I found Talking Chop back in 2009. I think it was linked off Yahoo! Sports, which I was only on because, at the time, that was the best fantasy baseball service. I don’t think the site has gotten a ton of its traffic from Yahoo! Sports through the years, but I do think that on a user quality basis, it’s probably more valuable than the gobs of traffic that once moved through Twitter and Facebook, and the mobile-heavy traffic driven by Google and the various automated cell phone feeds. Anyway, I’m getting off-topic.

The reason why I stuck around was because the comments were knock-down, drag-out, with actual arguments and evidence furnished in support of those arguments. Since that time, there have been so many epic long-running wars among the TC/BP commentariat that many are seared into my memory — Jason Heyward/Jose Constanza, Nate McLouth/Jordan Schafer, rebuild/no rebuild among them. Along those same lines, I’ve always wanted what in my mind is a Big Board — basically, every time a falsifiable claim or position is falsified or validated, partisans on either side of the topic gain/lose points, accordingly. That said, making this is much easier desired than implemented, because honestly, a lot of divisive topics aren’t truly falsifiable. Even when it’s an issue like McLouth-Schafer, the team has to actually give both guys enough playing time for one side or the other to be proven correct. In other words, arguments are often pre-emptive and have little bearing on what the team actually does, and once the team does something, the argument is kind of moot. The exception is, I guess, about what the team will do instead of should do, but those are somewhat less interesting.

Anyway, you see what I’m getting at, provided you even read this post. So I’m gonna skip the further explanation, and just put it this way:

Go forth and put your selections in the comments. I’ll track them, and maybe anything else I/the commentariat comes up with, and we’ll have a Big Board after all.