For the purpose of this activity, my focus is on the website Fangraphs’ blog roll, where both full-time and freelance writers contribute statistical-based baseball analysis and news. 28 different writers have published their work here, and it’s easy to access each individual author’s archives on the sidebar. The layout is simple, and that works in its favor in some ways, but I find it a bit unappealing.
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| Image Credit: Fangraphs |
Articles are well-organized, stacked under publishing date subheadings with headlines, deckheads, and tags. The site is laid out very intentionally but a bit atypically in the sense that it doesn’t run left to right, information is strictly organized vertically. This sort of layout is consistent throughout the blog section of the site, as are the color palette and font. The minimalist layout makes navigation, both to the blog roll from the homepage and within the blog roll itself, fairly straightforward. The blog roll is clearly visible in the main site’s header, and readers can easily filter by author, category, blog type, and even by specific players and teams in the blog roll’s sidebar. These filters are also presented alphabetically in separate categories, so it’s easy for readers to narrow down their intended search.
However, I find the benefits of this simplicity end there. I’m not affected by this much since the collection of Fangraphs’ content does a great job of catering to its dedicated user base on its own, but a complete lack of visuals isn’t likely to do them any favors in terms of retaining first-time viewers. The site’s home page incorporates visuals alongside almost every trending article, but these images are nowhere to be found when scrolling through these very same articles in the blog roll. The blog roll’s wall of Arial-adjacent text is not remotely aesthetically pleasing, and the images that accompany these articles on the homepage could easily fit in the sizable chunk of empty space left throughout the page. These images don’t take up nearly enough space to justify omitting them in my mind.
I find the articles themselves to be well written, and I’m impressed by the consistency throughout the staff despite its wide range of contributors. Their writers tend to take either a ‘fun and friendly’ or ‘direct’ voice, and I found via a readability checker that most of their articles are typically written at an 8th-9th grade level. The writers do a good job of making often complex information easily digestible for anyone with some sort of prior knowledge of the sport. The nature of their work allows these sports analysts to be a bit looser with their tone, but they have a good understanding of the degree to which they must restrain themselves in order to be taken seriously. They’re informative without being stuffy, which can be a very hard balance to strike in their field.
The Fangraphs staff also effectively encourages readers to continue to interact with the site as a whole. Their articles are full of embedded links to other Fangraphs articles and statistics pages. If an article references a specific player, a brief statline and an embedded link to their full statistics can be found in the article’s sidebar, encouraging readers to dig deeper into what trends inspired the article they’re reading.
Fangraphs is also an incredible tool for up-and-coming or established sports analysts to share their work and communicate with each other, as it features a community blog consisting of original pieces from readers. Fangraphs maintains editorial authority, but they’re further encouraging members of their community to interact with the site and each other. However, there is a barrier to access after the first ten free articles. Readers must buy a subscription to read to their heart’s content, and they can’t comment on articles without an account.
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| Image Credit: Fangraphs |
Fangraphs is a site that I’ve long perused and supported, but it is not without its flaws. I feel that adding archives sorted by publishing date would pay dividends for the site, as it’s not particularly easy for readers to find older articles unless they’re already familiar with them. As I previously mentioned, I would also make better use of the current layout’s blank space and implement many more visuals to increase audience retention. However, I’ve found it to be an incredible resource as even a casual baseball fan in large part due to its digestibility and ease of navigation, so I don’t personally have many gripes with it.
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