Happy New Year to all of our fans and readers. 2012 looks promising for both the Cardinals and the Royals, but it also looks promising for i70baseball.com.

The first day of 2012 brings a big change, as you have probably noticed, for i70baseball. The site has ended it’s agreement with Fan Vs Fan and entered into an agreement to join Yardbarker.

I would like to take a minute to thank all the folks at Fan Vs Fan. It is a great network of sites and has a lot of growth potential. I personally hope that we have the opportunity to work together in the future on other projects. They were supportive and helpful and lived up to every part of the deal on their end.

That being said, I-70 has achieved a staff of 20 writers and we are bringing top quality content to our fans quickly, accurately, and multiple times a day. Yardbarker brings a larger audience to what the writers of I-70 work so hard to achieve. Everyone on this site is here for exposure of their work and Yarbarker offers us a greater opportunity to achieve that.

Through Yardbarker and their affiliates, Fox Sports and MSN Sports, I-70 will reach a national audience in a whole new way.

2012 is going to be big for I-70. We are glad you are along for the ride and we welcome each and every one of our new readers.

Play Ball!

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball as well as the Assignment Editor for BaseballDigest.com.
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.com.
Follow him on Twitter here.

Our new friends over at Rant Sports have Connor Nielen covering the Royals for their network site, Royal Treatment. Connor provides series previews and I-70 has reached an agreement to bring his top quality work to our readers in exchange for introducing our readers to his excellent site. So give his site a read and check out his thoughts on the Seattle Series.

The Royals sure came to play on Wednesday afternoon in Minnesota – a 4th-inning offensive onslaught saw 6-consecutive hits to begin the frame (Kansas City would score 6 runs on 8 hits in the inning). K.C. doubled up on the Twins to a final tune of 10-5 and now return home to Kauffman Stadium for a 4-game series with the Seattle Mariners:

Thurs. Apr. 14. 7:10 pm CT - Doug Fister (0-2, 2.31) v. Bruce Chen (1-0, 4.09)

Fri. Apr. 15. 7:10 pm CT – Erik Bedard (0-2, 9.00) v. Luke Hochevar (1-1, 5.30)

Sat. Apr. 16. 12:10 pm CT – Felix Hernandez (1-1, 4.50) v. Sean O’Sullivan (0-1, 11.25)

Sun. Apr. 17. 1:10 pm CT – Michael Pineda (1-1, 2.70) v. Jeff Francis (0-0, 2.61)

You can read Connor’s in depth analysis of the series by clicking here.

I-70 Baseball came into existince on July 12, 2010 as the new affiliate site of BaseballDigest.com. The launch brought a modest staff of writers and editors to the world to talk about Cardinals and Royals baseball.

In the short time that we have been around, we have grown tremendously to bring you, our readers, the best content we can on a daily basis. Without fail, we have published a minimum of one article per day, seven days a week, for each team. We have laid out a schedule that brings fantasy reports, series previews, farm reports and commentary to you on a regular basis.

As we have been moving through production, we have identified areas of the site that need some attention. Derrick Docket, our Graphic Designer, has done amazing work adjusting the way things look on the site based on suggestions from our readers, our writers, and our editors.

The goal of this website is to bring you top quality content in a attractive design while being informative and entertaining. Recently, during staff discussions, we identified that the pictures being used to deliver our material were lacking in solid quality. A decision was made to appoint someone to oversee this aspect of the website and ensure that the photography you see on the site is of the same amazing quality as the graphics and writing that you find here every day.

Justin Hulsey was one of the first writers to join the staff here at I-70 prior to launch. A young man from Union, Missouri, Justin is one of the most talented individuals I have come across, regardless of age. I have often said that one of the great benefits of being an editor of the site is getting to read the amazing content from some of my favorite writers before anyone else gets that luxury. Justin is the epitome of that statement as I enjoy his series previews, opinion articles and his weekly Cardinals Farm Report. He has shown great dedication to the I-70 project and ensuring that everything is handled in a manor that would allow us to reach out to more and more fans.

After discussing the needs of the site, it was agreed that Justin would join the executive staff here at I-70 Baseball as our Photo Editor in addition to his writing duties. It is a great pleasure to announce this to our readers and to continue to work with this young journalist with a very bright future.

If you would like to submit photos for use here by I-70 Baseball, you can reach Justin at jhulsey@i70baseball.com