UTK Special 6/27/20

We're Back?

Baseball is planning a return, which means this newsletter/column/whatever can get back to it’s original purpose. For those of you new to UTK, these sort of “special” columns are not what I do. I hope you’ve enjoyed them, learned from them, and made you think about some things in this intermission we’ve had.

First, we should be able to get back to the more normal format sometime after the players begin reporting. We have yet to see whether practices will be open in any fashion, even to team’s own media, but I’m not reliant on that for my information. Injuries are inevitable once we get back to baseball, especially for pitchers. I hope that makes me valuable during “Spring Training 2.0” — which should be “Summer Camp”, which is how I’m going to refer to it.

Second, let’s assume we get to Opening Day and the 60-game season. At that point, as I’ve said all along, this newsletter will go to a paid model. I hope you will see that my information is worthwhile and will be worth $5 a month, which is the lowest Substack allows me to charge and is, I feel, good value for money. I know a lot of people use my information to win their fantasy leagues or to gamble, so that five bucks can pay off quickly.

That’s not to say it’s for everyone. There will still be free information at least once a week - “Free Friday” - or if something breaks that is getting a lot of media attention. I might just have something I want to get out there. It’s a learning phase for me as I do this, but we’ve seen the model works for many others.

I will be transparent about this as well, but maybe not as much as Joe Sheehan is. I need a minimum of 1000 subscribers to keep doing this. Largely, I need to pay for health insurance so I need you to not only subscribe, but evangelize. I’m below that number now for free subscribers and at a normal conversion rate of 10 percent, this wouldn’t be viable, which is why I am keeping this a month to month thing for now. Make it a success and I’ll come up with a yearly deal in ‘21, god willing.

So my ask for you is to share the information on this far and wide. Twitter and Facebook are poor mediums for advertising — and worse in this climate, no I will have nothing to do with Facebook at this stage — but the thing I know works is referrals or the digital equivalent of word of mouth. Please send a column to your friends, fantasy league pals, and anyone who might have an interest.

I’ll be taking much of next week off - it’s my birthday - so hopefully as we get closer to reporting dates, we’ll start to get more information about how this is all going to work. It feels like we’re all coming off the Injured List, so wear your masks, wash your hands, and that magical call of “Play Ball” is getting closer by the minute, if we can just get COVID back under control.