Darren Everson at the Wall Street Journal notes that baseball blogs are making a difference to ballclubs:

"We don't have a monopoly on baseball knowledge," says Sig Mejdal, the Cardinals' senior quantitative analyst who helped create the contest. "Just looking at the fan sites and posting boards, you see an amazing amount of energy. Why not harness it?"

The Cardinals' program is believed to be the first of its kind, but several sports franchises -- especially baseball teams -- have also begun to breach the divide that traditionally separates fans from team management. Last season, the Seattle Mariners used a report prepared by a friendly blogger to help one of the team's young pitchers. And one independent-league team from Illinois allowed fans to set the team's starting lineup.

These moves are often aimed at improving public relations. But they also suggest a new line of thinking among owners and managers of sports franchises. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of independent team-centric Web sites where partisan fans -- some of whom are mathematicians or scientists with Ph.D.s -- share their own enlightened statistical research and scouting analyses. Teams haven't just taken notice -- they are looking for ways to leverage all this brainpower.

Teams do read these sites. Keep up the good work everyone!

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