The Boston Red Sox Sunday, April 26, 2020 * The Boston Globe Baseball websites have taken a hit Peter Abraham Tim Dierkes and Sean Forman changed baseball with their ideas, creating websites that made it easier for fans, executives, players, agents, and journalists to follow and appreciate the sport. Now, with baseball indefinitely shut down because of the coronavirus, they’re trying to survive. “It’s been very stressful time to run a business,” said Forman, who owns Baseball-Reference.com, part of the Sports Reference family of sites. “You’re trying to do right by your employees and their families. Nobody saw this coming.” Dierkes is the founder and owner of MLBTradeRumors.com, a site that reports on the latest transactions and gossip from around the game. Walk around a major league clubhouse close to the trade deadline in July and you’ll find many of the players and most of the reporters frantically checking the site’s phone app for the latest news. Outside of MLB.com, MLB Trade Rumors and Baseball Reference are the two most popular baseball sites on the web. In normal times, MLBTR would be getting an average of 1 million page views a day. That’s down by more than 40 percent, and advertising revenue has dropped by 50 percent. “It’s a double whammy,” said Dierkes, who has three full-time employees. “It’s devastating for the business.” The same is generally true for Baseball Reference, which during the season generates 1.5 million page views daily. The site, which started in 2000 as a hobby for Forman, has grown into a company with 11 full- time employees. Baseball Reference is the industry standard for looking up statistics, box scores, and the other minutia of baseball. Any time you read a story with some mention of statistics, traditional or advanced, it’s likely the writer went to Baseball Reference to look it up. Forman also created sites for the NFL, NBA, NHL, professional soccer, NCAA basketball, and NCAA football. That traffic has helped Sports Reference stay afloat. “Overall we’re holding fairly steady,” he said. “Baseball traffic is down, but the NFL offseason took on new meaning with Tom Brady [leaving the Patriots]. The Michael Jordan documentary [on ESPN] was a big win for us, too. “Anything of a historical nature that people are watching, people are also looking for box scores. We’re fortunate in that regard.” But Forman is leaving one open position unfilled and shuttered the company’s summer intern program. The drop in Web advertising hit hard, but he’s making payroll. “If the NFL plays in September, we’ll be fine,” he said. “If not …” Baseball Reference is running its own computer simulation of the season to create some content. But with fantasy leagues and the sports gambling industry shut down, too, many of its customers are finding other ways to spend their time. Dierkes believes as much as two-thirds of his traffic comes from fantasy team owners. But over the years he has spoken to many baseball insiders who appreciate having one place on the Web to go for the latest roster updates, no matter how minor. MLB Trade Rumors, which started in 2005, also has sister sites for NBA, NFL, and NHL rumors. But baseball is what brings in the most revenue, and transactions came to a sudden halt on March 27 when rosters were frozen. “That was a big change,” Dierkes said. “A lot of what we’re doing now is original material and reporting the news. It’s hard finding something interesting.” In slow times during the year, Dierkes encourages his writers to be creative. Now that’s a daily mandate. Recent posts looked into the free agent class of pitchers for next season and which players could be candidates for qualifying offers. “This happened virtually overnight,” Dierkes said. “It’s something you couldn’t have anticipated happening. Ad rates fluctuate sometimes but they just dropped suddenly.” Dierkes, who operates the site in suburban Chicago, successfully applied for government assistance to help make payroll. “My accountants were really good helping with that,” he said. “But this has just been terrifying." Another baseball site, the analytically based Fangraphs.com, also was hit hard. CEO David Appleman laid off 20 freelance writers in March and cut the pay of 10 full-time staffers. Because these sites rely largely on advertising revenue as opposed to paid subscriptions, the lack of games is a hurdle almost impossible to overcome. “You’re doing anything to move the needle, even a little,” Dierkes said. “Generally that’s depending on the news. April is never a big month for us, but last year, when [Craig] Kimbrel and [Dallas] Keuchel were free agents, we did really well. “Usually it builds in May and June and we get a big spike at the trade deadline. Now I don’t know if there will be a trade deadline. We don’t know what will happen. You look ahead and wonder what the business will look like.” One small positive is that working from home is not an issue. Baseball Reference, which operates out of space rented from a church on the outskirts of Philadelphia, already had two employees working remotely, and the others made a relatively smooth transition. “That part, at least, wasn’t a concern,” said Forman, a former professor of mathematics and computer science who left Saint Joseph’s University in 2006 to operate the sites. “But we need some games.” THE CALL ON CORA? Bloom should have final say It’s easy to suggest, as I did this past week, that the Red Sox should rehire Alex Cora as manager after the 2020 World Series ends. He was cleared of any wrongdoing in 2018, and the assumption is that Ron Roenicke will get the team through this season but not necessarily beyond. That the Red Sox did not extend his contract beyond this season suggests they don’t see the 63-year-old Roenicke as a long-term solution. It was obvious during his two years on the job that Cora is temperamentally suited for Boston. That’s not a quality easy to find. He also brought out the best in Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, and Eduardo Rodriguez, three players critical to the long-term prospects of the organization. Cora unquestionably acted poorly in Houston and earned his suspension. But if the Red Sox believe he’s their best choice, holding that against him would be foolish. Commissioner Rob Manfred suspended Cora for a year, the same punishment he levied against Houston manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow. That strongly suggests the commissioner saw their lack of oversight being just as serious as what Cora did in setting up the trash-can scheme. The Astros were an organization without a moral center long before Cora arrived, and it continued after he was gone. When Cora was let go in January, Sox ownership talked about him as if he were a treasured member of their family. It was clear their hand was forced and they made the move because there was little other choice at the time. They’ll have a choice once the season ends. But there is one potential obstacle. Chaim Bloom has been in charge of baseball operations for six months now and has yet to make a significant hire. He deserves a chance to put his imprint on the organization, and if he feels Cora is compromised or that the Sox can do better, he should have veto power. Bloom knew he was inheriting Cora when he took the job. But now the choice should be largely his. A few other observations on the Red Sox: ▪ MLB’s investigations department should do some actual investigating the next time cheating is alleged instead of offering immunity to players to rat out somebody such as J.T. Watkins and make him the fall guy. MLB’s report doesn’t categorically determine that Watkins broke any rules, only that some players believed he could have. Yet he alone was held accountable. The alternative was for MLB to acknowledge that three months of investigating didn’t amount to much. Watkins went on the record denying he broke any rules, and that any information he gave players during games was a product of his pregame preparation. So it comes down to this: Do you believe the word of a West Point graduate who went on the record or a small group of players who spoke anonymously knowing they could not be held accountable in any way? If Watkins returns to the Red Sox in 2021, it should be with a healthy pay raise. ▪ The Red Sox investigation should be what finally compels MLB to move all replay monitors to a location away from the dugout. The players should not have access to the technology or the people monitoring it. Staffers such as Watkins work for modest pay and hope to get a life-changing playoff share if the team is successful. It’s unfair to put them in a position where the players are hovering. “I think it’s something that we as a sport ought to look at,” Bloom said. “It’s no excuse for rule violations; we’re all accountable for our behavior and we’re all responsible for following rules whatever they are. “But I also think that structurally we ought to do everything we can to make sure these aspects of our game are beyond reproach. What exactly those remedies are, I think, is something that has to be discussed.” The answer seems simple: Put the replay screen on the press box level, with both teams in the same area.