The 2014 MLB regular season begins next season, and the Miami Marlins are ready to try and improve from a bitter 2013 campaign. But you know who else is ready to improve upon their previous season? Your SB Nation Marlins blog, Fish Stripes! Fish Stripes is back for another season with yours truly at the helm, and we are ready to once again bring the best Marlins coverage we can right to you, our loyal readers.
But what can you expect from us, and what do we want to see from you? Our number one goal here at Fish Stripes is to provide the best analytic and opinionated coverage of the team, from every aspect of the organization. What we want to hear is that you, the readers, also have a voice! So here, on this piece, we'll discuss what Fish Stripes will give to you, and what you can give to us to make our community the strongest on the web for the Marlins.
Daily Schedule
The Fish Stripes daily schedule is always subject to change, but you can expect a number of things on a regular basis.
- Bright and early in the morning (6 AM EST), you can expect to see our Fish Bites link dump feature. Fish Stripes readers can see all the links to the latest Marlins news and opinions, along with links to the most interesting bits around the web. Finally, all of yesterday's Fish Stripes articles will be featured in one convenient place, so you can review our very best from the previous day or the weekend.
- Also bright and early, at 7 AM EST, you can expect our crew of Marlins prospect experts to deliver the latest in minor league happenings in our daily Minor League Recap post. Here, readers can check the daily box scores for each minor league affiliate in 2014 and track your favorite prospects!
- Every day, Fish Stripes is ready to provide commentary on the most interesting news pieces of the day. The same folks who will bring you our daily Fish Bites pieces will also be commenting on what they believe are the most important stories of the day. In addition, I will be chiming in on those stories, continuing our top-flight news coverage with a unique Fish Stripes voice.
- In addition, you can expect to see one to two articles a day from me, on topics ranging from opinionated takes on the news to in-depth statistical analysis of your favorite team. My schedule is getting busier and busier with my day job, but I promise to continue to provide interesting, fresh takes on the Marlins on a daily basis.
- On game days, Fish Stripes can also expect our game threads, full of top-notch gameday coverage of the Marlins. The crew here at Fish Stripes promises to bring you a preview to each game, complete with lineups, statistics, and bold prediction as to how each game will end. Then comes the actual game, during which parts of the staff will be present daily to live-discuss the in-game happenings with the rest of the Fish Stripes community! In addition, the game thread is where you can post your Ichthyomancy picks for our season-long Ichthyomancy game (more on that later today).
- After the game, you can expect a quick recap on the happenings of the game, followed by a more detailed overview of the important happenings of the game. These will be our Fish Caps of the game!
Weekly Events
In addition to our daily coverage, Fish Stripes will feature weekly posts from a number of authors who will cover other aspects of the team.
- On Thursdays, our prospect maven Sam will cover one minor league or prospects-based story of interest per week, ranging from greater analysis for specific players to stories involving the Marlins' minor league affiliates. You can expect this post sometime during the day on Thursday, typically in the afternoon.
- On Fridays, our other prospect maven Eric will bring us our weekly Marlins Top Prospects Report, which is designed to keep you updated on the best Marlins prospects featured in our top twenty. How are the best guys doing? Who's stock is up, and who's is falling? Which players are on the rise and heading to the top 20 by season's end? All that and more every Friday!
Fish Stripes will continue to work to find new authors for the site as we go forward as well, to bring you the best coverage possible from all angles.
The Staff
Who are the folks who will bring you all of this coverage? Let me introduce each of us:
Michael Jong: That's me, your lead editor and leader of Fish Stripes! I'll be providing daily coverage of various topics for the site, along with being ever-present at every possible game thread. Come discuss the Marlins with me!
Scott Gelman: Scott will be taking over as a co-editor alongside me, and he will be responsible for a lot of our daily coverage. Scott will be writing two Fish Bites articles a week, and you can expect to hear his opinion everyday on various posts regarding the latest Marlins news.
Paul Washington: Paul is the newest member of our Fish Stripes team, and he will be contributing Fish Bites and news coverage on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Paul became a Marlins fan five years ago when he moved to south Florida, so he offers a different outlook and voice than the more veteran Marlins fan group here.
Dakota Schmidt: Dakota returns again to provide Fish Bites and news coverage on Wednesdays. We are happy to have an outside perspective on the team, as Dakota is more of an interested observer of the happenings in Miami.
Sam Evans: Sam returns for his third season in Fish Stripes as one of our two lead prospect mavens. Sam will work part of our Minor League Recap reports and contribute an article a week on the happenings of the minor leagues.
Eric Weston: Eric is the other half of our superstar tandem of prospect mavens. Eric will be contributing the other half of our daily Minor League Recap reports and put up an article a week on our weekly top prospect progress reports!
That is the staff of Fish Stripes and what we can provide you here in 2014! If you want to know more about the website and everything it can provide, please ask here in the comments or feel free to contact me via email, and I'd be happy to answer!
Now that we have covered what Fish Stripes can do for you, stay tuned for later today, when we discuss what you can bring to our quaint little community.