Distractions

The baseball season finally ended not too long ago. You may have heard. That leaves several months of emptiness before pitchers and catchers report next spring. The world being what it is, major league baseball has done its best to try and fill that void. After all, if you’re not a 365 day a year news story, there’s something wrong with you.

One of the big off-season events has always been the announcement of the awards for the previous season. MLB has always done a good job of spreading the announcements out so that everyone get a day, and a news cycle to themselves. Recently, though, they’ve spread t out even more. Instead of just announcing the winners of awards, they’ve been announcing “finalists” ahead of time. This was the perfect way to turn a one day story into a two day story. Now, instead of debating who won and who didn’t, we can all debate who was a finalist and who wasn’t as well. “Wait, Mookie was a finalist but Ortiz wasn’t?” 

Which makes the announcement of the recent sets of awards weird to me. MLB just released the winners of the Gold Glove Awards. It’s a pretty prestigious set of awards. It could certainly lead to all kinds of discussion among baseball fans. So, why did they release the winners on Tuesday? On Election Day? Was there ever a chance that the winners would get any small part of the news cycle? Even if this election wasn’t the most unthinkable upset in election history? Who was even going to notice the Gold Glove winners?

Then, they did it again. They announced the Players Choice Awards. These awards probably don’t get the respect they deserve. If I was awarded a “pitcher of the year” type award, I’m guessing it would mean more to me if I was selected by my fellow player than by sportswriters. They’re certainly not going to be getting the respect when you announce them right after Election Day. Again, even in a regular election, wouldn’t you expect the minds of America to be pretty occupied the next day?

Which is fine if that’s all you’re looking for. If you just want a press release to get the names out there, send it out whenever you want. But, if you’re Major League Baseball and want the news reports. If you’ve adjusted your schedule and added pretend announcements to draw attention to yourself do that. Don’t go through all that effort only to bury the end result. Wait a week. Fill in the dead times, not the busy times. Wait until times when people are looking for things to tweet. Don’t do it when they’re already tweeting 100 things an hour. 

Be consistent.