to providing the basic news and relatively unbiased opinion of the report publishing the article, we will be tapping the other writers of our MLB staff to provide thoughts on their specific team when their team is making news.

Every Friday I will be publishing a weekly article called the Baseball Side of FanSided.  This article will feature links to one story from each of our team sites as well as relevant announcements as they relate to our MLB team of sites and bloggers.  Those of you who are familiar with my work on Kings of Kauffman are already familiar with this series and how it is presented.  You can also rely on, and look forward, to a collection of nine links hand picked by the Call to the Pen staff and ready for your enjoyment every Monday morning.

All of the above is just the tip of the iceberg.  As we get into the swing of things and find our stride, we will be adding more regular content and will be trying out many different things in the coming months to see what works best for us and for our readers.

Now I think it is past time to introduce you to the collection of writers that will be contributing content to Call to the Pen.  As we grow and develop as a staff I am sure we will need to add more voices, but for now I hope you will find that we’ve got a lean, mean, and talented writing team assembled for you.  Without further adieu, the Call to the Pen staff.

Wally Fish: Lead Writer and Featured Columnist

Born and raised in the Twin Cities he moved to Kansas City after graduating from Creighton University with a degree in English and classical civilization.  He has worked for Saint Luke’s Health System as a Data Quality Specialist since 2001 and spends most of his time with his wife Laura and two young sons Justin and Zachary (named after Morneau and Greinke respectively).  Thanks to his wife’s love for the game of baseball, which nearly matches his own, baseball is a part of their daily lives.  Remaining non-family free time is consumed by all things baseball and writing.  Incidentally, his parents are thrilled that he is putting his college degree to use.  Wally is also the lead writer for our Kansas City Royals site, Kings of Kauffman, and is the network’s MLB Director.

Wally’s weekly column, Draft Currents, will appear every Sunday with a focus on the Major League Baseball Draft.  Anything related to the drafts of the past, present, and future is fair game.

Justin Klugh: Featured Columnist

Justin is a penniless post-grad from Temple University attempting to make ideas work while living amongst a pack of feral dogs in West Philadelphia.  Fortunately, as a lifelong Phillies fan, he’s been able to squeeze some joy out of recent years.   Indulging more than just his passion for baseball, Justin also writes for Tango Echo, a science and culture webzine, and (non)pretentious, a site for literary enthusiasts.   When not seduced by the warm glow of the computer screen, he can be found walking dogs, playing video games, searching desperately for Cheez-its, or being arrested for inciting a riot on Dollar Dog Night.  Justin is also the lead writer for our Phillies blog, That Balls Outta Here.

Justin’s weekly column, Balls to the Wall, will appear every Monday and focus on the more ridiculous or asinine aspects of the game he loves.  From Jayson Werth’s beard to Ozzie Guillen’s Twitter account, he’ll have it covered.  After all, baseball is like waiting for a bus, but when it finally arrives, it explodes.

Mat Germain: Featured Columnist

Grew up between Montreal and Ottawa, which allowed him to cheer for both the Montreal Expos and the Toronto Blue Jays legally.  He graduated from Mount St-Vincent University with a Business Administration degree with a major in management, as well as a minor in political sciences.   Mat is currently employed in the military as an Air Combat Systems Officer (17 years and counting) and spends all available quality time with his wife Marla and daughter Téa. They’ve agreed to spend some of that quality time watching baseball games, which works out great for the coverage of the game and research.  Mat is also the lead blogger for our Toronto Blue Jays site, Jays Journal.

Mat’s weekly column, On the Level, will appear every Tuesday and focus on one player at each level of the minors (from LoA to AAA) in order to draw attention to players that deserve to be noticed during the 2010 season. These will often be the lesser known players, or breakthrough players, that can help both fans of each team in knowing their players, as well as fantasy team owners who are looking to add talent to their squads. To provide coverage of all teams and leagues, each week’s column will feature a player from four different divisions and two will be from each league (AL/NL).

Brian Phair: Featured Columnist

Born and raised in Connecticut, Brian moved to Boston after graduating from the University of Connecticut with a degree in sociology.  Brian is getting married to his sports-enthusiast fiancé Sarah in May.  He works at a non-profit in Boston during the day and writes about the Boston Red Sox at night.  He is a fan of all sports, but during baseball season everything else takes a back seat.  Brian is also the lead writer for our Boston Red Sox site, BoSox Injection.

Brian’s weekly column, Streaking in the Park, will appear every Wednesday with a focus on the hot and cold players and teams around the league.  The column will touch on all levels of individual and team achievements, including the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Nathaniel Stoltz: Featured Columnist

Nathaniel has been writing about baseball since March of 2008 when he signed up to write about the A’s for Bleacher Report on a whim.  He eventually was ranked #1 in the MLB writers section there, and remains in a featured columnist role with his beloved A’s.  He came to FanSided in February of 2010 to debut our San Diego Padres site, Chicken Friars.  Nathaniel does plenty of extensive research on every team, and has a working knowledge of over 2,000 players.  In addition to his work for FanSided and Bleacher Report, he’s also written statistical analysis columns over on OaklandClubhouse.com.  He is currently a junior at James Madison University, pursuing a degree in technical and scientific communication, with designs on a career in baseball or sports journalism.

Nathaniel’s weekly column, This Week in Prospects, will appear every Thursday.  It will be similar in style to Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein’s “Prospect 10-Packs,” and will discuss ten minor leaguers per week.  Unlike Goldstein’s column, however, “This Week in Prospects” will not focus solely on successes.  Instead, Nathaniel will cover three top prospects performing well, three top prospects performing poorly, three sleepers on the rise, and one “Quadruple-A” player.

Michael Jong: Featured Columnist

Michael recently graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in chemistry.  He has been an avid, passionate Marlins fan since he hopped on the bandwagon as a young child in 1997 and has followed them through two World Series championships and numerous rebuilding trades.  While Michael has always been a Marlins fan, he has only recently been introduced to the world of sabermetrics.  Since then, he has vigorously studied the objective analysis of baseball and attempted to apply that knowledge to his work as the lead writer for our Florida Marlins side, Marlin Maniac.

Michael’s weekly column, Saber-Slant, will appear every Friday and focus on introducing sabermetrics to those interested in learning.  Topics range from primers and explanations of concepts to analysis of players and teams using those concepts.  The goal of the series is to try and get people who want to know more about the world of sabermetrics up to speed.

Ryne Gery: Featured Columnist

Ryne, a student at Syracuse University majoring in journalism aspires to become a sports writer after college.  He’s from Reading, Pennsylvania, and loves sports, especially basketball and baseball both of which he played in high school and still enjoys playing to this day.  He was named after Chicago Cubs Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg.   In addition to baseball, he also follows college basketball and football avidly.  His favorite teams are the Syracuse Orange and Florida Gators.  Ryne is also the lead writer for our St. Louis Cardinals site, Redbird Rants.

Ryne’s weekly column, Ryno Report, will appear every Saturday and will focus on an interesting storyline in baseball.  The articles will be feature stories dealing with a variety of topics from a highly debated event to a look back at the week in history to an interesting look at a player.  The column’s name was born out of Sandberg’s nickname during his Hall of Fame career.

Jordan Campbell: National League Transaction Reporter

Jordan is currently a student at Jacobs High School in Algonquin, Illinois.  He plans on majoring in journalism in college with the ultimate goal of carving out a lucrative career in the sports writing industry.  He is a lifelong fan of the Cubs who dreams of landing a job as a beat reporter for the team after college.  Beyond writing about baseball, he enjoys hanging out with his friends, as well as playing and watching sports.  Jordan is the lead writer for our Chicago Cubs site, Cubbies Crib.

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Tomorrow Mat will be leading off for our team with the debut edition of On The Level.  I hope you will stop by often and check out our content, growth, and progress.  Thanks for reading and thanks for taking the time to get to know us.