Rumors for PRO Rumors
Mail Time with PRO Rumors
Posted by: | Comments
As the off season quickly gets underway, we here at PRO Rumors are gearing up and getting ready to bring you the latest and greatest breaking news from around the League. You can always stay up-to-date with our web page, www.prorumors.com, or with one of our award winning apps for either the iPhone or Android phone.
One of the new features we are proud to debut is our “Mail Time with PRO Rumors.” Twice a month (or maybe more), we will answer emails from our readers about any baseball related topic. We will also take questions in both English and Spanish. If you have a question about Winter Ball in Venezuela make sure you drop us a line, as PRO Rumors’ writer Juan has been scouting most of the games.
Send us your questions to Mailbag@prorumors.com
PRO Rumors is hiring writers for a paid position
Posted by: | Comments
Hello,
PRO Rumors is growing, and we’re looking to add two new writers to the PRO Rumors’ team. This is a paid position. Because you will become a core member of a small team, we’re going to be very selective as to who we want since you’re going to be steering the direction of the PRO Rumors product.
Here are some of the requirements that we are looking for:
- You live and breath Major League Baseball. You have to have a good understanding of what’s going on with the 30 teams. Basic knowledge of how contracts, free-agency, arbitration eligibility, waivers, signings and firings work in the world of baseball is a plus.
- You can write an intelligent and thought provoking article regarding current events in the PRO Rumors’ style and tone.
- Attention to detail and the integrity of the story – spelling and grammar are very important. This also means you’ll have to deal with criticism from other writers on the PRO Rumors staff.
- The ability to adapt to new technology – we have automated many of our tools using our really cool programming skills here. We want your job as a writer to be as easy as possible to find new information. We also want you to suggest innovative ways for PRO Rumors to share information whether it’s through an iPhone app or other technological methods. You’re not just a writer, you’ll be a sports information pioneer.
- Flexibility – you’ll be scheduled to cover certain hours on the weekdays AND weekends.
- Depending on your performance, there will be room for advancement within PRO Rumors.
PRO Rumors is a sports utility that helps fans get the latest rumors, news and relevant statistics for professional baseball. It’s made with love by baseball fans for baseball fans. If you are interested in joining the PRO Rumors’ team and want to be on the cutting edge of sports information technology then please send a resume to jobs@prorumors.com. Thanks!
Allan
jobs@prorumors.com
Will the real Jonathan Broxton please stand up
Posted by: | Comments
The Dodgers are fresh off a 3-1 series win over the World Champs. But everything isn’t perfect in Dodger land. Dodgers’ closer Jonathan Broxton appears to be continuing his post all-star form as he has allowed 2 home runs in three games (3 innings) to start the season. Yes, I understand that he did in fact get the save in all three victories and didn’t blow any of the games, but it is the way he closed the first and fourth games that raises questions.
Dodger fans have become spoiled over the years (and especially as of late) as they are used to seeing dominant closers take the ball. From Eric Gagne and his 84 consecutive saves to Takashi Saito and his 1.95 ERA, the ninth inning became almost automatic.
Yes, Dodger fans have come to expect a dominant closer performance night in and night out. Broxton though has been just as dominant as Gagne and Saito. In 2009, Broxton threw 76 innings while saving 36 games with a 2.61 ERA. Not too shabby for someone who is entering his seventh season. But then the tale of two Broxtons hit in 2010. In his first 33 appearances the first Broxton struck out 48 and walked just five in 32 2/3 innings, leading to a 0.48 ERA.
But then June 27th and the Yankees came to town. Broxton blew the save that night and threw a career high 48 pitches and the other Broxton settled in and he pitched to a 7.58 ERA the rest of the season. Yes his velocity dipped a bit but he was still hitting mid 90’s on the radar gun.
So what is going on with Jonathan Broxton? He has yet to crack 100 MPH this season but he has still tipped the radar guns in the high 90’s so I don’t think his velocity is the issue. Is it a mental issue or is he trying to blow the ball past everyone? Whatever the issue is, Broxton allowed just 2 home runs in 2008, 4 home runs in 2009 and 2010. He’s already given up 2 this season to the “I’m way over my prime” Aaron Rowand and Pat Burrell duo. His career K/9 is 11.7 but he has only 1 strikeout this season (3 innings).
Though I don’t think it’s time for the Dodgers to push the panic button as it is way to early, I do think there is some cause for concern. In 2010, Broxton in his first 3 appearances allowed zero runs while striking out 4 and allowing only one hit. This season, in his first 3 appearances he allowed 1 single, two solo-home runs with only 1 strike out. Broxton also is throwing around 5 pitches per batter which could create issues down the line with the Dodgers using him on back-to-back nights.
Luckily for the Dodgers and Broxton, the season is just under way with plenty of time to fix the problem at hand. Don’t panic too hard, just take notice and hope Rick Honeycutt can help get the big guy back on track to being the once dominant pitcher we all remember him as.
Winners of the PRO Rumors Opening Day contest
Posted by: | CommentsFirst of all, we’d like to thank everybody who has participated in PRO Rumors past, present and future. The response for the contest has been overwhelming and we plan to run more fun and exciting contests throughout the season. Originally, we only had 12 prizes, but because of the overwhelming response Allan has decided to add ten $5 Amazon gift cards to the prize pool and we’re giving away 25 copies of the PRO Rumors paid app so that more people leave with the warm and fuzzy feeling.
We will contact the winners by Facebook or email if you have won in the next hour.
Without further ado, here are the winners of the 2011 PRO Rumors Opening Day contest:
iPad 2 Wi-Fi 16GB: Javier F.
PS3 MLB 2K 11: Matt D.
$5 Amazon gift cards (10): Chris S., Brian R., Joe M., Aaron C., Friarhood Steve, Blake C., John R., Kenny B., Rob C., Sean B.
PRO Rumors iPhone app (25): The easiest way is to head to our Facebook Fan page and respond to Allan’s request (it should be the latest post on top of the fan page): http://www.facebook.com/prorumors1
Just because the contest is over doesn’t mean you have to stop leaving comments and participating in PRO Rumors. Please keep visiting us everyday, support our sponsors (so we can give out more prizes) and leave more comments. Thanks!
Win an iPad and MLB 2K11 from PRO Rumors
Posted by: | Comments
In celebration of the 2011 baseball season, PRO Rumors is giving away a few prizes to our loyal readers.
What prizes will be given away?
– We’ll give away 10 copies of our award winning iPhone app.
– A brand new PS3 copy of MLB 2K11 courtesy of our friends at 2K Sports (we had a copy for XBox 360, but Ryan took it).
– A brand new 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2nd generation (yes, the one that’s sold out everywhere)
How do I win? (Hint: The more you do, the better chance you’ll have to win.)
– Sign up for PRO Rumors to get free Instant Action Email and Text Alerts to your inbox and mobile – Click here to sign up.
– Download the PRO Rumors FREE iPhone app.
– Follow us on Twitter & retweet us A LOT!
– Follow us on Facebook & leave a comment.
– Leave intelligent comments at the bottom of our posts and create discussions.
– Visit us everyday at http://www.prorumors.com and tell your friends.
Any rules?
– Contest ends at 12:00 noon Pacific Standard Time on Friday, April 1 (No this is not an April Fools joke).
– Winners will be chosen at random from those that sign up with PRO Rumors, but we’ll heavily favor those that participate in discussions/Facebook/Twitter.
– Anybody is eligible to win except for employees of PRO Rumors. You must be 13 years of age or older. Sports writers, players, general managers are all welcomed to participate.
– We’ll ship pretty much anywhere on planet Earth.
– We’ll send the iPhone codes for redemption immediately. We’ll ship the PS3 game by April 10, 2011. We’ll order the iPad upon confirmation of the winner, and it will take about 3-4 weeks to receive it.
PRO Rumors: Postseason Predictions
Posted by: | Comments
Here are the PRO Rumors take it to the bank playoff predictions.
If you missed our American League standings and award predictions or our National League standings and award predictions make sure you check them out!
| Writer | AL Pennant Predictions |
| Allan | Red Sox |
| Ryan | Red Sox |
| Juan | Yankees |
| Writer | NL Pennant Predictions |
| Allan | Phillies |
| Ryan | Phillies |
| Juan | Brewers |
| Writer | World Series Champs |
| Allan | Phillies |
| Ryan | Red Sox |
| Juan | Yankess |
Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and we will pull out the predictions come November and see who was right!
PRO Rumors: NL Awards Predictions
Posted by: | Comments
The last two days, we predicted the division winners for the American League and the National League. Earlier today, we covered our award predictions for the American League. Without further ado, here are the National League award predictions.
| Writer | National League MVP |
| Allan | Buster Posey |
| Ryan | Albert Pujols |
| Juan | Albert Pujols |
| Writer | National League Cy Young |
| Allan | Roy Halladay |
| Ryan | Cliff Lee |
| Juan | Tim Lincecum |
| Writer | National League ROY |
| Allan | Aroldis Chapman |
| Ryan | Brandon Belt |
| Juan | Brandon Belt |
| Writer | First NL manager fired |
| Allan | Bud Black, San Diego Padres |
| Ryan | Edwin Rodriguez, Marlins |
| Juan | Edwin Rodriguez, Marlins |
Can you beat our picks? Make it known now on Twitter/Facebook or just drop us a comment below. We’ll do the National League later this afternoon.
PRO Rumors: AL Award Predictions
Posted by: | Comments
Here are the PRO Rumors American League awards predictions. We not only predict the Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and first manager of the AL to be fired.
Also, don’t forget to check out how we think the American League and National League teams will finish this year.
| Writer | American League MVP |
| Allan | Adrian Gonzalez |
| Ryan | Miguel Cabrera |
| Juan | Alex Rodriguez |
| Writer | American League Cy Young |
| Allan | CC Sabathia |
| Ryan | Felix Hernandez |
| Juan | Felix Hernandez |
| Writer | American League ROY |
| Allan | Jeremy Hellickson, Rays |
| Ryan | Michael Pineda, Mariners |
| Juan | Mark Trumbo, Angels |
| Writer | First AL manager fired |
| Allan | Ozzie Guillen, White Sox |
| Ryan | Bob Geren, Oakland Athletics |
| Juan | Ozzie Guillen, White Sox |
Can you beat our picks? Make it known now on Twitter/Facebook or just drop us a comment below. We’ll do the National League later this afternoon.
The technology behind PRO Rumors
Posted by: | Comments
I have a lot of appreciation for companies like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Yardbarker (to name a few). Not only do they come out with awesome products that are beautifully designed, but they can scale it out for millions of users per day. PRO Rumors is not quite at that level (yet), but we’re learning what it takes to incrementally support a large user base.
There’s a few things that you should keep in mind when you visit us at www.prorumors.com. The website is coded in Ruby which is an object-oriented programming language on top of a Rails framework. Ruby is similar to the more popular Java language. Ruby on Rails allows us to rapidly deploy new codes several times a day, so that’s why you may see a new feature or a change come up quickly. Programming gives us the flexibility to add cool widgets such as the stats and contract pages that you see throughout the website.
All of our data is hosted on MySQL database server. I debated long and hard about using MySQL as opposed to PostgresSQL or the whole NoSQL movement. I chose MySQL because I was familiar with it, and it allowed me to get to market as quick as possible. I’ll eventually have to revisit this idea in the near future as we grow.
Our data sits on several CentOS Linux servers with Rackspace. I’ve been really happy with Rackspace. Awesome customer support and they built design into an industry that traditionally did not consider user-interface.
Our iPhone app (which is coded in Objective-C) uses the same MySQL database via an web-based API that we created. So as we grow in both the website and the mobile market, we’re starting to realize that we need to scale. The first fix was to add memcached which alleviated some of the pain and served up pages a lot quicker. The next thing we needed to decide was to either scale vertically or horizontally. The quick fix is to scale vertically or add more resources to our servers. At some point we’re going to need to scale horizontally by adding more servers (which takes more planning and effort) in addition to optimizing our code.
There are other pieces of technology that we use such as Nginx web server, Mongrel clusters, jQuery, Subversion, etc., but I’ll save those for another day.
So if you see a hiccup here and there, keep in mind that we’re growing and we’re working hard to fix it. Let me know if you like the posts such as this one describing the behind scenes work of PRO Rumors, and I’ll write more about it in our blog. If you have any questions, please feel free to email at allan@prorumors.com – I promise to write you back.
Allan
PRO Rumors: National League Predictions
Posted by: | Comments
Yesterday, a few members of the PRO Rumors team predicted who they thought would win the respective divisions in the American League. Today we tackle the National League.
| Writer | National League West |
| Allan | Rockies |
| Ryan | Rockies |
| Juan | Giants |
| Writer | National League Central |
| Allan | Cardinals |
| Ryan | Brewers |
| Juan | Brewers |
| Writer | National League East |
| Allan | Phillies |
| Ryan | Phillies |
| Juan | Phillies |
| Writer | NL Wild Card |
| Allan | Brewers |
| Ryan | Braves |
| Juan | Rockies |
Do you agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.
