With the end of the regular season, we start thinking about the things of the fall. Playoff baseball is at the top of the list, of course, but here at the blog, we’ve got our own calendar. For instance, the Playing Pepper series will start getting worked on in January or February for a March publication. I’ll start working on the Exit Interviews soon so they can run probably in November. Most pressing, though, is starting to collect the data for the annual Top Cards on Twitter series.
Most of you have done this before, but there are some new followers to the Twitter account (and I hope to direct them over to this post) so let’s take it from the top. From now until October 23, you’ll have a chance to fill out the form that I’m going to link to here in a bit. Then, once that time passes, I’ll take the votes, rank everyone, and write a series of posts detailing how it all shook out. If you are interested, the last three years can be found on the front page of the blog (down the right-hand side under “Series”) but you can go right here to see the posts from the 2020 version.
I whittled away at the list this year to try to make it a little more manageable. I’m not sure how well I succeeded, since my policy is to make sure all write-ins from one year make the ballot the next. Overall, I think the list is around 150 folks, which is down from the 200 last year. There were some of my personal favorite accounts that I had to let go because it was based on last year’s results. Hopefully they show up as write-ins this year and get back on the ballot proper in 2022.
Now, you might be saying, “150 people? I don’t have time for this!” I completely get that. Which is why the first rule of the ballot is always spelled out in bold and red letters.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO RANK EVERYONE ON THIS BALLOT! IF YOU HAVE NO OPINION ON THE ACCOUNT PLEASE LEAVE IT BLANK!
Seriously. While the overall ranking is done on total points, averages are a big thing as well. Don’t go putting a 1 in someone’s spot (or a 5 or whatever) if you don’t at least have some opinion on the person. There may be accounts on here that you’ve never heard of. Skip them. There may be accounts on here that you never have interacted with or don’t follow so you don’t really know about them. Skip them. Invariably someone will ignore this section and vote for everyone, but I can’t believe that there are too many people that actually know all of these accounts. There are ones on here that I don’t know!
How you rate them is up to you. Ideally, you’d focus on what they bring to the Cardinals table, their insights and opinions about the club. However, it’s completely up to you. If you don’t like someone filling your timeline with football and want to dock them a grade, I get that. If you aren’t real fond of someone’s politics and that influences your score, that’s fine. If you want to just downgrade them because they are Brendan Schaeffer, that’s really understandable.
All right, we’ve done enough talking (though hit me up on Twitter if you have any other questions) and now it’s time for you to spend some time going over the ballot. Again, the voting will take place through October 23. Last year we had 144 ballots so let’s see if we can top 150 this year. Share with your friends and followers!
