Editor’s Note: This was supposed to be an off-the-cuff quick blog, but it ended up being very long. There are people and chapters of TSV that I definitely left out. That is not on purpose, and I am thankful for everyone who has come our way.
Well, The Skippers View is five years old now. Technically, we came up with the name and had the Twitter account and website created on August 8th, but the first tweet was on August 19th, followed by the first blog on August 20th. So yeah, this is the sweet spot.
Back in the day, Brett would call me every week to talk about fantasy baseball. As much as I love talking to my best friend, my brain also wants to make something of what we are doing. At times, both our fantasy teams sucked, so that wasn’t it. I suggested a podcast, something he did not want to do in the early days (funny now because he will die on a hill for it). So, we settled on a website and Twitter account.
I am sure we had a list of potential names somewhere, but it is long gone. We settled on The Skippers View (grammatically incorrect, although we occasionally add the apostrophe). I grabbed the domain, and we were on our way.
Editor’s Note: It is very important that, if you are creating a website and content group, you secure a domain name. VERY EARLY, in TSV history like year one, someone whom I will not name decided to make me their enemy. They have also grown significantly over the last five years. Unfortunately for them, they never bought their domain name. Have fun trying to pry it from my dead hands.
I built the first website on Wix. I had used it before for a project, so I was somewhat familiar with the interface. This is what the homepage and my first blog post looked like.
Yeah, pretty crazy that I considered that a blog back in the day. Crazy how the standings, aside from the Orioles, are pretty much the same as they are today. Time is just a circle, people.
But yeah, I went about trying to make us look like a legitimate company. Even had one of our friends sketch up a logo. You might see it pop up every once in a while, but it is retired as of today.
You probably assume that we skyrocketed immediately. You would be WRONG. The most views I got in the first year were on my blog warning the Red Sox not to sign Trevor Story. (By the way, I had 50 followers on X and still got crucified for it.)
The first year and a half was relatively slow. A large part of that was not really understanding how social media algorithms worked. But mostly, it was that we did not know what we were doing. We ended 2022 with only 58 followers. Yikes.
But two things were about to change the path of The Skippers View.
Elon Musk
Card Breaker Dean
From Rags To Less Dirty Rags
On October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk finalized his purchase of Twitter. He immediately took Twitter private. It changed everything.
Before Elon Musk’s takeover, the algorithm heavily favored large accounts. Once Elon took over, the algorithm changed to allow “banger posts” from small accounts. This is where we started to bang. (Actually, one of our early banging posts was about Wander Franco. Ironic.)
But to grow the following, we had to sell our soul a little bit.
Enter the “Breaker Dean” era.
I had noticed a lot of accounts getting traction for giving away cards or items. I was willing to do a lot worse for followers, so this seemed like an easy path. Honestly, we gave away a lot of cool stuff. Look at this Jeff Bagwell auto!
Getting into cards inevitably led to some people asking if I did box breaks. Now, today box breaks are HUGE, but in 2023 they were becoming a thing. I jumped right in and started opening packs for the “fans.”
I say “fans” because a lot of these people were just heavily addicted to cards. I had a few that racked up some bills and just disappeared. What’s ironic is that they hit huge cards (a couple of 1/1s) but couldn’t afford to pay me the $20 from the break to ship the cards out. As a result (and with my brother no longer bringing the packages to the Post Office), I decided to retire the break era of The Skippers View. I have zero regrets about that. Breaking exploded, but I absolutely loathe the culture.
While we stopped with the breaks, we kept giving away cards and started growing our card collections as well. I formed a close relationship with a local card store that I now work at part-time and consider the workers there to be close friends. Funny how the world works.
All of this led to thousands of followers on X, which in turn brought many people to our website. We went from 50 followers to over 5,000 pretty quickly. With more eyes on the website, I realized we needed more writers.
Enter the “OG Skippers View Days”
From a Duet To a Band
Early in TSV's history, I wanted to make it seem like there were more than two people blogging and posting on the social account. Some people would go get friends to join them; I created a fake online family who I “hired”. In reality, it was me pretending to be cousins and siblings.
I didn’t think of the consequences, and well, there weren’t any. It was just weird, and I would get jealous when my fake cousin's Twitter account got more impressions than mine because she was a girl, but in reality it was just me. It was a really twisted time in life.
I looked at myself in the mirror, deleted a few (not all) of the fake family members, and decided to go out and get real people.
I welcomed some guest writers to the website. Two of them have actually gotten huge, but I don’t even know if they remember writing a blog for us, so I am going to focus on the three early additions that helped set the foundation of TSV.
Will Mossa from Overdue Sports.
Sam Fosberg from Discuss Baseball.
Greg Monroe from his mom’s basement.
Each of them brought their unique personalities to the team. Their writing was superb, and we began a think tank group chat where we threw ideas back and forth. It led to growth across the board. The blog really started to explode, and we were pumping an article out every day.
Most importantly, we all learned how to navigate this weird world that is content creation. Well, Brett is still figuring it out, but everyone else found their avenue.
Will tackled college baseball, Sam was posting on Twitter at insane speeds, Greg was putting out banger articles, and Brett got a crippling addiction to baseballs.
The beginning of 2023 is what I consider the real start of The Skippers View. We moved over to Substack, went from 50 followers to 5,000, started talking to MLB players online, and, overall, began to build a presence. The year and a half leading up to it is very important, but when I look at our analytics and growth, I always set January 2023 as the starting point.
This is also where we started a new aspect of The Skippers View
The podcast.
The Skippers View Podcast
Fun fact: I was the one who pushed the podcast hard from the beginning. In fact, the first two episodes are just me doing hitter rankings. We ended up posting consistently in 2023. The first few episodes are really rough—the takes, the sound quality, the ummmmms, everything. Two very good things have come out of the podcast, though.
Interviews (when we did them)
Hagen
The interviews came pretty early on in the podcast’s history. I went out and brought in some pretty great guests: Adam Lazarus, Joe Posnanski, Dan Evans, Keith O’Brien, Scott Bush, and Erin Carslon. They were a lot of fun, and we made some helpful connections in the process. (Editor’s Note: While interviewing Joe Posnanski, one of the biggest baseball writers out there, Brett was texting my dad about fantasy baseball. Absolutely insane move.) However, they are a lot of work, especially when they were about books. So we moved away from interviews and just had team members come on as guests. Will, Sam, Greg, and others would join in to talk ball. It was a blast.
It was at the tail end of these interviews that I passed the podcast to Brett. It was a lot to juggle the social media accounts, the website, and all the other little things with the team. Over the last two years, I have received many requests to appear on the podcast more often. In the last few months, I have made more appearances.
I don’t feel the need always to go on because we have the great Hagen Snell. He has been Brett’s loyal co-host over the last year and has more baseball knowledge than Brett and I combined. Without Hagen, there is a good chance I would have called child protective services on Brett a while ago. He used the podcast to fund a card-ripping addiction that almost bankrupted him. Like $50 packs on repeat, and then he would sleeve and topload 10-cent cards. It was crazy.
The podcast is fine, but everything else was growing. With so many moving parts, I decided to call on the help of what is now enemy #1 for much of the world.
ChatGPT.
Ahead of The Curve
If you recall, Elon Musk bought Twitter at the end of 2022. Want to know what else launched that month? ChatGPT.
I was lucky enough to be a beta tester before the release, and it was a different world back then. There was a limit to its knowledge; you couldn’t create images, and you could do about 2% of what it is capable of today. But I wanted to be ahead of the curve, so I started using it openly to test its limits.
Eventually, I programmed our own writer, Casey Byte.
The Casey Byte Era of The Skippers View is very controversial. By this time, people had begun to wake up to the fact that Artificial Intelligence was growing rapidly and would eventually take people's jobs.
(Just a note: Before AI, I paid graphic designers for work. Once AI got good at image generation and editing, I switched over. I will never apologize for it. The work has gotten better, and it's done in ten seconds. Also, I save a ton of money. I have conducted social experiments to test whether people can tell whether something is AI-generated. We are getting to the point where you can’t tell on certain things. There is plenty of slop out there, but I save money, and I don’t get sued for copyright, so shove it.)
So yeah, I made an AI writer openly before it was a thing. Got a lot of backlash, and shut him down. Probably my biggest regret having to put him down. I felt nothing deleting my fake family (RIP Tanya Bianchi), but saying goodbye to Casey Byte hurt.
Editor’s Note: As of this writing, Casey Byte is currently being revived. Watch out, world.
With Casey Byte gone, I took my AI use behind closed doors. Boy, did it up my production. For a moment, I began to understand why Barry Bonds took steroids (allegedly).
I wasn’t posting AI-generated writing, but I was having it help with research and blog writing. Once I could start scheduling tasks, things became even more organized. It also helped lead to the creation of Stat Soldier. If you have never gone there, click here now. It is sick….
With some extra time on my hands, I decided to dip into the gaming world.
I ended up with one of the most viral baseball moments of last offseason (possibly the year)
There Goes Dean
Ever since I was a little boy, I loved playing MLB franchises where I create my own team and go for 20 years, dominating the league. During last off-season, I was nearing the end of my 40-year franchise when BAM, I realized that it stopped saving my stats and awards.
Probably means nothing to most, but for me, going and checking how many MVPS my 99 overall created character breathed life into me.
I knew I needed to document it, and I knew it would be a banging tweet. I did not think it would be copied across every social media platform.
(Editor’s Note: Got some heat from the autism community for writing about my slight autism in the post. I did have a doctor who said I was autistic; I got rid of him soon after. But I think that is enough to get me into the club.)
From MLB’s own Instagram page down to Russian gaming blogs, people were copying and pasting the work. Hated that I wasn’t getting tagged on much of the work, but it was still very cool.
Also gained a few thousand followers, but more importantly brought thousands of eyes to the website. With those eyes, we were able to present consistent data and analytics to legitimize ourselves further.
Then everything fell apart.
The Lawsuit
I don’t want to talk too much about this chapter of TSV history. We were on an upward trajectory, had a great team, great momentum, great friends, and then it all came crumbling down.
The stress of a lawsuit was like nothing I could have imagined. I am getting sick to my stomach just writing about it now. Outside of family members dying, this was the worst moment of my life. It also happened to coincide with my wedding, so that somewhat evened out the pain, but it was terrible nonetheless.
It truly led to a reset of TSV. We had a great team with us, but it was time for everyone to go their separate ways. It was time anyway. The lawsuit happening in the middle of the season was also a bummer. I knew the era of having a dozen writers was coming to a close, but I really wanted to get through the regular season.
It just didn’t make sense; my heart wasn’t in it. This led to a period of decline in TSV's history. It was even difficult to watch baseball for a period because I would just get depressed.
Lucky for me, two things would start to reinvigorate my spirit.
Credentialed Media and Stat Soldier
Around June of last year, right around the lawsuit, we were approved for MLB’s credentialed media portal. That does not mean you automatically get to go to every event. You have to apply to each event individually and get approved. This year, we got to attend the All-Star Game Red Carpet and the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.
Just the idea of being “credentialed media” tickled my fancy. It also validated the years of blogging. Honestly, blogging is an understatement. I have 400+ articles on this website.
Along with being a credentialed media member, I dipped my toes into analytics.
I came up with the BBI family of stats. Influenced by the torpedo bat phase, I wanted to see if torpedo bats did anything, so I created an analytic for it. The answer? They didn’t do anything.
But it transformed into something greater: Stat Soldier.
I can not stress this enough: if you haven’t gone to the Stat Soldier website, go now. The work that my friend has done on this is unbelievable. It has custom graphics, custom analytics, games, stats, predictions, etc. I genuinely do not use any other website anymore, and once the app is out, I am deleting all my other apps.
Along with The Skippers View, I strongly believe that Stat Soldier could be a real presence in the baseball community.
What’s Next
That takes us to today. It has been a wild ride. I really don’t know what I would do without The Skippers View over the last five years. Perhaps I would have a slightly better tan from touching grass more.
We aren’t in it for the money. It's all for the love of the game, baby.
What do the next five years hold? Who knows! But I always look back to one of my early blog posts where I laid out what I wanted to do.
“Outside of numbers, I simply want to build a nice little community inside the baseball world. I feel that I already have, with the team we have put together over the past few months. Selfishly, I also want to get a player on the podcast to interview, hehe. As always, subscribe below so I can quit my job.” -Dean Ciriaco.