The Goodbye Post

To our readers:

Last week I received and accepted an offer to work as a Baseball Analytics intern in the Cleveland Indians front office for the summer. This is truly the realization of a lifelong dream, and it is a tremendous honor to get this opportunity from the team I grew up watching and rooting for.

Unfortunately, this means my time at Wahoo’s on First must come to an end. Obviously it would be a conflict of interest to continue to write about the Indians while I am working for them, and though I will not be starting until the end of the semester I feel that my upcoming employment would compromise my objectivity. And so I have retired as Senior Editor of Wahoo’s on First and from baseball writing, effective as of last Friday.

Brian Heise has been promoted to Editor of Wahoo’s on First, a position for which he has been qualified for some time. Both FanSided MLB Network Manager Aaron Somers and I quickly identified Brian as the right person to take the reins of the site when we began planning for my eventual departure and he immediately said he was up to the task. After more than a year of working closely with Brian I have the utmost confidence that he can take Wahoo’s on First to new heights.

It has truly been a privilege to spend more than a year and a half at the helm of Wahoo’s on First. This site has grown phenomenally since we launched it in October 2011 and I am incredibly proud of whatever hand I had in that. I often said that the best part about running this site was that I was be first to read some of the best Tribe analysis on the internet. I hope you will continue to support Brian and the rest of our talented staff for the rest of this season and beyond.

I would like to thank the more-than dozen Wahoo’s on First writers with whom I have had the pleasure to work and debate over the last 18 months—those outside our little group could not know how much work we put into the site or how much fun we have doing it. I also want to express special gratitude to John Parent and Wally Fish, who recruited me to the FanSided network and helped me launch Wahoo’s on First, and Aaron Somers, who in addition to being a great supervisor has been incredibly supportive in this transition.

Beyond Wahoo’s on First, I would like to thank all those, too countless to name, who have helped and supported me throughout my nearly four years of blogging about baseball. There are dozens, if not hundreds of people in the baseball community without whom I would not be where I am today. To those who hired me or helped get me an in with a prestigious publication; to those who aided me in my research or offered constructive criticisms on my efforts; to those who helped me find my footing, whether by explicit guidance or implicit example; to those around the blogosophere who joined me in collaborative projects; to those who read my work and shared it with others; and to those who have believed in me (especially the Cleveland Indians) and patiently pretended to listen when I talked about my passion for baseball: Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I feel extremely fortunate to have gotten this new opportunity, but leaving this site makes the transition bittersweet. Thank you again for your support over the last 18 months and I hope you will continue to read Brian and the rest of the gang’s work here on Wahoo’s on First.

Roll Tribe!