Category: Housekeeping Page 1 of 3

Friends, a new season is upon us. As you know, we were looking for new writers to join our team. We are very happy to say that we found them – but before we make the formal introductions, let us just pause to say that we are humbled by the number of applications you all sent us. We cannot thank you all enough for taking the time to write a sample and send it to us.

But now on to the new team members, and we are thrilled to be bringing aboard four new writers to the Views team. All of our new friends bring something unique to the table. In alphabetical order, they are:

• Jaime Acevedo (@JaimeDavid3010) is new to sportswriting. He will bring all sorts of statistical insight to the Views team, including scouting the trade and free agent markets, current player trends, and everything in between.
• Ana Apostoleris (@AnaMariana42) returns to the sportswriting game with us. We’ve known Ana for a while and know she will bring sharp insights about the current Yankees. She will also write in-depth historical perspective pieces.
• Rohan Arcot (@rohanarcot20) joins us by way of Bronx Pinstripes, where he has been a contributor for a while. You can see his archives here. Rohan will bring a ton of good stuff about the Yankees’ pitchers, their arsenals, the Yankee farm system, and cover the draft for us.
• Domenic Lanza (@DomenicLanza) returns to us from RiverAveBlues, from which most of you probably remember him. Dom will bring us the same toolset he brought the fine folks at RAB. He will be writing statistical analysis and prospect-related stuff.

We encourage all of you to throw them all a follow on Twitter and give them a hearty welcome to the Views team. They will help take our site to the next level and ensure that we are delivering you the same consistent analysis, game coverage, and prospect writing that you have come to expect from us.

So, with that out of the way, let’s get to some baseball, shall we? It will be a fun season of baseball for the Yankees. The entire VF314 crew, new and old alike, can’t wait to watch and enjoy it with all of you.

Another baseball season is nearly upon us, and while we don’t know the specifics of how and when the season will function, we do know one thing: we’d like you to write for us. We’re going to be looking for writers to join us, specifically any who are interested in doing everything it is that we do here:

• Covering specific games with game threads & nightly recaps
• Previewing upcoming opponents in series previews
• Providing original analysis and thoughts on the latest and greatest with the Yankees
• Pitching in with prospect coverage & nightly recaps of the farm’s games
• Joining our weekly podcast
• Arguing about the Yankees in our Slack channel

You get the idea. Unfortunately, these are unpaid positions. This blog is a passion project for all of us. Of the limited revenue we do generate, 100% goes to keeping the lights on with the site and podcast. We all have different day jobs and do this strictly because we love doing it.

With that in mind, we will hold you under no obligations in terms of written volume. We would not expect a set number of posts per week or anything like that. In other words, you can write as frequently as you want. We just hope you’d be a willing participant in our season’s coverage.

There is no prior writing experience necessary. We strongly encourage anyone, especially those from communities typically underrepresented in baseball writing circles, to reach out. We would really like to emphasize this point. Having a diverse team with a variety of perspectives and points-of-view is extremely, extremely important to us.

So, if that sounds like something you’d be interested in, please do send us an email at viewsfrom314 [at] gmail [dot] com by Monday, February 8. To be considered, please include a brief bio/introduction and one original, unpublished post as a sample of your style and voice. There is no strict word count or topic – all we want is to hear your voice and see your perspective shine through in a post you’d think would fit on Views.

We will do our best to respond to everyone, and we’d ideally like to bring everyone aboard before the start of Spring Training. Thanks, and go Yanks!

We last gave a housekeeping update in early February, which was somehow only four and a half months ago. I don’t believe it either. A ton has changed since then, but team practices are resuming this weekend. (They’re actually calling it Summer Camp, believe it or not.) That means it’s a good time to hit on the basics again.

But first…old friend Melky Cabrera signed with the Mets yesterday. The Melk Man is still in the league, believe it or not, and that’s an excuse to watch this play of yesteryear:

I love everything about this, from Damon’s reaction to Manny’s exasperated stare of disbelief. It never gets old. Anyway, onto the housekeeping stuff.

Spring Training Summer Camp

Camp is set to begin this weekend, and we’ll do what we were doing for Spring Training: providing daily updates on the biggest news of the day. See here for an operative example. It’s probably going to be weird – who knows what kind of access reporters will get given the pandemic – so there may be less to go on, but we’ll see. The point is that we’ll do our best to provide regular news updates to keep you up-to-speed. How that will actually materialize remains to be seen.

The Usual

It may have been a while, but things haven’t changed that much around here. It’s going to be a strange season, if it even happens at all, but we’ll continue to do everything we normally do to keep you up-to-date on all things Yankees. We’ll continue the following familiar features:

• Weekly Manager Evaluation Survey
• Weekly Thoughts Post
• Friday Mailbag
• Game Threads
• Game Takeaways
• Podcast

I was looking forward to taking over DoTF in Steven’s absence this year, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. If there is Minor League Baseball this year, we’ll keep you posted just like we would have – but, again, this is not a usual year, so we’ll see.

The Mailbag

I bring up the mailbag as it’s own little blurb here because, well, I stopped doing it for a while. There just wasn’t that much baseball to talk about! Weird, right? It’ll be back starting this Friday as usual, so please send in your questions to viewsfrom314 [at] gmail [dot] com. We’ll choose our favorites each week, and those that don’t make the website might get covered on the podcast.

Finally, I’d be remiss to note that this is not a normal season, and that’s not just because of the fact that it’ll be shortened. The context in which the season will proceed is obviously one that is unique in baseball history, and we can’t (and won’t) ignore that. Eireann Dolan had a good thread on this on Twitter the other day, which you can see here:

She raises a ton of good points, and while we’re just a lowly blog, we all will do our best to cover this season with the proper perspective while still covering the day-to-day operations of all things Yankees. If we fail in that balance, please keep us accountable.

It’s going to be a weird season (if it’s a season at all), but we’re excited to follow it with you. Go Yankees.

Hello everyone! With the start of the season right around the corner, we’re hosting a fantasy baseball league on ESPN. It’s a 12-team rotisserie league with a snake draft tentatively scheduled for March 25 at 9 pm EST. That’s the day before Opening Day, which should ideally help us limit drafting injured players. It is free to play with no cash prize – we only play for bragging rights. Here are the scoring categories:

We have 5 teams already signed up, which means we’ll need 7 more to get this thing rolling. We want you to join us! If you also want to play, please send us an email at viewsfrom314 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line “Fantasy Baseball.”

In the email, please tell us the following four things: 1) why you want to play, 2) how many leagues you’re in (or played in last year), 3) how and why you’ll be a consistent player, and 4) your best line of trash talk against one of us. We’ll choose the first 7 people who can make a case that they’ll keep up with the league all year and play with good spirits.

We’ve all been in a league where someone stops setting their lineup in May. Do not be that person. Nobody likes that person. If you’re not that person, please send us an email. We look forward to competing against you!