Meet the Fantasy Baseball Industrial Complex: How much information does a geek need?
Posted by Jonathan in INTERNET on 03-18-10 No Comments
For a nerd like me to even begin to think there’s too much baseball information out there — wow, that’s really a problem. But this year’s fantasy baseball data scene is flat-out getting out of control.
It seems like every single media outlet has its own fantasy baseball info site. Here’s USAToday’s Fantasy Windup. And there’s no shortage of private services like FantasyBaseball.com. There are the meta-sites like FantasyBaseballHub.com that pull together the other baseball stat sites out there. There’s even new hard science being done: An Iowa professor named Kerry Whisnant has found what he claims is better formula to predict baseball success — if you can figure out what this guy is talking about.
But inside this storm of information is some hidden value: I like what I am seeing in so-called projection data sets.
These services take 2009 data and walk it forward into 2010, based mostly on age, performance history and factors like a player moving from one league to another. Though most of these charge for the service, there is some solid content here. Take a look at The Baseball Guru. I like the data I am finding at the prediction engine from The Sporting News. The folks at Stats.com are doing good work. And there are many, many others.
The fact is, for better or worse, this info is changing fantasy ball. There is simply too much information out there for this data not to find its way into even casual leagues. If you are doing your own fantasy league on just your gut, you will probably be outplayed by the other guy using one of these virtual scouting services.
Better be prepared.
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