I am sure you all came here to read insightful baseball analysis, not my views on life, the universe, and everything. After all, good analysis has been what this site has provided since long before I started writing here. I will do my best to keep this message short.

First, I owe a debt of gratitude to those writers and managers who have preceded me: Marc Normandin, RJ Anderson, and especially Sky Kalkman, who had the questionable judgment to bring me on board in the first place. Sky, you will be missed.

Second, though, I'd like to pull back the curtain and let you see how the sausage is made. That is to say, I'd like to offer my philosophy of what makes for good analysis. This should provide some understanding of what I intend for Beyond the Box Score.

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Thanks for everything, everyone.  With a great lady, a new house, and (hopefully) a career upgrade, the time I have for this hobby has taken a hit.  Overall that's a good thing, but for my role with this site, it's not.  Therefore, I'm going to step away from managing and writing at BtB and leave you in the capable hands of Tommy Bennett and the rest of the writing team.

Thanks to RJ, who brought me on board last August and is one of the best at combining data with convincing, non-numeric arguments.  Thanks to the SBN crew, including Jim, Trei, Chris, Tyler, and Eric, who have many more tricks up their sleeves.  Thanks to the writers who have been part of the ride, you're all even more talented than you think.  Thanks to all of you readers who have spent time commenting at the site -- the discussions have always been my favorite part.  And thanks to Tommy Bennett, who has agreed to take over the managerial reigns.  Tommy's a really smart guy with great ideas, and I expect him to take BtB to the next level.

Where am I going?  Who knows...  I'm not disappearing, but snarky discourse in comment sections around the web are probably my limit for a while.  Feel free to drop me a line to talk baseball any time at skyking162@gmail.com or twitter.com/BtB_Sky.

Play nice.  Ask questions.  Go Pirates.

- Sky

Short Version

Go here and give money to public schools who need it.

Longer Version

BtB, along with many other SBN websites and social media outlets, is participating in the 2009 Social Media Challenge, a competition to see which social media sites can raise the most money for public school classrooms who need it the most.  DonorsChoose.org is a non-profit group that solicits funding for specific projects suggested by public school teachers, and then distributes the needed supplies back to the schools.  Yeah, sounds pretty cool to me, too.

Here's the link to the BtB Giving Page, which I've pre-populated with projects in the Math & Science category (seemed appropriate for what most readers of this blog would support).  You don't have to fund an entire project, just give what you can.  You can also simply enter an amount to donate and it will be put towards the most urgent projects.

There's a bit of a friendly competition going on here, too.  BtB is competing against other SBN sites, but, more importantly I think, SBN is competing against other social media organizations.  I really don't know what to expect, but I'm hoping we can leave out mark.  Here are the current Social Media Challenge standings.  There are some groups who have already started raising money, but we're playing by the rules and launching our effort October 1st.

How You Can Help

Whatever money you can give would be obviously be greatly appreciated.  We all have different financial situations, but I think everyone reading this blog can do without their coffee upgrade for a week or hold off on buying their next jersey in order to help out the next generation of baseball fans.  Small sacrifices can go a long way.

But in addition to money, you can give your time, by sharing links to the BtB Giving Page (or any SBN blog's giving page if you think it would be more effective) on Facebook, on Twitter (trey the green TweetMeme button), over email, or by written letter.

The great thing about all the SB Nation blogs is that you can get frequent, in-depth coverage on all your favorite teams.  The downside has always been that you needed to check out 30 baseball sites in order to get news on all 30 teams.  Or go to ESPN.com.

Not any more.  SB Nation just launched an effort to provide one-stop shopping.  Whether you're someone who only has the time to check sports news for a few minutes a day (I'm so sorry for you) or you're like me and can never get enough sports news, the new sbnation.com has you covered.  Only want baseball news?  Try sbnation.com/mlb.

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Starting Tuesday, BtB's Graph of the Day column will be re-born.  Led by Justin Bopp and Walter Fulbright, and featuring many of the contributors you've come to know and love at BtB, Graph of the Day will see an increase in aesthetics, consistency, and professionalism (sorry about that last one.)

Who are Justin and Walter?  They're the duo behind Gritty & Clutch, a saber-slanted blog with phenomenal charts and graphs.  It was a no-brainer to invite them over to BtB, and I'm psyched they agreed.  Hopefully just the first of some exciting announcements over the next month.

I finally took the time to go through and calculate it all.  It's going to be an interesting second half, for sure, but samt has jumped out to a commanding lead.  Let's go straight to the standings.

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