During the month of July, I will cover my 16th MLB draft on this site. This will also be the fourth time in that span where I’ve covered the draft alone.
This site was launched with an idea of covering minor leaguers throughout the Pittsburgh Pirates system, but it was really born from the draft coverage. Following the 2009 draft, Rob Neyer of ESPN linked to my recap, stating that “suddenly the 2009 Pirates draft looked great“, following the approach to pair under-slot catcher Tony Sanchez with a group of over-slot prep pitchers.
That 2009 draft wasn’t great. In fact, I spent time over the next 16 years writing about how the Pirates overhauled their scouting department after the results of those first three drafts under Neal Huntington. But that bump by Neyer really helped to launch this site into what it became in the years to follow.
In all honesty, I didn’t know what I was talking about in 2009. I had a lot of knowledge of the game, but I was largely just following the reports of other people, and the promise of upside with every prospect. I had no real clue how a prospect could develop to the majors. I was just a highly optimistic person who wanted to believe the Pirates were heading in the right direction, due to knowing exactly how that would positively impact their fan base.
Last year, in my 15th season covering baseball development, I took a much different approach.
The Pirates had the first overall pick, and there was no consensus for that pick, despite how good Paul Skenes looks today. Around this time last year, I started scouting players as I would if they were already in the Pirates’ system. This meant watching them in action, reading about their development, and most importantly, listening to interviews to get an idea of the person.
After scouting all of the players in the draft, there was no question that Skenes was the pick. In my mind, I represented independent accountability for the Pirates in that draft. I needed to write something before the draft to show that Skenes would be the pitcher we’re seeing today. That way, if the Pirates didn’t pick him, their actual online minions couldn’t go with the argument that no one knew Skenes would be this good. My article would exist.
Two days before the draft, I wrote that the Pirates can’t pass on the chance to draft Skenes. I then was invited on the Pirates’ pre-game show and defended the argument live to Pirates fans.
Today, I wonder if putting my thumb on the scale in such a way influenced their pick? If so, you’re partially welcome, Pittsburgh.
In the span of 15 years, I went from reacting to a Pirates draft with blind hope that they did the right thing, all the way to leaning on my expertise to provide accountability in the event they didn’t do the right thing.
That’s personal growth.
The biggest impact this site has made is allowing me to grow so much over the last 16 years. It’s also a difficult process that involves almost four versions of me, and there’s a lot of behind the scenes bullshit to deal with.
The Pirates are off today, so this update is going to be about my roles on this site, and the plans of the site going forward.
Tim Williams, The Owner
Behind the scenes, this site has had a few moments that honestly made me really question the Pittsburgh media scene.
The first came in 2013. This site was already a full-time job for me by that point, and was getting to the point of regular live coverage at all levels, with me moving to Bradenton to increase the live coverage. I made the decision that site contributors could only write about a prospect if you’ve covered them live.
This led to Kevin Creagh angrily departing the site as a contributor and eventually forming his own site, The Point of Pittsburgh. Kevin attacked me constantly over the years, publicly accusing me of being a shill for the Pirates. What’s funny about those claims is that in 2012 at PirateFest, Kevin arranged a photo with me and then-Pirates president Frank Coonelly. He wanted to put the photo on the site as a show of validation of some sort. I told him not to post the photo online, as I didn’t want it to look like there was any association with the Pirates beyond the media approach.
Kevin did post the photo on this site while I was driving back to my home in Virginia, and I deleted it after my long drive. Another interesting thing about that Pirate Fest is that I had set up an exclusive interview with Neal Huntington. Kevin separately set up a blogger session with Pirates Prospects in the mix, including several writers I had never heard about, and my exclusive turned into a group interview. I think one of them was a younger Gary Morgan, who is still writing today like its his full-time job.
My communication changed after that to make sure it was clear that this site wasn’t a group project, but owned and directed by one person.
The second big issue came in 2018. The site was a subscription site by this point. It was also the most influential outlet in Pittsburgh Pirates media. I was getting burnt out by all of the roles and time needed to run this site, and revenue was dropping with a lack of trust in the Pirates and lack of writing from me. I kept paying contributors more than their articles generated, treating this more like an independent media charity, and went broke by that summer. The site did rebound, but I knew I needed a new approach.
I started delegating some of my writing roles after 2018. As an example, I recruited Ethan Hullihen from Kevin Creagh’s site to handle the payroll discussions on this site. I never actually included Ethan’s payroll sheet on this site, but gave him space and a bigger audience to write whatever he wanted on the subject as I dropped the responsibility of that core feature from my site.
I wanted to outsource the MLB coverage on this site, so I purchased the domain PittsburghBaseballNow.com, and talked with this site’s former MLB writer Alan Saunders about a plan for a new site in 2020. Around the 2021 draft, when Pirates Prospects was set to return from a year off to plan for a network of independent writers, Alan and others from the Pittsburgh Sports Now sites were on board with creating a baseball site, aimed at covering the rebuild.
Today, I know that this group only wanted what I had. They originally asked for my archives, aiming to build a site that looked like Pirates Prospects became Pittsburgh Baseball Now, with promises that they would pay me for my writing on their site. I declined, obviously. I did help them, including getting them instant credentials as a partner to my site. I also sent them them traffic for a year with links to every article they published.
They ended up using some of my site’s decade-plus branding for their extensive prospect coverage, while targeting the “Pirates Prospects” tag heavily on Google. It was not the MLB-focused site that I was discussing. Their owner today, Dan Kingerski, claims to have bought the site in 2022, but I still own the domain, and found out about the “sale” on Twitter. Kingerski has tried to sue me for the ownership of the domain, but I won that case after providing a lot of receipts that I spent a lot of energy and focus initially helping to organize that site.
Pittsburgh Baseball Now originally had a podcast they paired with, featuring Anthony Murphy, Cody Potanko (who I believe goes by a different last name today), and Jeff Reed, who was a commenter on this site. They had me on for an episode in 2021, and I recruited Anthony Murphy to write for the site after being sent one of his articles by John Dreker. Years earlier, Dreker joined the site as the Pirates international writer, armed with a complete list of international bonus figures sent to him by Frank Coonelly. The easy access my original contributors had to Coonelly is a red flag to me today, but not to my ambitious, clueless younger self. In the case of Murphy, I was only focused on giving someone an opportunity to do what I had done, while recognizing his talent in analyzing the game.
The final big issue came last year around the draft.
We had a behind-the-scenes blow up last July, after I went solo on the draft coverage. The contributors wanted a place where they could have an unfiltered say on the Pirates. I was told I needed them more than they needed me. I told them that I was a higher tier of media than all of them combined, which they took offense toward. They ended up forming Bucs on Deck, which was essentially a copy of this site’s group format, minus me.
The Bucs on Deck group had since paired with a new site called Draft Nation, which is run by Pittsburgh people behind the scenes. This is just a shell operation, aimed at looking bigger than Pittsburgh media, but with a goal to influence Pirates minor league coverage directly. They created a prospect book this year, and sent an email to the Pirates looking for credentials, saying they were responsible for taking over the Prospect Guide from Pirates Prospects. I was surprised when a member of the Pirates media department congratulated me on the new venture.
The Bucs on Deck crew can claim they didn’t actually send this email, as it was the Draft Nation people they continue working with. They refused to answer any of my questions behind the scenes earlier this year in explaining how the project came together, with all of them writing a competitor for my long-running book, for a brand new site that was falsely claiming an association with my site.
John Perrotto, who joined Pittsburgh Baseball Now as their beat writer in 2022, has also paired with this Draft Nation site as a contributor, strengthening the Pittsburgh ties. This site ended up being the straw that broke the camels back for my trust in the Pittsburgh media scene. Especially a year after I took the expert approach I took in the 2023 draft. This site also directed my focus this year. Writing about the minor league system is my hobby. Investigating these shady corners of the Pittsburgh media scene is my real job.
It is curious to me how things have played out with former writers.
I might be a bit paranoid, but there feels like a behind-the-scenes fraternity in the Pittsburgh media scene, with an uncomfortably close association with the Pirates. There are two moments in this site’s history where I dictated a change in coverage that would limit what some writers have said, in the interest of making this site a strict media outlet. Both times resulted in the formation of a new site that ended up targeted my site in obvious and non-obvious ways.
I’ve been running a site online long enough to know that there are zero writers receiving full-time pay at The Point of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Baseball Now, or Bucs on Deck. I know I’m not paranoid, because I know every way these three sites have targeted mine, including ways I won’t mention.
The non-paranoid view is that this site has has been the best Pirates site for a long time, and that’s going to always inspire direct competition and imitation.
My approach as the owner of this site going forward is a solo approach. There’s not going to be a push to create opportunities for other writers. I trust zero people. I’m just here to provide accountability to the Pirates organization that no one else can provide, due to my deep knowledge of how the game works. I’m also here to provide a check on Pittsburgh’s media scene.
Tim Williams, The Producer
Owning the site is about keeping the site in existence.
Producing the site involves the content for the readers.
My goal as a producer is to create a content schedule that gives readers — old and new — what they want to read. I’m really good in this role, to the point that Bucs on Deck is relying on features that I produced for a group site. As an example, they have a feature on Mondays called “Ten Observations” where they all submit observations from the previous week of minor league action. I created this idea last summer, but shelved it, due to near-zero participation each week from the Bucs on Deck crew.
Producing for a single-writer site has been a bit more of a challenge.
There’s now a daily Pirates Prospect Watch, looking at the results from the previous day in the minors. There’s a daily First Pitch, with my views of the latest events. There’s also a daily premium article, which is available to Patreons, some of which have supported this site and my work since the beginning in 2009.
Two to three articles per day, every day, with zero days off. That’s my production schedule for the rest of the year.
Tim Williams, The Editor
For many years, I would sit down with a loose idea in my mind, write until I felt the idea was completely expressed, and publish. There was zero editing. Even with the work from other writers in the beginning.
I eventually made time to edit every article that went on this site, but I spent a long time with zero editing to my own articles. For over a decade, you were reading my raw, minimally refined thoughts on the game. It probably drove some highly educated people crazy, but the accessibility of the sloppy writing also probably led to this site’s popularity in a society where most people are at a 5th grade reading level or lower.
I’ve poured a lot more time into editing the last few years, as dictated by my Producer role. In the words of Eminem: “I bully myself, because I make me do what I put my mind to.” Whatever this site production needs, that’s what I do.
The editing for the Bucs on Deck writers was about 20 hours a week while they were on this site in 2022-23. That left little time for my own writing, which ran into the revenue problem from 2018. This year, I edit the daily articles with one or two passes, but features get the most attention. For example, yesterday I wrote a 4,000 word feature on hitting. The idea for this was finalized on Saturday night, and the outline and first draft was written in my head. I wrote half of the article in an hour on Sunday, then spent five more hours finalizing it, with three full reads and edits.
This article you’re reading now had a few more weeks of planning, but still several edits and re-writes before publishing. This small paragraph was actually one of the final things added. I add this only to underscore that I do not mention any other outlet or writer lightly. I’m only telling what actually has happened to influence this site’s direction.
The content goal today is less about bulk content with accessible reading, and more a focus to write, edit, and produce something quality that gets you to put down the god damn screen and think for a few minutes. That’s better with cleaner writing from editing.
Tim Williams, The Writer
Mifune: [dying] They’re coming… they’re coming… the Hammer.
Kid: What?
Mifune: You have to open that gate. Cut the counter-weights. You can do it. Hurry, there’s no time.
Kid: Captain, I… I didn’t finish the training program.
Captain Mifune is one of my favorite characters in fiction. Barely in The Matrix trilogy, he has one of the best moments of the final movie. With sentinels attacking Zion, and The Hammer ship speeding through a mechanical line to deliver an EMP that could save the day, Mifune altered his approach from defending the dock to opening the door for The Hammer to arrive.
The sentinels realized that Mifine was too powerful, and ended up swarming him in a final showdown. A kid nearby, who earlier was known as a Neo supporter, was recruited by Mifune with his dying breath to open the gate for The Hammer. The kid hesitated, worried that he lacked qualification, due to not finishing the training program. Mifune smiled, then issued his final words: “Neither did I.”
The kid probably took that as encouragement. His qualifications didn’t matter if Mifune also didn’t complete the same program. However, I believe that Mifune was talking about something else.
Mifune probably knew that life is nothing but a training program. None of us know what we’re doing. We all end up just doing something, and adjusting along the way. There is no way to complete any training program in anything you do, unless you die. At that point, your training is complete. Before that, you wake up every day hoping you’re doing it all the right way.
In 2020, as the pandemic was making the future uncertain for so many, I reached a point of certainty in my life. For years, I felt like an imposter on this site. I had no training to be a reporter. I had no training to be a writer. I just did this site, and kept doing this over and over, learning along the way.
What’s interesting about that is if you read this site from 2009-2019, you got the imposter version of Tim Williams. Whatever you thought of my writing and this site was far beyond what I thought of the status of each. As this site was scooping every Pittsburgh media outlet in 2015-18, I was still worried about making it.
I didn’t tell anyone the full details, but I made an essential change in September 2019. After a few years of therapy, medicine to regulate my thought and energy patterns, and reflection on what I wanted to do in life, I started proceeding confidently. By June 2020, I mapped out my entire life going forward.
My goal at this point is to write a fictional novel series about Time Travelers battling Vampires. I’ve talked about this often, as I dedicated myself to years of planning, before writing my first book during the distant year of 2024. I’ve spent the last few years studying psychology, quantum mechanics, cognitive neurology, music theory, and many other things to develop realistic, unique characters. Baseball writing has been a nice escape.
I’ve largely operated as my old self. I’ve tried to not reveal that I currently have a level of confidence where no one in this world is above me, mixed with humility that no one is below me. I’ve had a few “tests” of my confident self, and the periods are only known to me.
The first big “test” was when I went to Altoona at the end of the 2022 season. After that trip, I said that Endy Rodriguez was the top prospect in the system at the time, and a better long-term catching option over Henry Davis. This was before this became obvious to others. This article and the series that week were the debut of my new writing/editing process.
The second big “test” was last year with my draft coverage. This was the same writing/editing process. I didn’t enter that process knowing that Paul Skenes was the obvious pick. I did enter the process trusting my scouting skills, and trusting my knowledge once I felt the research portion was completed.
Skenes and Endy just happened to be standouts in my process. I didn’t do anything other than observe, trust my views of the game, and write the best possible stories that I could write.
My confident self took over full-time with the silent return of a daily First Pitch last month. I know there is no one else in Pittsburgh more equipped to serve as a check on the Pirates front office. Dejan Kovacevic is the writer who could generate the most noise with his complaints, but he doesn’t have my expertise of the game. I’m the writer who can easily explain why the Pirates are heading in a right/wrong direction.
I’ve spent a lot of time the last few years monitoring the Pittsburgh media scene, creating my novels, and testing different production approaches on this site. I’ve even offered the Pirates behind the scenes thoughts on the problems I was seeing with their hitting development. I’ve offered them unsolicited ideas, like having their players get pumped up with songs where the player knows every single word, or pushing chess education to all players to develop their strategic mind.
For full disclosure, I’ve told the Pirates in the past that I would work for them. This is for two reasons. Number one, I know I could help them win, and that would make a bigger impact for Pirates fans than any understanding provided by this site. Number two, I liked the changes they were making in giving more individual freedom to their players, and incorporating more of a female presence in leadership roles throughout the organization. The latter I feel is important for developmental purposes, but also important for societal purposes.
I’ll never actually work for the Pirates, and I’m fine with that. On this site, I have more power than Bob Nutting, Ben Cherington, and any other person in the organization who has to walk on eggshells with their words and beliefs in the name of marketing to the masses. They have to fear Pittsburgh media. You could line me up in front of the entire Pittsburgh media army like Jon Snow, and I wouldn’t need the calvary at my back to slice my way through that group. The Pirates have to fear the anger of Pirates fans, but there’s no fear from a writer with a 16-year track record of always expressing honest and fully researched views — whether they’re positive or negative.
My goal is to die a writer.
I turn 41 this year, and I currently have three projections for how things will go in my life. I’ll either die at 43, 52, or I’ll have to regroup at 60 and decide what to do with the next 20 years of my life. I don’t have any preference. I just wake up and write my assignments I give to myself every single day, while trying to always learn something new in this training program called life.
At the start of this year, I committed to one more year of baseball writing, with an option for 2025. This year was when I expected the Pirates to start competing, and I’m not removing the best check against their organization by stepping down.
Don’t mistake me for Captain Mifune.
I am The One.
And I continue doing this simply because it’s what I choose to do.
I’m enjoying writing this year, more than I have in years. The freedom of covering this organization how I want, with no concern for helping to publish content from other writers is a combination I’ve never really had on this site. A big reason I decided to return was to experience that process. My “option year” will largely be determined by my desire to continue this coverage beyond this year. Hopefully, it won’t be as bad as Matrix 4.
This month, you’ll get my updated top 50 prospects (releasing this week), my draft coverage (draft prospect previews starting soon), and trade deadline reactions. I hope you enjoy the upcoming content, and consider helping this site’s remaining operations by becoming a Patreon supporter.
Most of all, I hope to see the Pirates heading in a winning direction for their long tortured fans.
And if I’m correct about parts of a Pittsburgh media fraternity working together against me, I hope they stop wasting their time.
