Its opening day in the minor leagues. Buffalo's game has already been rained out with the games in New Hampshire and Michigan in doubt too. Dunedin could be our only hope for a game. But before the games begin it's time to talk about the minor league updates. The first MLU on Da Box was published on April 10, 2004. Alex Rios was in AAA, Aaron Hill in AA and a host of players who we had high hopes for were scattered through the system. Those of you with long memories might remember Vito Chiarravalotti, who we got excited about for a while before we learned that first basemen who mash in short season ball don't always make it to the big leagues.
I wrote my first MLU on April 12th, 2004. The Jays had a minor league team in Charleston and Greg Zaun was playing for the Jays AAA team in Syracuse. 2017 will be the 14th year of minor league coverage on Da Box, the longest continuous coverage of the Blue Jays minor leagues on the internet.
A lot has changed over the last 14 years. Back in the day there were no real-time updates for games, the results landed at some point and you took it from there. Now the games are updated pitch by pitch at the upper levels and inning by inning at the lower ones. Many of the games are broadcast live on video so you can see the players for yourself. Twitter has also made a big difference. The teams tweet about the games, the teams broadcasters tweet about the games and journalists tweet. John Lott has been tweeting an abbreviated MLU on Twitter for a couple years now. There are many sites that provide minor league coverage apart from milb.com. There are so many ways to get information on games that the unique value of our MLU has diminished over the years. That is reflected in a reduced readership, people have more immediate ways of getting a description of what has happened in the game. By the time we post the MLU many minor league followers have followed the game themselves and know what happened. So we have decided that the "old-form" MLU should not continue here. But people still love minor league information and insights and its not so much the results that matter its what it means or how things happened that matter.
As a result the MLU is being reborn as a way to note the notable things that happened in that days games. It could be a particularly good performance or a bad performance. It could be a weird and wacky play, to quote Marv Albert. It could be a reflection on a player. But it will not be a description of how the runs were scored or a list of who went 2-4 in a game. The times are changing and the world has moved on. We are doing the same but we hope the new and improved MLU has more value than the old form MLU.
#2JacobBrumfield, sam and myself are back at the controls. As it has been over the last few years the MLU will run Monday to Friday. We hope you enjoy the new format. Let the games begin!
