Today at 11:30 you’ll see something new on RAB. It’s a byline that you might find familiar, just not around these parts. In the next week or so you’ll notice a few more of these new bylines popping up. River Ave. Blues is expanding, and we’re excited to announce a pair of new writers, plus a new twist on a current one.

The first one you’ll see is Larry Koestler. Mike, Ben, and I have known Larry for a long, long time. You might have known him from Yankeeist and then The Yankee Analysts. We like his work all the way back in his Save Phil Hughes days — he even did a guest post for us a while ago. Now he’s part of the RAB team, and will bring his consistently well-researched articles to us on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays — and perhaps more if he has the itch. If you’re not doing so already, make sure to follow Larry on Twitter: @Larry_Koestler.

Next on the list is Larry’s partner in crime, TYA co-founder Moshe Mandel. We’ve followed Moshe from his days at the The Yankee U through TYA. In fact, he succeeded Ben and I on the now-defunct MVN Yankees blog, The Bronx Block. (In our day it was Off The Facade.) If you follow Moshe’s Twitter account — @MosheRAB — you might know that he’s a recent Harvard Law grad and is on his way to a fancy schmantz job in January. Because of that he’ll post a bit less frequently: Tuesdays and Sundays. He’s on vacation this week, though, so you’ll have to wait until next week for his debut.

With new contributors on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, we thought one final contributor for Thursdays made sense. Turns out the perfect candidate for the job was right under our noses. You might know Stephen Rhoads from his weekend posts. Now he’s sliding into Thursdays so we can more prominently feature his work. He actually got a head start this week, so his regular spot is already in place. You can find him on Twitter at @sprotster.

Please, folks, give a warm welcome to the new guys. Their voices will add variety to the RAB experience, expanding discussions and providing different angles on the subjects we cover every day.

Now that we have a more robust weekday staff, we decided to install some sense of order. With just Mike, Ben, and me previously on weekdays there wasn’t much need for a hierarchy. We all founded the site and we all took care of business. But with six contributors during the week we need a figurehead. It is with great pleasure that I introduce River Ave. Blues’s first Editor-In-Chief, Mike Axisa. He’s really grabbed the reigns of RAB in 2011, and now he’s the big boss.

While this announcement represents a significant change at RAB, we clearly believe that it will create a more enjoyable experience. Larry, Moshe, and Stephen all have distinct voices that will add variety to the site that we just couldn’t achieve with the three of us. It also takes a little of the load off Mike and me, though most notably Mike. That frees us up to take care of other RAB projects, which we also know you’ll enjoy. There are some exciting times ahead for all of us. We’re thankful that you’ve all come along for the ride.

Just bumping this up top as a reminder. You can still attend the event if you’re under 21, you just have to check in when you get there. They’ll give you a bracelet so they know not to serve you alcohol, but that’s better than not attending.

Last July, we got together with the crew from FanGraphs (and various Mets bloggers) for the first ever FanGraphs Live Discussion. There were a total of four panels and ours basically discussed the state of the team and what not (recap here), and the only complaint seemed to be that it ended too early. We had to be out of Florence Gould Hall by I think noon, otherwise we could have talked for hours. A great time was had by all.

FanGraphs has done a number of Live Discussions since then, and they’ll be coming back to New York this Sunday. This one will be much more informal, no panels or anything. It’ll just be a bunch of us baseball nerds talking about baseball. All the details can be found here, but here’s the nuts and bolts…

Time: 1pm ET (until whenever)
Date: Sunday, Sept. 25th
Location: Amity Hall

Ben, Joe, and I will be there, as will a few FanGraphers, Mets bloggers, etc. Best of all? It’s free! The last event was something like $10 a person, right? No worries this time though, just show up (the entire downstairs is reserved) and enjoy the happy hour prices and baseball talk (and watching, of course the game will be on). Don’t worry, we’ll post a reminder later in the week, but I just wanted to get this on your radar.

Since December Mike and I have tried something new in podcasting. Instead of running the normal weekly segment, we went with a daily format. The thought was that there’s so much to talk about with the Yankees that we could easily record a 20-minute episode every day and still have plenty of leftover content. For six months we made that work. Unfortunately, the experiment ends here.

It takes time every morning to record and produce the show, and unfortunately we’ve gotten to the point where we can’t justify using that time on the podcast. We have plenty of other responsibilities, both to RAB and elsewhere, and the podcast cuts into those. It’s really a matter of prioritization, and we think that the podcast shouldn’t get the priority it has received in the last six months, given what we’ve been able to estimate from our listenership.

The podcast isn’t completely going in the toilet, though. We’re still going to produce a traditional podcast every Thursday. It will run a bit longer, but I’ll make sure to create an alternate version that will include a bookmarkable file (so that your iPod will remember where you left off). It also figures to be more organized and feature more guests.

We now send you back to your normal content. For Mike, I’m Joe, and we’ll talk to you on Thursday.

Since late February in 2007, long before Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia were Yankees, long before we knew about Manuel Banuelos or the power of Kevin Long, Joe, Mike and I began RAB as an experiment in blogging. We had been writing for various other outlets and thought we could do a better job on our own site. Since then, we’ve followed four baseball seasons, penned over 11,200 posts, received 950,000 comments and see 1.2 million of you reload the site every month.

For years, RAB has been a labor of love. We earned some money off of advertising, but it’s not enough to run the site full time. Mike has worked as an engineer and writer for MLB Trade Rumors and FanGraphs; Joe has a day job as a tech/mobile phone writer and also contributes to FanGraphs; I’m in law school and recently picked up a gig at Baseball Prospectus. Still, we’d love to focus on River Ave. Blues as a full-time venture, and so we announce today a trailblazing path in baseball blogging: The RAB paywall.

Drawing inspiration from The New York Times’ recent foray into charging for web content, we’ll be doing the same. After all, while free content is a nice benefit of the Internet, those who produce the content need to be adequately compensated for their time and energy.

So how will this work? First, the good part: Some of our articles will be free. You can still enjoy game threads and open threads as well as the numerous asides we post. Those aren’t going anywhere. But long-form pieces and recaps will fall behind the paywall. Our readers too can access a certain number of free posts per month. Here’s how it works:

• 27 free articles per month. After 27, you can buy a monthly subscription for $3.14.
• 42 free comments per year. After exceeding that total, commenters can purchase an annual unlimited account for $19.23.

Of course, we’ll also offer some bonuses as The Times is doing. Those of you who find their way to RAB via our @RABFeed Twitter account or Facebook page won’t be docked for article views. We still want to make RAB as accessible as possible while working toward drawing in enough revenue to make the site sustainable.

We know many of you might not be happy about this news, but we hope it will lead to better and more thorough coverage. With the added revenue, we’re going to upgrade our offerings, post more frequently and provide more in depth coverage. Over the next few months, you’ll see some changes to the site that aren’t quite ready for prime time, and by next April Fools Day, the paywall will be live.