The MLBTR Newsletter is taking a new form next week, and I will no longer be a part of it. After struggling to maintain my baseball writing career in the wake of the 2020 shutdown, I may have finally come to the end of the line. I’m not officially, definitively retiring from writing about baseball (I’m always open to new opportunities), but I don’t seen an obvious way forward from here and will most likely turn my attention to the more lucrative (purely a relative term here) editing work I have done in recent years.
Given that I always took extra time to recap a player’s career in the Newsletter upon the news of his retirement, I thought I’d give myself a similar treatment today. Eternal thanks to everyone who supported my career, be it as a reader, an editor, a producer, an employer, or a mentor, and, of course, first and foremost, to my family for their support of my pursuit of this unusual and irregular career.
Cliff Corcoran, best known for his contributions to SI.com, The Athletic, and Baseball Prospectus books, is reportedly contemplating retiring from writing about baseball. One of the second wave of baseball bloggers in the early 2000s, Corcoran launched his eponymous, Yankees-focused Big Red Blog in August 2003 and got his big break when he joined Alex Belth’s Bronx Banter with the launch of Ken Arneson’s Baseball Toaster in March 2005.
In 2007, editor Jacob Luft assembled a team of bloggers, primarily from Baseball Toaster, to write a daily blog for SI.com called Fungoes, with Corcoran penning the “Wild Card” entry in Fridays. Corcoran first broke out of that short-lived corner of the site with a memorial for Phil Rizzuto in August 2007, just a month after leaving his day job to pursue a freelance career. That October, he covered the first two games of the National League Division Series at Citizens Bank Park for SI.com.
In the meantime, Corcoran, at the urging of his mentor and good friend Steven Goldman, began to contribute to Baseball Prospectus books, first with a portion of a chapter in 2005’s Mind Game, then with the Cleveland player comments in the 2006 Baseball Prospectus annual and two chapters in 2007’s It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book. As an assistant editor at The Penguin Group, Corcoran signed the Baseball Prospectus annual to a three-year contract with Plume in 2007 and co-edited the 2007 and 2008 editions, as well as the 2007 edition of Pro Football Prospectus. He subsequently wrote for the 2009–12 BP annuals and co-edited the 2022 annual and Futures Guide.
In August 2010, Corcoran left Bronx Banter, then with SNY, to join Steven Goldman’s Pinstriped Bible when that long-running column/blog joined the YES Network. He would subsequently move with Goldman and the blog to SB Nation, contributing through 2013 while also writing stray articles for some of SB Nation’s other team sites.
Meanwhile, Corcoran took on increasing prominence at SI.com, emerging in the early 2010s as one of the site’s lead baseball writers, ultimately alongside his Pinstriped Bible and Baseball Prospectus colleague Jay Jaffe. In 2013, Corcoran also began making semi-regular appearances on the MLB Network, primarily on the Brian Kenny–hosted Clubhouse Confidential and MLB Now.
Sports Illustrated’s slow-motion collapse caught up with Corcoran in September 2016. Will Leitch subsequently recruited him for Sports on Earth from 2016 until that site’s shuttering in January 2018. Corcoran’s former Bronx Banter colleague Emma Span then brought him to The Athletic, where he was one of the emerging site’s first national baseball writers (joining Eno Sarris and Ken Rosenthal) and wrote regularly until the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the 2020 baseball season. In the late 2010s, Corcoran also contributed to USA Today and covered the Red Sox for Boston.com.
Corcoran stayed afloat in 2020 by co-authoring the InsideTheDodgers vertical on the zombie SI.com with Howard Cole. In 2021, Corcoran launched his own newsletter, The Cycle, on Substack. That November, Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors hired him to write the daily, email-only MLBTR Newsletter, which he would do for the following four years. In the wake of the pandemic, Corcoran also contributed sporadically to Baseball Prospectus.
Belatedly inducted into the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in 2015, Corcoran was dropped from the organization in 2024, the year he would have become eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame. Corcoran last appeared on the MLB Network in early 2020. The last issue of The Cycle was in late April 2023. His most recent article at Baseball Prospectus was published in January 2024. Today, his version of the MLBTR Newsletter draws to a close.
Nine years after departing SI.com, 22 years into his career as a baseball writer, and rapidly approaching his 50th birthday, Corcoran has grown tired of begging for scraps from an industry that once embraced him. Though he still loves the game and would welcome an opportunity to continue to write about it, he has found his work as a copyeditor and proofreader of nonfiction books to be more lucrative and nearly as satisfying in recent years (this is the writer equivalent of moving from playing to coaching). As has been the case throughout his career, his dedication to his family and work as a stay-at-home dad (to a kid who is now a year and a half away from graduating high school) remains his highest priority.
Here’s hoping you will wish him the best in the next phase of his life, whatever that might be.
Thanks to Ken Arneson, Jacob Luft, Gennaro Filice, Ted Keith, Jon Tayler, Larry Burke, Paul Fitchenbaum, Jay Jaffe, Christina Kahrl, Will Leitch, Gabe Guarente, Gabe Lacques, Chris Greenberg, Emma Span, Kaci Borowski, Howard Cole, Brian Kenny, Micah Karg, Mitch Green, Chris Arnowich, Doug Jaclin, the late James Allen, Craig Goldstein, Patrick Dubuque, and Tim Dierkes, among others. Endless gratitude, debt, and love to Alex Belth and Steven Goldman.
CliffCorcoran.com 