Some Changes at One Strike Away

As a somewhat well-known blog in the Rangers universe, this is something I feel like I need to put up, if for no other reason than to get the truth out there.

Some changes are currently underway at One Strike Away; more specifically, Eric Reining will no longer be writing for the site.

In recent months, some of you may have noticed a person in the comments section that went by the name "Dubya". Oftentimes, Dubya was contentious and had pretty scathing things to say about not only my published articles, but the articles of other writers on the site.

It went as far as even blasting one author for the format and length on a post. I dismissed it as a normal Internet troll. It happens, especially when you're getting linked by ESPN several times a week. There's always bound to be that fan that thinks either sabermetrics are stupid, that you're insulting their favorite player, whatever it may be. That's not what this was.

So in recent weeks, Dubya ramped up the criticism. In a post about throwing some mostly non-serious trade ideas out for fun, there was this: "Embarrassing article. Just stop with the trades. Just stop."

In a piece talking about the brawl on Sunday, Dubya went on to call me petulant, as well as add this little tidbit: "You sound like all of the local DFW media that people can't stand."

Tuesday night, I posted up a GIF of Adrian Beltre quite clearly looking unhappy with his job. It's a look Beltre has been known to give players such as Elvis from time to time, so I never took it as Adrian "making a statement". Just that he wasn't happy. Dubya railed and said the post needed to be removed.

Finally, Wednesday morning, I had a piece up on the bullpen. In it, I made a comment about small sample sizes and trying not to overreact. To which this comment was posted: "'So while I'm all for not overreacting to small sample sizes...' This is rich coming from you. It's such a long season. Don't you ever get tired of overreacting?"

I got a bit curious. I wanted to see if maybe it was a fan from another area just attempted to troll anything that was posted. As such, I loaded up my Disqus comment moderation panel, and found "Dubya" on the list. Right there, I could see the IP address and email address associated with the commenter account. The account was registered to none other than Eric Reining, one of the writers of One Strike Away.

So, rather than express displeasure personally -- and all while texting at least on a weekly basis -- we had a writer decide to create a "fake" account with which to trash the site and all other contributors.

Upon confronting him with what I had discovered, I never received a response. Maybe part of me didn't expect one, but it seems as if it would have been the adult thing to do. However, another contributor and moderator, my cousin, sent him an email letting him know what had been discovered. The response? "You got me! Ah, man, what ever am I supposed to do now that I can't write on a child's blog anymore?"

I suppose I feel a bit bamboozled. Although he had previously written for Nolan Writin', and had a less than private -- as well as contentious -- departure from that site, Eric's writing was something I wanted to see on One Strike Away. And it was fantastic while it lasted. I have no idea what happened to create so much disaccord, and it saddens me that we won't be getting his articles here anymore.

However, I just didn't see any other way of solving this. As always, thank you to all of you that do read. Although you may not always agree with the viewpoints presented here, your input and opinions are very valuable, and we do work very hard to put out quality content on a regular basis, win or lose.