Well, I guess that’s not actually true – they’re not really free agents, but rather, mercenaries adding to their list of websites being infiltrated by their great work.

In addition to the great work Dennis and Josh do here at PH8, I’m happy to announce that we’ve somehow conned accomplished baseball minds and writers Dayn Perry (you’ve seen his work at NotGraphs, FOXSports.com, several other outlets, and his own books!)  and Andrew Simon (his blog Hitting the Cutoff Man is a personal favorite, and he also just happened to cover the Cubs as an intern for MLB.com one season – we don’t hold it against him).

Both of these guys are Cardinal fans who will use PH8 as an outlet for their Cardinal-specific ideas – a direct conduit for their Cardinal writing to us Cardinal fans.

You’ll still find that we’re just going to write as we see fit, there won’t be any regular schedule of posting from any of us – but hopefully you’ll find that among the group of us, there will be something you want to read.  Thanks for doing that, reading.

You can follow Dayn @daynperry and Andrew @HitTheCutoff on Twitter to get their instant updates, and as always, links to new posts are always funneled through @PitchersHit8th.  Follow Dennis @gr33nazn and Josh @aprfool79 to complete running the full PH8 Twitter gambit.

We’re excited and looking forward to hearing more from Dayn and Andrew here at the site, and hope you all are excited about reading their Cards stuff too.

I don’t say it enough, but great thanks are due to Dennis and Josh for keeping things fresh around here – they truly make the site what it is – and thanks to Dayn and Andrew for joining us.  Go Cards!

Yep, that’s right, Pitchers Hit Eighth has reached the 600 Post Club.  I’m not sure what that means, if anything, other than Dennis has been writing a lot lately.

Dennis’ post “Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the B12 Bobbleheads” this morning was number 600.

Consequently, the “milestone” offers me the opportunity to thank Dennis sincerely for coming in here and blowing the doors off the place. He has been prolific, profound, funny, controversial, and passionate from his first post here.  Ironically, that post was titled “Why I’m Not a Baseball Blogger“.

Anyway, thanks Dennis.  Looking forward to the 2011 season and trading barbs with you.

Thanks also to everyone who has been reading, it’s a cool thing to get your feedback.

United Cardinal Bloggers Twitter

The United Cardinal Bloggers now have a Twitter feed that hopefully will soon include links to posts from all member blogs daily.  If you have a hard time keeping up with the sheer number of sites that are now in the UCB Network (like I do), you can now follow @utdcardbloggers and never miss another link.

UCB Radio

Despite my disappearance from regularly appearing on the show, Daniel, Bill, Josh and the crew have forged on.  (I know what you’re thinking, they’re better off – and you’re probably right.)

If you haven’t listened in a while, or never have, use the player below to check it out.  It’s really worthwhile.  You can also download from iTunes via the big CD/musical note image above right.

Now, the bad news. Blog Talk Radio has decided to effectively pull the plug on the ability to do this show for free.  They are moving to a pay/premium service for shows longer than one hour and in prime-time slots.

As such, the group is exploring other options for producing the show each week.  If you happen to be a benevolent reader and wish to defray the approximately $40 per month cost to host a premium show, use the contact form and let us know.

I-70 Baseball and the Midwest Baseball Writers Conference

Bill Ivie and the good folks at I-70 Baseball have announced they will host an event for baseball writers in Springfield MO on February 12th of this year.

The Midwest Baseball Writers Conference will feature guest speakers and an opportunity to interact with others to discuss, well, writing.

Check it out and get in touch with Bill if you are interested in attending.

PH8 Shop

I want to expand and improve upon the current PH8 Shop.  Many thanks to those of you who have already purchased the “Honkin’ for Jaime” shirt or a Pitchers Hit Eighth branded piece of apparel – but I want to try to add some new exciting things there this year.

If you have any suggestions for a fancy, cool, funny, or otherwise shirt design – please let us know.  If we use your suggestion and create a new item, we’ll send you one for free.  FREE STUFF.

Follow us on Twitter

@PitchersHit8th
@gr33nazn
@aprfool79
@andrewdmoses

See what I did there?  A baseball pun?

Today marks the second birthday (or anniversary, however you look at it) of this humble little site.

In May 2008, I led things off with a post that really had nothing to do with the Cardinals – “Soriano = Zito?” – which is strangely being made to look pretty silly right now, as both Alfonso Soriano and Barry Zito are tearing it up for their respective clubs.  Still doesn’t make the umpteen expensive years left on their contracts any better, but I digress…

My real point is that I wish to express sincere gratitude to those who read every day, or every other day, or as often as we can get something new up for you to read.  Josh and Andrew have been a great help to me, both providing you folks reading with more to digest on a regular basis as well as some differing viewpoints that I hope make the site more “versatile” or “diverse” or pretty much “whatever folks will read.”

I am grateful for, and consider myself very lucky to have come across, the opportunities presented to me solely based upon my “work” here at the site.  Participating in interviews with Bill DeWitt III, Kyle McClellan, P.J. Walters, among others; participating in projects with other bloggers; being a member of the UCB and BBA; among other fun things this site has brought my way to numerous to name all of them here.

I appreciate the opportunity to interact with those reading as well as my fellow bloggers and other writers, whether here, on Twitter, Facebook, or some other medium.

This site has allowed me to further both my baseball knowledge, my math skills (ha!), and deepen my appreciation for, and love of, the Cardinals.

What I’m saying is thank you.  I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing, hopefully continuing to improve as I hope I have over the two years previous, and hopefully you’ll keep reading.

Cheers.

The doldrums of winter, with no regular baseball to watch, generally lends itself to filling time with something other than writing – if for no other reason than a lack of things to write about.

Here, that typically means futzing around with the site structure, engine, and appearance.

To that end, I want to bring your attention to some of the most recent futzing.

1.  Undertook a huge clean up project to reduce the number of categories on the site, as well as the tags.  Categories now are more general, like Current Cardinals or Minor League Cardinals.  Tags will drill you down to more specific posts, like a specific player name like Skip Schumaker or Yadier Molina.

2.  With the change in site structure and the way you (the reader) will link to older posts, I’ve moved the Categories drop-down menu and added a similar Tags menu at the very top of the sidebars:

There are also tag clouds on both the Archives page and at the bottom of every page on the site in the brand spanking new…

3.  …Footer!  Been looking to add the footer for a while now, never was really sure what we could put in there, and it figures to be dynamic for a little while to determine what does or doesn’t work best down there.  Scroll to the bottom of the page and check it out.

4.  ‘Read a Random Post’ is over there in the far right sidebar.  We’ve managed to build up a pretty significant history of posts now in almost two years, and instead of having them all become buried treasure, now they are available in the sidebar on a rotating basis – making it very easy for you all to see just how wrong PH8 was about several topics and ridicule.

5.  I mention these items only because you are certain to see them, so they deserve mention – I’ve added a ‘Donate’ button for PayPal at the bottom of the sidebar and an affiliate link to the creators of our design framework, Thesis, in the sidebar.  While you loyal readers (all three of you), are certainly under no obligation to click on either, your support of Pitchers Hit Eighth in either case is much appreciated.  If you’ve got a blog that you wish to redesign, Thesis is awesome – again, it’s the basis of our site here.  If you find PH8 strangely adds value to your daily routine and wish to make a PayPal donation, that is much appreciated as well.  Any funds we’ve accumulated so far have been put toward hosting and domain registration, and general upgrades to the site.  Now that Josh and Andrew are on board, I’d love to be able to thank them for their contributions to the site by kicking back some tickets or other useful stuff to them.  Thanks for reading this item, I won’t mention this stuff again unless absolutely necessary.

6.  I’ve added links to the Baseball Bloggers Alliance member sites, I’ve updated the blogrolls in the sidebars, and I’ve added a ‘Friends of PH8′ section.  I’ve made some calls on Twitter already, I’ll do the same here – if you aren’t in the blogroll and wish to be, send me an e-mail or post in the comments below, and we’ll get you on there.

Thanks again for reading here, we hope to keep you entertained as another great season of Cardinals baseball takes off soon.  As always, if you have suggestions for improvements to the site and/or our writing, let us know.

I’m quite happy to announce the addition of another writer to the suddenly burgeoning stable here at Pitchers Hit Eighth.

Andrew joins us directly from the ranks of Twitter, where a number of you may recognize @GoElBirdos for his astute observations on Cardinal baseball and addition to discussions on many topics.

Josh and I are looking forward to having Andrew showing us up here at the ole blog, and I’m looking forward to having another writer with great ideas and outstanding knowledge of the game to help keep the site current when Baby PH8 arrives.

Andrew is very excited to get going here and I must admit I’m anxious to see what he can produce, because I know from following him on Twitter that the guy knows baseball and can impart some knowledge on all of us.

So again, please welcome Andrew to the site, as I have, and keep reading along.  We all appreciate your stopping by, and we appreciate even more when you join the fray in the comments section below – it’s easy, don’t be shy!

Stay tuned for more here at the site – and for those on Twitter, here is the PH8 roster – Nick: @PitchersHit8th, Josh: @aprfool79, Andrew: @GoElBirdos.

Not much to look at here, my apologies – but I wanted to bring up a few loose ends that had escaped my posting here recently…

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I did a Q&A with Simon on Sports in December called “Blogging the Off-season” where Simon asked several bloggers from all of the MLB teams some questions about their respective teams’ upcoming off-season. It’s a bit dated now, but I’m happy to say that my answers are still faring pretty well.

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Have been doing some more touching up with the site itself that you may or may not have noticed. There is now a “Read a Random Post” section at the far right over there. I figure we’ve got enough backlog now that some may enjoy looking back. You can always find “the classics” by going to the Archives page as well (it’s linked in the top nav).

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With the random post section, I’ve reduced the Recent Comments tally to five. It was getting kind of unwieldy with ten, in my humble opinion. If you want more, let me know. It’s easy to change.

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I’ve been trying my darnedest to keep on top of the blogroll, but I’m certain I’m missing some folks. If you have us linked at your site and don’t have a link here – let me know! Twitter @PitchersHit8th, our Contact form, or in the comments below.

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I’ve added a page with links to all of the members of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. Check it out down there in the left sidebar.

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If you didn’t catch the McGwire-based UCB Radio Hour last night, download on iTunes via the big record logo above right.

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Cheers everyone, as always, we strive to provide a great site and entertain you. If you have suggestions, comments, or feedback – good or bad – we’re always interested in hearing it.

Thanks for reading.

As the Cardinals steam toward the playoffs and Cardinal fans search for more information and news, demanding more information about their team, the challenge to keep fresh content here on the site for our loyal readers (all three of you) continues to increase.

With that in mind (and an eye toward yours truly getting more sleep), it is with great pleasure that we announce the addition of Josh, the heretofore steward of Redbirds Row, to the PH8 team.

Josh and I have been teaming up on the UCB Radio Hour over at BlogTalkRadio for some time now, and I make every effort to keep him company on Sundays during his half-hour as well.  As such, it seemed a logical move to beg Josh to help me keep things running smoothly around here, and he has thankfully accepted.

Don’t expect much to change around here, save for (hopefully) more new ideas and opinions for you all to read on a more regular basis.

I hope you all will welcome Josh to the site, as I have, and continue to follow along.  In addition to reading Josh and I here, you can always follow us on Twitter as well – @PitchersHit8th and @aprfool79 (Josh).

As always, thanks for reading.

-Nick

So while I was watching Albert Pujols pulverize a ball into the left-center field stands at Citi Field during the tenth inning of tonights Cards-Mets game, I took the time to put together a fancy new archives page.

Since the redesign, a main source of archives was missing, and I wouldn’t want to deprive you all of all the past blathering that’s gone on here.

So via the new PH8 Archives (also in the top nav bar, look up) you can now search via terms in the search box, you can search via year or month, you can search via category or author, and you will also get a list of random posts and list of most recent posts.

ALL IN ONE PLACE!

Back to our regularly scheduled writing about that spanking new Cardinal offense tomorrow.

(Hat tip to the good folks at Blogussion for the archive tutorial )

Well, ok, we’re slightly late, since the American League has already triumphed 4-3 tonight in St Louis.

Nevertheless, we’re quite pleased to present the spanking new Pitchers Hit Eighth.

We hope you like the new look, and are very anxious to get your feedback and suggestions.

Some items of note:

Removed

• We deleted some blogroll links that have gone dead or are no longer relevant.  If this deletion wrongly included your site, please leave a note in the comments below.

Moved

• You’ll note that there is a second sidebar, so things over there have been rearranged.
• The link to the UCB Radio Hour on iTunes is still here, click on that big ole red tune image in the upper right.
• If for some reason, you feel the need to register or log in, the link is all the way at the bottom right.

NEW!!!

• Easy links to Twitter, Facebook, and UCB Radio via iTunes by clicking on the handy image links at top right.
• We’re getting more information into the same space.  The content window hasn’t changed, just shifted left slightly.  We hope that it’s still as clean as you found the original design, easy to read, easy to locate what you’re looking for.
• Replies in comment threads now work, which make discussion on posts far easier to follow.  Perhaps most excited about this upgrade.

Now, we’re not done by any means – there are still some tweaks and adjustments necessary.

That being said, if you have any feedback at all on the new design, please leave it below in the comments – things broken, things that look out of sorts, upgrades or new features you would like to see, etc.  Nothing is off limits.

Thanks for reading for the last year plus, and we hope you’ll stick around with us for a while longer.

Since the Cardinals took the night off last night (trust me, they did, it was an off-day at Busch III), we at PH8 regret to inform you that as a result you will be subjected to …

*** SHAMELESS PLUG THURSDAY ***

We’re happy, nay, ecstatic to have you reading along here on the home base of Pitchers Hit Eighth. However, if you prefer the comfort and ease of an RSS reader, we’ve got a feed that you can latch onto – right here.

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We enjoy bantering with you folks almost as much as we do writing about the comings and goings of the St Louis Cardinals. Why not join in the banter? Find a comment section at the bottom of each post, like you see here.

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Once a week (Wednesdays, 9:30pm CT) the members of the United Cardinal Bloggers network host the UCB Radio Hour over at Blog Talk Radio. Just so happens that PH8 co-hosted with Josh from Redbirds Row on the show last night. You can listen to the show anytime by using the Blog Talk Radio player on the UCB website linked above or by downloading from iTunes by clicking on the huge UCB logo button at the top right on this site.

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As you may or may not notice at the right there, we regularly spout off on a Twitter account. If you’re on Twitter (or even if you’re not), you can read and/or follow PH8 on Twitter – @PitchersHit8th. If you really like what you see, ReTweet it!

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Finally, there’s Facebook. Holy social media have we overdone it at Facebook.

Pitchers Hit Eighth profile

Pitchers Hit Eighth fan page

Pitchers Hit Eighth group

Be our friend, “fan” us, join our group. Heck, we might even challenge you to a featured match on Baseball Tycoon!

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Also, don’t be afraid to use the handy little share button you may be seeing right below this post.

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Thanks for reading everyone, thanks for inflating our ego by giving even the slightest bit of credit to anything written here, and thanks for supporting the site in all of these various locations.

Go Cards!

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’m trying to start up a daily morning post that will allow me to put up short tidbits (in addition to Twitter, Facebook, the UCB site, etc) on my thoughts from the previous night’s game, news and notes, etc.

I’m trying to keep things fresh for the loyal readers (all three of you) here.

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First off, I obviously think this decision by our esteemed manager is bogus:

http://yourenotagolfer.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/04/opening_day_lineup.html

Pitchers Hit Eighth Ninth?

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The NCAA Women’s Final Four is in St Louis this weekend (and into Tuesday).  They’re playing at Scottrade, which provides a bit more intimacy than the monstrous layout and spectacle up at Ford Field for the Men’s tourney.  UConn versus Louisville in the Women’s final (which is more than I can say for the much ballyhooed, over-hyped Big East on the Men’s side) on Tuesday night.  Check out the floor that they’re playing on (hat tip to Basketball Court Designs).  What do you think?  My first reaction was that it looks cluttered and overdone, but the more I see it on SportsCenter, I’m coming around to it…

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So tomorrow is Opening Day.  Matthew Leach made reference tonight on the UCB Radio Hour that the folks at MLB.com treat the first day of the season as a capital “O”, capital “D” – Opening Day – sort of event.  I like that thinking and am adopting it here at PH8.  Let’s hope they can get the game in.

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Speaking of Opening Day, you may have seen the guest post here from Josh at Redbirds Row from last night.  Well, I made a similar Opening Day retrospective post of sorts over at Josh’s site.  Check it out here.  Try not to get choked up reading it.

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Tonight was the actual start of live, meaningful, counts-in-the-standings baseball.  The Atlanta Braves survived a late scare to beat back the defending champion Philadelphia Phillies on the strength of long balls launched via Brett Myers’ service.  Derek Lowe, on the other hand, was dealing.  I know he got a big payday and was likely never considered, but I still can’t help but think what prognisticators would be saying about the Cards this season if they had Lowe in the rotation as well.  If they were willing to spend $10mm per on Brian Fuentes, why not at least take a long look at a guy like Lowe?

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Anyone think Jordan Schafer might get a surprise visit from the “random testers” after his bomb tonight?  No doubt his history is likely to follow him, despite his talent.

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Finally, Monday is an important sporting day for more than Opening Day.  The Big Ten is repping strong with Tom Izzo and his Michigan State Spartans reaching the finals in Detroit.  As an Illini fan and alum, I’m generally inclined to root against and even despise Sparty.  For some reason, I find myself rooting for them this year.  Perhaps it’s that I’ve finally had enough of the Big Ten bashing and am riding the wave with our last remaining team, perhaps it’s that I still have my green State t-shirt from the t-shirt exchange that took place before the 2005 Final Four (organized by the Orange Krush and Izzone), but I think it also has to do with the amount of respect I’ve developed for Izzo over the years.  The Spartans have reached the Final Four five of the last eleven seasons.  Each player that has remained at MSU for four years has played in at least one Final Four.  Those are staggering numbers.  Izzo will go down as one of the greats.  Go Green!  Go White!

The UCB Preseason Roundtable discussions continue, with Deaner over at Cardinal Nation Globe posting today about choices for a franchise building block – Albert Pujols exempted.

Tomorrow features a great question from Josh at That’s A Winner – I won’t spoil it, but it’s very pertinent to the Cardinal outlook for coming years.

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Tomorrow night, I get to play host again for UCB Radio Hour.  We will once again be chatting about Spring Training and the return of live baseball.  The Cardinals open up the spring season tomorrow, with a lineup that could be very telling for the 2009 season.  Please join us for Radio Hour – the more callers we get, the better the show is – call in for 5 minutes [ (646) 929-1758 ] and ask some questions of our brilliant bloggers.

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If you’re not checking them out already, Derrick Goold and Matthew Leach are down at Spring Training and twittering to the rest of us poor saps what they’re seeing in Jupiter.  Today featured a wild ‘coach-pitch’ game fostered by manager Tony LaRussa.

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Finally, some of you have probably noticed a few more design changes taking place here over the last week or two.  I’ve taken the opportunity of the off-season to perform some upgrades on the site.  Notably (with links to the code suppliers, as a manner of thanks) – we now have links to Related Posts at the bottom of each post page, we have inserted an Add This button at the bottom of every post so you loyal readers (all three of you) can share PH8 posts with your favorite news sites or friends, the Greet Box has been added for those folks arriving via search engines or otherwise to help them navigate around, and finally we’ve switched to WP to Twitter plugin for firing off our links into the Twitterverse.  Some of these things you will notice, some you won’t.  Hopefully they are not too intrusive, and if you see something you don’t like – please let me know!

I wanted to share a couple of quick notes with you folks.

Tomorrow is the scheduled date for the United Cardinal Bloggers’ Blog Swap.  You can check out the entire lineup at C70 At The Bat tomorrow morning.  The real kicker is that you don’t know who is posting where.  We’ll have a guest poster here at PH8, it’s up to you to guess the writer.  Time to make use of that comments section!

We’ll have a guest post put up somewhere else in the Cardinal blogosphere, so make sure you check out all of the UCB sites to get the lay of the land.

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Next note is about PH8 Facebook – we have finally joined the Facebook movement!  You can now be a fan of Facebook at the official Pitchers Hit Eighth Facebook page.  Don’t all rush over there at once, I don’t want you to crash their servers…

For my loyal readers (all three of you) paying attention to the right sidebar, there’s been a lot of activity today in the Redbird Tweets section.

The testing and experimentation is complete.

I was lucky to come across a stud javascript programmer (thanks AD!) that has put together an outstanding script for me that pulls in not only my posts from Twitter, but also shows posts from others directed toward me (or @replies, in Twitter lingo).  Because there’s more discussion, I’ve expanded the section to include the ten most recent posts by me or to me.

This should help to provide a clearer picture of the context of discussions that we here at PH8 are having on Twitter, rather than just seeing my end of it.

As such, I’ve renamed the group from ‘Redbird Tweets’ to ‘Cardinals Twitter’ as I feel it is now going to include a lot more of the Cardinal “Tweeple” on the site.  It’s all semantics at this point, but hey, I’m excited about it.

If you’re not already on the Twitter wagon, join up at http://www.twitter.com .

Then you can follow me (I’m @PitchersHit8th) and the rest of the UCB crew as we keep it under 140 characters!

Obviously if you’re here reading, you may not find this helpful, but Pitchers Hit Eighth has partnered with Cards Clubhouse to ‘syndicate’ our content (if you will) on the forums over there.

Hopefully this arrangement will bring a number of readers and opinions back and forth between the sites to make the discussion more lively (at least more lively than the Cards’ off-season).  Zing!