Today's Fantasy Rx

Before I begin recounting our experiences at the Symposium sessions, please know that I don't intend to directly regurgitate the information presented by the speakers. While I'll spend the next few days highlighting the most vital points of the weekend, we don't want to reduce the value of the conference for the attendees or discourage anyone from attending in the future.

Following registration on Friday morning, Symposium host Ron Shandler began his introduction a few minutes after 8 in the morning. Among the first items noted was the return of the chocolate mints to the tables. Back in 2000, Doubletree supplied each table with a daily bowl of something similar to your basic starlight mint, except the mint was a swirl of peppermint and chocolate. They gave us Key Lime mints last year, so anyone attending at least their third Symposium was quite glad to see the original mints return.

Ron introduced the speakers, as well as noting that Baseball America's Jim Callis and Sports Weekly's John Hunt, both regular speakers at the Symposium, wouldn't be able to attend due to personal reasons. He then discussed his desire to find a new term for "fantasy baseball". We're fairly committed to "fantasy" and especially "rotisserie" for obvious reasons, so we'd probably prefer not to see any change here. Ron also commented on our logo as an unfortunately logical extension of the "Rotisserie" + "Baseball" equation, so we were pleased with attention to our site if not the context.

Fantasy Sports' Greg Ambrosius delivered the keynote address, focusing on the growth of the fantasy baseball industry. After detailing his background, he noted that new baseball card sales rose from $250M in 1988 to $450M in 1989 with the introduction of Upper Deck before reaching $1.1 billion in sales in 1991. Fantasy Sports launched a bimonthly publication schedule in 1990, and then Baseball Weekly entered the market in 1991. The industry quickly jumped to 121 fantasy baseball companies in 1993, a rather impressive improvement from the 9 or so in existence in 1990.

Heading into 1994, the mainstream press loved fantasy baseball. The LABR leagues started, major media discussed the sport regularly, and then the strike nearly shut the industry down, first, by not letting leagues finish the 1994 season, and second, by lasting into 1995, thereby reducing the number of drafts in that year. Largely due to fantasy football's emergence in 1995, baseball has never bounced back according to Fantasy Sports' research.

Now about 6% of the U.S. plays some fantasy sport, although about 10 million of those 10-15 million people play fantasy football. However the average owner played in 4.1 leagues/sport in 2000, with the average fantasy baseball owner's $84K income providing welcome sustenance for the fantasy industry.

Greg also mentioned that the first World Championship of Fantasy Baseball will be held next March 21st and 22nd at the Rio in Las Vegas. While we certainly question the decision to hold a baseball event in Vegas during Spring Training, the opportunity to take home a $100K grand prize might tempt us to make our first trip to Sin City.

Following Greg's rather informative presentation on the evolution of the industry, we divided into seven roundtable discussions spread throughout the room, allowing attendees to spend about 20 minutes at each of three presentations of their choice.

We first joined a couple others to listen to Gene McCaffrey of Wise Guy Baseball discuss "Luck in the Top 100(of the BBW Diamond Challenge)". Anyone following our Sunday articles throughout the year knows that we agree with Gene's assertion that getting into the top 100 in the DC is skill, while final placement in the top 100 is mostly luck.

However Gene also presented a rather intriguing handout that noted the entire difference in Coors' scoring occurred during the first two months of the season. Between June and September, teams combined for 13.5 runs/game, the identical number posted during the 2001 season. He also briefly discussed steals in a handout, suggesting that we look at the likelihood of SB studs repeating their seasons by multiplying SB by SB%, a promising idea that I hope to discuss in further detail at some point in the future.

Jess & I attended separate sessions for the remaining 40 minutes. She listened to Jeff Barton discuss Scoresheet micromanaging and Rick Wilton go over a series of injury updates, while I spoke with John Zaleski of Ultimate Fantasy Sports and then joined a performance analysis discussion led by Joe Sheehan and Mat Olkin. While neither of us noted anything in particular of interest, I should mention that although I didn't have enough time to completely discuss UFS with John, I'm quite impressed with his company from a business point of view. UFS leagues appear to provide an intriguing option for fantasy baseball hobbyists, especially considering the "lifetime" ownership of most of your players, but I retain my reservations about joining UFS leagues with the intent of regularly turning a profit.

Friday's second group speaker was Deric McKamey of BBHQ and Street & Smith's. Deric owns a nearly encyclopedic memory of players and their basic tools, and he's presented scouting information on AFL players for several years of the Symposium. He also recently attended MLB's Scout School.

Deric provided the most informative handout of the conference, detailing each AFL team on a single page, allocating two lines for a brief scouting report on every player in Arizona. Among the many players he discussed, I'd like to highlight the following:

Kevin Cash has a fantastically quick release team on throws to second base, and he continued to impress throughout the games we saw.

Chase Utley is not defensively ready for the majors, so the Phillies need to find an alternative starter for 2003.

Adrian Hernandez needs to relieve due to his lack of stamina, however MLB scouts can't stand the thought of using anyone with five decent pitches out of the bullpen.

Drew Henson is nowhere close to the majors. Henson was more disparaged than any other player throughout the weekend as he played terrible defense and showed little offensive potential. Deric doesn't think he'll ever play a competent 3B and would only make the majors as perhaps a right fielder. The Henson consensus was that his best position was quarterback.

Hee Seop Choi could easily struggle throughout the first two months of 2003 since his "slow trigger" on his swing leaves him open to inside pitches. Fortunately he can mash any pitches left over the middle of outside of the plate, and the Cubs need to let him play through his growing pains in the majors, since he has nothing left to prove in AAA.

Clint Nageotte of Seattle at least should mature into a closer if not a top starter. Most analysts harbor some workload concerns, however the Mariners restricted Nageotte to one-inning relief stints in the AFL.

Mark Teixeira is ready for the majors right now both offensively and defensively. He could easily win the 2003 Rookie of the Year, although more time in the minors wouldn't hurt him.

Jamal Strong owns 80 speed and could excel as a 4th outfielder, but he'd only be an average starter.

Justin Morneau is about the best pure hitter currently in Arizona, and he could peak as a .300/20-25 HR guy with the necessary development time.

Brandon Phillips owns tools comparable to Barry Larkin, doesn't respect the game, and is among the top five minor league prospects. Even if you don't like his inconsistent effort, he still should emerge as a roto force in 2003.

Scott Hairston of Arizona may be the best hitting middle infield prospect in the minors, but he has problems turning the double play and might shift to the outfield.

Aside from Teixeira, the two players receiving the most press in the AFL are Kansas City's Ken Harvey and Anaheim's Bobby Jenks. The right-handed Harvey essentially bats like a left-handed pull hitter, showing no ability to turn on the ball; perpetual injury problems also make him a poor gamble. Jenks is known as uncoachable and headstrong, though he owns great arm strength. I don't expect him to contribute to fantasy teams before late 2004.

Deric commented on well over a hundred other players over the course of the weekend, but most of the others aren't likely to reach the majors in 2003. His regular contributions to BBHQ essentially are worth the subscription fee by themselves, and we've met no one else in the industry with his incredible knowledge of tools and especially the repertoire of pitching prospects.

I'll continue tomorrow with a recap of the final Friday speaker and the second day of games, including the introduction of one of the neatest tools for evaluating pitcher mechanics that you'll ever see, courtesy of John Sickels.

Today's Fantasy Rx: We've been debating discarding our logo for some time for technical reasons, and Ron Shandler's comments have spurred the discussion again. Should we keep our logo or just splash "Rotohelp" across the top of our pages? We'd appreciate input on this issue as we look to update our site after our first year, so please e-mail us with your opinion.