Lindbergh: The best of baseball’s new old videos

From SABR member Ben Lindbergh at Baseball Prospectus on February 25, 2013:

A little over four years ago, Shawn Hoffman wrote a piece at BP called “Opening Up MLB.com: How MLBAM Can Take Its Next Big Step.” A couple key paragraphs:

MLB.com has been slow to open up, at least relative to the suddenly nimble major media companies. And really, that is the only thing that has stopped MLBAM from becoming a billion-dollar business. It sounds counter-intuitive, but by trying to wring out every dollar possible through downloads and subscriptions, MLB.com is actually leaving money on the table. Instead, they should be trying to flood the site with short clips (both new and old), and make them easy to share and embed on third-party sites (when you click ‘Share’ on an MLB.com video right now, it only lets you e-mail the URL to your friends).

So what steps can MLB.com make? To start with, they should open their massive video vault in New York City, and use their video-editing software to create as many clips as possible. Imagine being able to see any home run in World Series history (of those that are on tape, at least), on demand. Or the last inning of any televised no-hitter. The possibilities are endless.

It’s taking longer than those of us—okay, all of us—who’d enjoy being able to access any play at any time would like, but we’re gradually getting closer to Shawn’s vision of internet baseball nirvana. Early in the 2011 season, MLBAM quietly made some of its videos of recent highlights embeddable. And right around the same time, just as quietly, it began to put some “classic” clips online.

As I write this, there are 996 viewable MLB.com clips tagged “classic”.

Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19691



Originally published: February 27, 2013. Last Updated: February 27, 2013.