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Pirates Prospects Will Be Completely FREE on Wednesday For the Wild Card Game

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PITTSBURGH — The Wild Card game is tomorrow, and Pirates Prospects will have live coverage of the game. I will be covering the game along with Sean McCool, and we will have photos from David Hague. This is just one game in the post-season, and we’ll have coverage for all of them, as noted below.

Our subscribers will get access to all of our coverage throughout the playoffs. But as a special promotion, we’re making the site completely FREE tomorrow. Starting at midnight tonight, and running through 8 AM on Thursday morning, everything on the site will be free. You’ll get access to our playoff coverage, plus every article we’ve ever written, which amounts to over 15,000 articles in site history, plus every article we’ve written this year. That’s over 1,200 articles since the start of April, which was an average of 6.47 posts per day.

This will give you plenty of Pirates content to go over as you wait for the Wild Card game at 8:08 PM EST tomorrow night. We’ll post links to some of our favorite articles from throughout the year early in the morning. Hopefully this will give all of you non-subscribers a chance to catch up on what you missed throughout the year, and maybe it will convince you to pay our small subscription fees and join the site to get all of our great Pirates coverage going forward. If you want to do that ahead of the free day, you can subscribe to the site here.

Pirates Prospects Will Have Full Playoff Coverage

This is the third year in a row that the site will feature live coverage from every post-season game. We’ve been credentialed to cover the Pirates from the Wild Card game all the way through the World Series, if they make it. One thing that has changed this year is that we will have two people covering the games at PNC Park, with Sean McCool joining me for those games. In previous years we had multiple people covering the games through the NLDS, but we were only credentialed for one writer if the Pirates would have made the NLCS or World Series.

I don’t know what changed this year, although I assume it was the expanded MLB coverage that we had, including increased road coverage. At any rate, I’m really looking forward to all of the coverage, and hoping that the Pirates make it far enough that we can actually use those credentials and give our subscribers some outstanding articles from the playoffs.

Why Should Subscribers Stick Around in the Off-Season?

I got a question earlier this week that I was waiting until the off-season to address, but figured I would give an early answer with some of the plans for the off-season. The question:

As you may already know, this is our seventh year covering the system. So this will be our seventh off-season with coverage. One thing I learned along the way is that there’s a big demand for Pirates content in the off-season. A lot of Pirates blogs typically take off for a few months, then pick back up with posting in April. We’ve never done that, and I think that’s one reason why we’ve had the success we’ve had.

We provide content on the Pirates and their system 365 days a year. In the off-season, that means recaps and analysis of the winter league action, the Arizona Fall League, and of course, the roster moves.

If I told you to guess our three busiest months of the year, you might be able to get the first two — June and July. The third one might be a surprise: December. June and July make sense, as that includes the season, a lot of minor league promotions, trade rumors, and our biggest focus, the draft and international signings. But December is right up there with that, probably because we provide analysis of every single move, and cover things in a way where we typically have that analysis up shortly after the move is announced.

Our focus in the off-season is to make sure you are always up to date with everything that is happening in the system, as quickly as possible. That won’t change this year. If a prospect is traded, we’ll give the analysis on what the Pirates sent away. If a prospect is brought in, we’ll do the research and find out what kind of prospect the Pirates just added. And when a move is made on the MLB side, we’ll provide our analysis on how this impacts the Pirates.

But what about the new subscription model? How does that change things? To be totally honest, the off-season provides a bit of a break from live coverage, which is something you need in this business to stay fresh. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be coverage. I’ll have live coverage this year from the Arizona Fall League in early November, looking at that exciting class that is representing the Pirates, including Austin Meadows and Reese McGuire. I’ll also have live coverage from mini-camp at Pirate City in January, and we’ll have coverage from PirateFest.

In terms of coverage that isn’t locked down, I’d love to get coverage of the Dominican Winter Leagues, especially in the playoffs. I’d also consider Winter Meeting coverage, although it’s typically better to work from home during that event, as you can cover everything.

The biggest thing in the off-season is the Prospect Guide. I’ve already started work on that project, and it’s something that takes a long time. We’re expanding the book this year, as a result of our expanded coverage. It’s due out right after the Winter Meetings (one other reason why covering the meetings is tough), which means I’ll be very busy with that through the month of November. On a side note, subscribers should check below for a special offer on this book.

If you’ve got an annual subscription or our Top Prospect Plan, then you’ve already got the off-season coverage, with no decision to be made about whether you want to stick around. But if you’re a monthly subscriber on the fence, there are so many reasons for you to stick around. If you want continued daily coverage of the Pirates and their system, we have that. If you want live coverage of the prospects, we’ll have that. If you want the best analysis of the Pirates’ farm system, we’ll have that with the Prospect Guide.

If you switch to our Top Prospect Plan, you get much better value over the long-run. Right now if you subscribe only during the season (start of Spring Training through the end of the playoffs), you’re subscribing for nine months of the year. That’s $26.91 per year at the monthly rate. Over three years, that’s $80.73, which is more expensive than our Top Prospect Plan ($79.99 for three years). And under the Top Prospect Plan, you get all of the off-season coverage, plus you get this year’s Prospect Guide for free (details below).

To be honest here, from a financial perspective, we get the same if you only stick around during the season as a monthly subscriber, or if you sign up for the Top Prospect Plan. But you get much more content and value by signing up for our best plan, including daily off-season coverage when pretty much everyone else is taking an extended break until Spring Training.

Get a FREE One-Year Subscription With DRAFTKINGS

We have a special promotion with DraftKings, where you can get a free one-year subscription to the site, simply by signing up as a new DraftKings customer (must be a new customer) and making a deposit. Just sign up for an account (using that link), make your first deposit ($5 minimum), and participate in a contest. Once you have completed those steps, send an e-mail to Javier Vargas at DraftKings (jvargas@draftkings.com) and let him know you are participating in the Pirates Prospects subscription promotion. Javier will confirm whether you’ve met the requirements, then will contact me so I can give you a coupon code that will allow you to set up your one year subscription.

Get a Free 2016 Prospect Guide

The 2016 Prospect Guide will be FREE to Top Prospect subscribers. Anyone who is currently under a Monthly or Annual plan can upgrade to our three-year plan by going to your Subscription page and clicking “Upgrade”. This will give you a pro-rated upgrade price, with your three-year plan starting today.

Anyone under an Annual plan will receive $10 off the book. There are no discounts for Monthly plans, although upgrading to an Annual or Top Prospect plan does give you a discount on your monthly price, not to mention the discounts for the book.

This promotion also works for the DraftKings accounts. If you wish to upgrade your DraftKings account to a three-year plan, send me an e-mail at tim@piratesprospects.com.

Anyone currently under a Top Prospect Plan is already eligible for this promotion. You will receive a coupon code when the book is released for pre-sales.

Tim Williams
Tim Williams
Tim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.

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