Big day in IIATMS history, friends. Huge.
Effective immediately, IIATMS and The Yankee Analysts have merged!
It’s with tremendous pride that the incredible team at TYA have agreed to join us here at IIATMS to help deliver what we believe will be the most complete, cohesive and entertaining Yankees-centric site around.
A merger of IIATMS and TYA has been long viewed as inevitable, with the earliest discussions going back to late 2010, although the timing wasn’t right back then. Moshe Mandel, Larry Koestler and I have always viewed ourselves more as colleagues than competitors, each with a healthy respect for one another and the efforts each has put into developing the sites and their followings. We are here, now, proudly together, to bring you the very best in Yankees news, analysis and discussion. We thank you for your continued readership and support.
Best,
Moshe, Larry, Jason and the entire staffs of IIATMS and TYA
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Over the next bit of time, we will be bringing everything and everyone that made TYA an absolute analyst powerhouse over here. At some point soon, we will update the look and feel here but for now, we’re going to take this in steps, with an updated banner to reflect our joint domain as Step One. We have also added some concepts borrowed from TYA, such as the masthead to the right and a full history page so everyone is aware of who is here and how we all got here! We have also imported TYA’s entire history of posts.
So how DID we get here, anyways? I launched It’s About The Money, Stupid in late 2007 following several heated discussions with my father and brother regarding the then-newly signed Alex Rodriguez contract extension. With a goal of finding just 10 readers who would regularly read the blog, the site began to grow and gain a measure of regular readership. As 10s became 100s which became 1000s, Rob Neyer selected IIATMS (an acronym from early friend of the blog, Craig Calcaterra, when the name was “It IS About The Money, Stupid”) to be his flagship Yankees site on ESPN’s SweetSpot network in 2009, riding the wave of the Yankees’ 27th World Series title. IIATMS remained an affiliate of ESPN until deciding to leave after the 2011 season. IIATMS then joined the SNY Network as their sole Yankees site. The IIATMS team has been featured in publications and radio shows around the country, particularly with regards to their unflinching demands regarding safety on the field, namely with shattering bats. Supremely talented people like Tamar Chalker, Larry Behrendt, Anna McDonald, Hippeaux, Josh Weinstock, Jesse Douglas-Mathewson, Chip Buck, Mark Smith, The Common Man, Will Moller and others all helped make IIATMS one of the best, rational, thought-provoking Yankees destinations around. IIATMS is extremely proud and grateful of the legacy of these various contributors who have decided to write for the site, honing their craft and elevating the level of discourse across the board.
I turned over the day-to-day control of the site to Brien Jackson in 2011, when work simply became too much of a barrier to adequately covering the news cycles. Brien deftly managed IIATMS from 2011 through early 2013, when he handed the reins to Stacey Gotsulias, who had joined the staff in 2012. Stacey has taken the role of co-Editor-in-Chief in an enthusiastic and seamless manner. Throughout most of this ride, Tamar has been with me, handling all things from game recaps to her significant expansion of minors coverage. And while he prefers to remain behind the curtain, I can’t overestimate the advice and counsel that my tech guru has provided, helping me through innumerable hurdles and glitches that were far beyond my abilities. I cannot thank you guys enough.
It was in late 2010 when I engaged Moshe and Larry in some discussions about possibly merging. With my work situation changing and, at the time, no one to handle the day-to-day, adding their smarts seemed like a good idea. Timing wasn’t right for them and they soon handed their reins to TYA over and took roles at River Ave. Blues, the gorilla in the Yanks blogosphere, lead by some really good, smart guys (here’s to you: Ben, Mike, Joe) who run a fantastic site.
As our leadership transferred from Brien to Stacey, who also wrote for TYA, that commonality rekindled those discussions from 2010. Quickly, Moshe, Mike Eder and I began talking about what the combination should look like. It did not take long as the three of us were pretty much on the same page from the get-go.
Mike, Matt Imbrogno and Stacey will be our co-Editors-in-Chief, each continuing to handle the different aspects of a complete Yankees coverage. Our team at IIATMS will remain intact, with Tamar and William in the fold. Hopefully, this combination will even bring back some of our prior contributors (hint, guys)! We will be joined by EJ Fagan, Mike Jaggers-Radolf, Brad Vietrogoski and Domenic Lanza. I am honored to have them join us.
And to you, the readers: Thank you! I started this to engage and have fun and you guys have delivered your side of that equation. I hope this change only fortifies your belief in us. Please let us know what you like, don’t like, what we do right and where we fall down. Thanks for keeping us honest.
- Jason
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Below is the list of Twitter handles for everyone here. At some point, we will migrate the master Twitter handle from mine to @IIATMS, so please add that to your follows, along with those below:
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IIATMS: http://twitter.com/IIATMS
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IIATMS on Facebook: http://facebook.com/IIATMS
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Stacey: http://twitter.com/StaceGots
- Tamar : http://twitter.com/jeterian
- William: http://twitter.com/flagrantfan
- Larry B: http://twitter.com/larrybehrendt
- TYA: https://twitter.com/YankeeAnalysts
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Larry K: https://twitter.com/Larry_Koestler
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Mike E: https://twitter.com/mbonzo31
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Domenic: https://twitter.com/DomenicLanza
Hooray and welcome!
What William said! Definitely an exciting day here!
Very exciting!
Hooray! Now that's what I cal, "Positive reinforcement"!
I "call" it that too.
As Yogi once said, "Thanks for making this night necessary"
I'm sure there will be many diverse opinions about this announcement by the regulars who post here. I for one will be sorry to see IIATMS probably lose it's identity if that turns out to be the case. Bigger isn't also better. Having said that I wish everyone the best of luck.
Your concerns are valid and I hear you, loud and clear.
My reply: I'm still very much involved in what we are doing and how we do things. I may not be able to write as much as I would like or that I used to, but I'm here every day, reading every word and every comment. The addition of TYA helps us significantly deepen our analytical skills. The TYA team is very much in line with this.
My reply: Also true. However, what the new, full team of writers now brings are complementary skills and capabilities, rather than overlapping, loud, voices. I have utmost confidence in their ability to seamlessly put together consistent, top-notch work.
Well starting tomorrow, you'll be treated to my return to writing internet columns. Which will either help us keep/regain that flavor, or prove your point that bigger (word count) does indeed not equal better.
HIM is happy!!!
TYA is just a generic site and the writing is subpar. Sorry to hear this.
Well, allow us to prove you wrong.
Jason (and Brien, Tamar, Stacey, Larry, Will) – congrats on the merger, but I do hope you maintain articles that non-math majors can enjoy.
With the loss of hot links, I've been hitting other sites a lot more, and my only gripe with TYA is that they sometimes go into MORE, DEEPER analysis than I'm into. NOT a bad thing, guys – its great to have facts to back up gut feelings. But please keep your prose based discussions alongside the hard numbers, if you can. I'm all for both – just don't let one overpower the other.
well heck – just hit Ablog, and discovered that he's part of the happy family too.
Y'all know – kudos to Ablog – the thing I keep whining about is still running over there (the constantly updated BEST OF THE YANKEE BLOGOSPHERE.)
Please don't kill it over there too, after you merge.
Brad V: This one is for you. Let's make sure we keep that going!!!
I've not had the pleasure of reading or commenting on A Blog for A-Rod. I guess that's my fault I'm really not good at multi-tasking.
We're adding that analyses and we also recognize that it's not for all. That's fine, too. The goal is to give the readers more to mull over and they can decide what's best/important…
No problems – as long as you're add all the analyses without cutting the rest – that's great. I go to TYA, and read them – I'm just not geek enough to want that to be my ONLY Yankees content.
MORE is always BETTER.
Jason (and Brien, Tamar, Stacey, Larry, Will) – congrats on the merger, but I do hope you maintain articles that non-math majors can enjoy.
Don't worry. We got this.
Don't you worry, I am nowhere near being a math major. In fact, I haven't taken a math class since Fall 1992.
The new, merged site will be a mix of pretty much every type of Yankees analysis: you'll have posts with numbers, you'll have posts with bits of history, you'll have posts with some snark, you'll have Minor League features, Major League features, you'll have perfectly reasonable reactions to in-game action and possibly some unreasonable reactions etc.
It will be great, we promise.
Seconded.
Ooh can you make it so the posts are tagged like that: History, Major League Features, Snark… that way when I'm feeling in an especially snarky mood I can read all of them at once!
Very funny. And maybe we will.
Congratulations. I just hope this means I have one less website to visit, and not that it allows the writers of each site to slack off.
If everything is migrating to the IATMS site, please also update the links to include the active ones (like LoHud) that are on TYA but not on IATMS. I like to have one main site to hit first but go to everything else from there. Also the programming on TYA was in some ways better than on IATMS since it linked you to another site through the same window rather than opening a new window. If I am checking several sites for a daily briefing using the back button is much easier than closing 10 different windows. Consider changing to adopt the best of both sites.
We're going to be working on the technical stuff as we go along. This is definitely not the finished product and you will see the best of both sites.
I would like to see the bar raised in the areas of fact checking, vocabulary, grammar, and spelling.
Congrats everyone. I've been an avid reader of both sites for a couple of years now and appreciate each for what they are…. i'm into the in depth analysis as well as the historical, opinion type pieces and of course the recaps. It's great that you can combine them all into one and provide loads of various content. Good luck and all the best.
Thanks so much!
Not gonna lie, I *DID* check the date today to make sure it wasn't 4/1/13…
However, as it's March, congratulations all! I hope to come to know and love the new folks as much as the old folks…
It’s About The Money Analysts, Stupid Yankee!
No, that doesn’t work.
It's About The Stupid Yankee Money Analysts?
Hmm sounds too unpatriotic…