Tomahawk Take has a new Site Expert, Eric Cole

Hello Braves Fans! My name is Eric Cole and it is entirely possible you may already be familiar with me as I have been active in the Braves blogosphere since 2015 over at SB Nation’s Battery Power (formerly Talking Chop) as well as on Twitter under my username @leprekhan. What you very likely didn’t know until now is that effective today, I am taking over as Site Expert here at Tomahawk Take.

Just to give you all some more depth to my background, I started writing for SB Nation’s Braves affiliate site back in 2015 just on a lark. I have been a diehard Braves fan for many, many years and my day job was affording me some free time that I needed to fill. I took over responsibility for the minor league coverage after a few months, then took on more and more responsibility until I was named Deputy Site Manager in 2018 and I settled into that position until now. I have been a regular podcast host and you may have heard (and will continue to hear me) making radio guest appearances on shows throughout the Southeast.

I know that, for many of you, this news will be a bit jarring and others may be wondering what happened to my predecessors Alan and Jake. To be honest, I don’t have great answers there. I have known Alan for a long time, always found him to be a great guy, and wish him nothing but the best. I don’t know Jake whatsoever, but my understanding is that he moved on to focus on projects that were more to his liking. I have no desire to litigate why the changes occurred…my only desire right now is to do right by the community here and for Braves fans as a whole.

With any change in leadership is going to bring with it changes to how a site operates and this change will be no different. I am a fervent believer (having been trained by Kris Willis) in maintaining a fixed schedule of posting so that our readers know when to expect certain content each day. While we cannot plan for breaking news and we will always find space for original content as we come up with it, I do want to start making sure our readers know when to expect our regular features to go up.

Additionally, one thing you will learn about me is that I am not a fan of the slideshow format. That said, I know that there are some writers on the masthead that enjoy using it for the longer form content they create and I am not going to stop them. That said, with me in charge, you are going to see a lot less of that. If you aren’t a fan of slideshows, congratulations! If not, I am sorry..but you aren’t going to change my mind.

By now, you are all probably wondering what other changes are coming. In addition to some back-end changes (that you all are not likely to really notice) and potential branding changes down the line, you probably want to know things like “Is there going to be more minor league coverage?”, “Can we get more/different Braves history content?”, “Can you start covering baseball card/memorabilia collecting?”, etc. The answer to all of those questions is yes and that list is far from exhaustive. My primary goal is to get more content that you will enjoy on the site, but you need to let me know what you want to see. Let me know in the comments the types of content you want and I will do my best to deliver on that.

Speaking of the comments, one feature that I am going to commit to is a Q&A with yours truly where I answer your questions in the comments. They can be questions about the site, the Braves, or whatever you want. All that I ask is that you are polite, not profane, and not creepy (I’m not telling you where I live). If you follow me on Twitter, you will know that I am famously intolerant of people being jerks, so don’t be one. That will tentatively be on Thursday evening (we are going to try 6 p.m. ET to start) and will begin this week, so I hope to see you there. I am also going to be doing mailbag-type posts from time to time where I pull questions from Twitter and put them in an article format for everyone to see and digest.

For those that have followed my work over on Battery Power, I will be finishing out my time there during the month of November. I will be putting together a good-bye post over there as well at some point, although frankly even thinking about writing that is bringing tears to my eyes. I am sure I will pop on the podcast feed over there from time to time as a guest, but I am very excited about this next chapter in my writing career and I hope you will support our work here as well as at BP.

Today is bittersweet for me as I adore the entire staff at Battery Power include my ridiculously capable boss Kris Willis, my podcasters-in-arms Brad Rowland, Scott Coleman, Shawn Coleman, and Stephen Tolbert, and my minor league team Garrett Spain, Matt Powers, Austin Gwin, Gaurav Vedak, and Wayne Cavadi. However, I am thrilled to get to know the team here at Tomahawk Take and hit the ground running to give Braves fans everywhere even more content on the team that gives us so much joy/sorrow/anger/confusion, the Atlanta Braves.