Congratulating Stuart Wallace

Another Camden Depot writer is on to bigger and better things. You already know about Jon Shepherd leaving the site to work for Baseball Prospectus. Now, Stuart Wallace is leaving the blogosphere to take a position with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Jon recruited Stuart to write for Camden Depot, so I asked for his thoughts on bringing Stuart into the fold a while back and also on his exciting opportunity with the Pirates:

I contacted Stuart after searching for a local writer who was familiar with advanced metrics and medical concepts while also not being an Orioles fan. All of those attributes were important to me when I was looking for another writer to add to the site. One of the major problems that afflicts all local blogs is provincialism. It is natural to carry a shine to your analysis because you are a fan of a team. That desire for your club to do well can sometimes be a difficult aspect to coldly remove when evaluating a club. Stuart could occupy that outsider role and provide us with a control to compare our own writing against. Now, the other writers did not realize I went after Stuart for these reasons. I mainly lauded his ability to navigate through medicine as his selling point. However, I do think him never being a part of the Oriole fan club made him a valued asset to this site. His views were fair and fairly insightful. Those characteristics are why he was highly sought within the baseball blog world as well as why he is now leaving that world to enter the Pittsburgh Pirates organization.

So congrats, Stuart. And don't forget about us lowly bloggers, toiling away in obscurity.