Welcome to the new Pitcher List website!
There’s a lot to go over and while I’m going to cover the major changes, make sure to read all the little details in full in our PL7 Patch Notes.
Before we begin, I want to note: PL7 is easily the most ambitious project we’ve had here at Pitcher List. With every large project with a set deadline, elements are cut and not all bugs are squashed. We’re thrilled to show you the hard work of this team today and we’re exciting to continue polishing and improving what we’ve established as the new normal here at Pitcher List.
Homepage
As what we do at Pitcher List continues to expand each year, it’s important we adapt our homepage to accommodate our changes. We’ve created new sections of the website and deliver over 15 items of content a day in-season and we needed a way to show all of our weekly articles + daily stream easily without drowning our original columns.
We also realized users weren’t scrolling through our category archives on the homepage and instead preferred a quick way to view the most recent articles published on the site.
The solution was to create a view above the fold where you can tab between the articles you keep coming back to and are constantly updating each day. In the pre-season, we’ll have our fantasy rankings on the left, but in season, it’ll act as a tab where you can see our Daily Columns or our Weekly Rankings, always housed in the same place.
We also added our eponymous Pitcher List + Hitter List + Closers List on the right, showcasing the largest positive jumps made by players on the lists each week.
Did you know we have a newsletter? We created a new module to help you sign up, with easy access on the homepage.
We wanted to allow users to quickly view the articles they’re looking for, while give more exposure to the bevy of podcasts inside our network. The second half of our homepage is dedicated to both: an article stream that you can filter by article or by your own personal filters as a PL+ member. You can add filters for your favorite players, authors, and categories, allowing you to see a focused feed of Pitcher List content curated for you. It’s pretty neat.
Player Pages
When I launched Pitcher GIFs back in 2014, player pages had three things: Their name, a few GIFs of their pitches, and usage + velocity for each pitch. I’ve always envisioned those GIFs to not be the main attraction, but a proper complement to an entire home that outlines the player.
The new PL7 player pages are the next big step toward that vision. We’ve partnered with SportRadar to use Statcast data, allowing us to give an incredible overview of players, from displaying their MLB ranks to teaching new users with league averages.
We have a lot more we want to do with our player pages (rolling charts graphs, for example) and it’s still a little rough around the edges, but doing granular pitch research and fundamentally understanding a player’s value has never been easier. We cannot wait for these pages to flourish as we continue to pour our heart and soul into them.
2022 Fantasy Baseball Rankings
As is tradition, today is the day we begin our coverage of the fantasy baseball season ahead. Check out our Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit that will serve as a hub for all pre-season fantasy baseball content through opening day.
We’ll be rolling out our full rankings through the next few weeks, kicking off with the Top 200 Starting Pitchers from yours truly – those 37,000 words should keep you busy – as well as full reliever rankings from Rick Graham and the beginning of our hitter ranks from Scott Chu and Dylan Burris.
Team Pages
While team pages are mostly here to help everyone quickly access the pages of their favorite players, we wanted to add a little extra flair than just text links.
Team pages now have their logo and facts about their history + a look into their divisional standings with their team colors represented.
PL+ Additions
We have a lot planned for PL+ members this year, from full access to our 2022 Player Projections + an Auction Draft Calculator to aid your drafts. Both are arriving on March 1st. We also have another addition at no extra cost coming for opening day.
Until then, we’ve gone ahead and re-added PL Basic, allowing everyone to support the site and get an ad-free experience, while gaining access to the homepage’s custom article feed.
I wanted to be able to give something extra to PL+ members while not breaking my code of never having an article paywall on the site. My compromise? The Plus Pitch Podcast exclusive for PL+ members where I talk about starting pitching for 15-20 minutes every weekday morning in-season. Should be a wonderful time.
In The Works
We still have a decent amount left to do, from replicating our leaderboards to match our new player pages, launching our projections and draft calculator, adding rolling charts and graphs to player pages, and a lot more that we haven’t revealed today.
The time of us doing one major launch a year and with few updates in between is over. Expect a true PL 7.1 patch coming before opening day.
Thank You
It’s never easy having a massive launch and I cannot thank this development team enough: Jeff Nyveen, Brandon Lundberg, Niv Shah, Brett Goldhammer, David Fenko, Quincey Dong, Tyler Huttenga, Muna Gigowski, Rob Erskine, Michael Stanfa, Randy Bognatz, and Hunter Robb. It takes so much work to coordinate and build something like this and it’s unreal how much passion they’ve poured into making it come to fruition.
And to all of you reading, thanks for being there for us. It hasn’t been the easiest road across the last eight years and sticking with us through the thick-and-thin has allowed us to pursue something as ambitious as PL7. I can’t wait to continue building it into what we all know what it can be.
Thank you all so much and enjoy PL7.
-Nick Pollack
This is pretty exciting. Pitcher List has been high on the sites I consult for a while now, and making the interface easier to access means it’s going to be even higher. Thanks for all your efforts!
Thanks Matt! We’re all excited to let it loose.
Congrats and thanks for the updates, it’s awesome.