Baseball Advanced Media

I got a very interesting piece of e-mail from the Florida State League’s Brevard County Manatees regarding the redesign of their website. It seems that Baseball Advanced Media is the organization working on it. Now, you probably know BAM from mlb.com. They are the company that designed and built mlb.com and put Yankees material on the Twins page.

The letter states “BAM is working to incorporate all Minor League Baseball team web sites into this operation, however that will be a few years away.”

Now honesty, do you really like mlb.com? Granted, after looking at some minor league team’s websites on the internet, having the sort of content that BAM can provide, plus the look and feel is going to be an improvement. But I honestly feel the “cloned” team sites, and I’m sorry, they are very cloned, is kind of annoying. And when you get into areas like voting for the All-Star team or the coverage for the Hall of Fame voting, reporting that impacts all of Major League Baseball, the articles are generally not written to be team specific before they are published. Additionally, if you are on a narrowband connection – and yes, I know there is a narrowband version – it either takes forever to upload, or you lose a good deal of content.

And in the end, somewhere on the page there is other MLB content. And I’m sorry, but I really don’t particularly care to have Red Sox or Yankees content on my Twins site. Nope, not even headlines for those teams. They just don’t belong there.

Now we’re looking at “cloning” all the minor league sites. In a way, this will be sad. Individuality has gone down the drain. Just like most fans quite creating and running unofficial fan pages for things and have gone over to straight blogging. And most blogs are rarely topic specific.

Which is another thing. MLB.com now offers you the chance to write blogs. Great. I’d like to find a Twins blog on there, but…there really isn’t a good search mechanism worked into the site, at least not on the blog page.

Well, on the bright side, it means they won’t be pulling the Miracle page down every off-season to “rework” it.

In other news, Florida Gulf Coast University passed a resolution to go to NCAA Division I competition. The Fort Myers local college has already produced infielding prospect Chris Brown for the Twins, and that was when they were a Division III university. Baseball is one of the programs designed to be fast-tracked, making them eligible for post-season play in about three years if everything should go well. The Eagles are projected to join the Atlantic Sun Conference, which has several universities in the area (Stetson, Jacksonville and North Florida) none of which have football programs, a notable lack on FGCU’s athletic program.

However, the Eagle’s baseball program has been largely successful to date and with a large number of scouts in the area, the students they attract are guaranteed to get a pretty good look, not just by the Twins, but by many of the Major League teams who will already have scouts in the area to watch the FSL and Gulf Coast League teams that play out of Fort Myers, as well as the players who work out in the area during the off season.

The move has already drawn a lot of interest, but a number of details need to be worked out before the move can be finalized. In the meantime, the Division II Eagles prepare to take the field, with FGCU opening on February 1st against Barry University.

Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles

Outfield Jason Grove has not played baseball in a year after leaving the Yankees’ organization in March of 2005. The Twins signed Grove to a minor league contract with the intention of having him join the New Britain Rock Cats for the start of the 2006 season.

The Washington state native had played two seasons with the Trenton Thunder of the Eastern League before cutting ties with the Yankees. The Twins have promised him a swift promotion to Rochester if he can produce with New Britain. Grove can produce hits (180 hits for 619 at bats for a .291 two-year batting average), but needs to improve his long ball game if he is to contribute offensively at the higher farm levels. Grove has only hit 16 homers during his two years at the AA level.

Former minor league coach Jeff Carter has left the Twins to join the Kansas City Royals organization. Carter served as the hitting coach for last year’s High-A Fort Myers Miracle team while he helped mentor field manager Riccardo Ingram through his first season of High-A ball. Carter served as a hitting coach in AA New Britain during 2004, and was the field manager that led the 2000 Elizabethton Twins to an Appalachian League championship while winning manager of the year.

Carter, who lives in Arizona, also led the low-A Quad City River Bandits to a 256-218 record from 2001 to 2003, including two playoff appearances.

The Twins extended family wishes him well in his new endeavors with the Royals.