The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was no consensus. Monty845 03:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Retired minor league baseball player, never played in the bigs, no evidence of notability. Spanneraol (talk) 22:34, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Found some mention in sources, but not enough to lead me to believe that the subject is notable. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 02:02, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I admit I have a bit of a soft spot for All-Star Futures Game players. I feel like they should be notable under BASE/N, because there should be enough coverage of them as prospects to satisfy GNG. For Whittleman, I found this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, which I think scrapes him by, barely. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:20, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The sources listed above are almost entirely routine coverage, either from his hometown paper or in press release-type "stories" at MiLB.com. If that type of coverage is sufficient to pass GNG, then not only do 99 percent of MiLB players pass GNG, but just about any all-star high school athlete has enough coverage to pass GNG. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 09:07, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Enough of them discuss him in detail sufficient for GNG. It is coverage that most MiLB players do not get, which is why most of them are not notable but some are. MiLB.com stories are independent of MiLB, as indicated by the statement "This story was not subject to the approval of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues or its clubs". Local coverage counts as much as national. – Muboshgu (talk) 22:09, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MBisanztalk 04:41, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mediran (t • c) 01:56, 31 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Non-notable minor league baseball player. Alex (talk) 18:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Mugobshu. Participants in the Futures Game are notable. A couple of those sources are marginal, but there's some meat there, too. Also, Whittleman was covered at length in the 2006, 2007, and 2008 (print) editions of Baseball America's annual prospect guides. The 2008 version can be seen online here. The dead-tree Newberg Report annual volumes also cover him at reasonable length - his writeup in the 2010 version can be seen online here (it's at the bottom of page 23). -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 15:04, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per hitbull PortlandOregon97217 (talk) 09:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note to closing admin Two of the votes to keep this article are based on a made-up notion of notability. Contrary to the claims made by people above, neither Futures Game participants nor minor league all-stars are presumed to be notable by Wiki guidelines. Beyond that, the list of references mentioned by Muboshgu above are very, very weak. (One of them is one paragraph in a press release posing as an article, two or three others are routine coverage that any decent amateur athlete receives, and the last one is a standard wedding announcement that has zero utility for ascertaining notability for Wiki standards.) - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 04:44, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I hardly even know where to begin with this. First, these aren't "votes" - see WP:AFDEQ. Second, nobody is claiming that the guideline says anything about minor league all-stars or Futures Game participants. We're saying that people with those qualifications typically meet the GNG if you bother to look for sources (as the sources I provided in my earlier post in this thread demonstrate). -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 15:09, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree completely with HBWS. I didn't say that an ASFG participant is presumed notable, I said I would change BASE/N to include them based on the probability of their meeting GNG, which I think HBWS and I demonstrated is the case here. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:24, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's funny. You and HBWS found a couple press releases, a couple three-paragraph "stories," and a wedding announcement that mentions baseball once. If these are your idea of "demonstrating" notability, then millions of Americans are now notable, including any good Little League player, just about every school board member and city councilor, and anyone else who's gotten his/her name in the paper three times. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 00:39, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, if by "couple of three-paragraph 'stories'" you mean "extensive discussion of his playing abilities in two major newspapers and four different dead-tree books". -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 22:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know what the word "extensive" means? The next "extensive" article someone finds about this player will be the first. (And regarding the "dead-tree books," those books cover just about every player in the minor leagues. A minor league baseball player mentioned in a Baseball America prospects book is like a Chicago resident being mentioned in the Chicago phone book. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 00:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I will agree that saying it is extensive coverage is a bit of an exaggeration. With that said, the threshhold for an article would appear to be that it is non-trivial as per WP:SOURCES. So whether the refs are extensive or not is irrelevant. PortlandOregon97217 (talk) 07:43, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To say that the sources I provided cover "just about every player in the minor leagues" is simply untrue, and displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the way baseball as a whole works. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 14:42, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's funny. Being mentioned in a prospects book is like being mentioned in the phone book. By your standard, every junior college volleyball player whose name appeared in a media guide is notable. It's silly. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 02:14, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is, of course, a terrible analogy because prospect guides are independent sources while college media guides are not. Like I said earlier - everything you're posting in this thread displays a fundamental lack of knowledge of the subject. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 02:28, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MBisanztalk 00:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Both the sourcing and notability are not there. Wizardman 15:47, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Keep I looked at the talk page of the article, and there is no history of concerns with the article. I clicked on the Google news link above and immediately saw links that merited more attention. The nomination inexplicably states, "there is no evidence of notability". The article itself appears to be credible and a proper entry on Wikipedia, although the two sources that include "blog" need more review. Further review shows that this article was created to AfD it here, which is an action that IMO should be discouraged. Responding to the edit comment that the reason for this AfD is that the player retired, the fact that a player retired is IMO not a reason to remove material about him from the encyclopedia. WP:NTEMP partially covers this idea, although WP:N is not a content guideline. Yet more review of the history shows that a better-sourced version of the article once existed. *WP:Deletion policy#Alternatives to deletion discusses the need to consider ways to protect material in the encyclopedia, as does WP:PRESERVE. On the day of this AfD, before the material was moved, there existed a three-year consensus that this material had prominence at another Wikipedia article. I don't want to claim that a policy-based deletion argument could not be crafted for this case; based on a combination of reduction of prominence, non-notability as per WP:ROUTINE, evidence that no other merge targets exist or can be created, and an adequate analysis of the sources. But the assertion that the topic has retired is not that. A more obvious solution is to (after the AfD) find or create a suitable merge target and restore the community consensus that retains this topic as a redirect. Unscintillating (talk) 16:48, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment regarding your 1st sentence: //I looked at the talk page of the article, and there is no history of concerns with the article.// That's because the Article has no Talk Page! Its quote-on-quote "Talk Page" is just a couple of banners with no discussion whatsoever. That said, feel free to be bold and make it a redirect again, but don't forget that "Redirect" and "Keep" are not the same thing. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 02:38, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify my !vote, a keep result from AfD does not bind the community against a subsequent editorial consensus to merge. The nominator has shown commendable work on this article over a course of years, so I doubt there would be any purpose to my becoming involved with a merge. Unscintillating (talk) 13:59, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.