BABS is MOVING
The BABS system will begin moving to BaseballHQ.com for the 2025 season. (NOTE: The BABS Database is undergoing maintenance and will be inaccessible for a few weeks.)
It makes too much sense. The Broad Assessment Balance Sheet (BABS) was derived from a system called the Mayberry Method, which I developed when I ran BaseballHQ.com. It was driven by the same idea that we must embrace projective imprecision and use it to our advantage. Mayberry reduced each player’s skills and risk to a 7-character code. After leaving BaseballHQ.com in 2015, I took the concept a few steps further and offered up the radical idea that we don’t need rigid statistical player projections at all to win this game. And BABS was born.
The origins of Mayberry and BABS are the same. Now, it’s time for BABS to return to her roots and continue the conversation.
What this means for you:
Most of the current BABS spreadsheets will be published exclusively at BaseballHQ.com for the 2025 season. BHQ will also publish many of the analysis articles that had been discontinued in 2024. All of this will join BHQ’s massive array of offerings, providing you with year-round fantasy baseball intelligence unmatched anywhere. You can review the BHQ plans here.
The BABS database will move to BHQ at a later date, perhaps not until 2026. Until then, it will continue to be available here at BABSbaseball.com, and free for previous BABS subscribers. (The database is currently undergoing maintenance and will be inaccessible for a few weeks.) There will be no additional content here, and once the database moves to BHQ, this site will be shut down.
There will be no change to the availability of BABS at RotoLab, though you will have to access the BABS module through your BaseballHQ subscription.
Also… A special section in the upcoming 2025 Baseball Forecaster will introduce BABS to newbies and include a sample chart with final 2024 BABS ratings and rankings. The free “BABS Project” PDF ebook is currently being updated and will be accessible at BaseballHQ.com shortly as well.
If you have questions, feel free to drop me a note.
After 10 years of running BABS — at BABSbaseball.com since 2016 — it makes sense to integrate the system into a site that generates much of the source data and has been upgraded to provide a more robust experience for fantasy baseball owners.
For me, personally, this was a necessary move to allow me to focus more on future book projects. Neither me nor BABS are going away any time soon, and this transition is particularly gratifying. I created BaseballHQ.com in 1996 and am thrilled to bring BABS over and contribute after a decade away.
I hope you all will continue this journey along with me.
— Ron Shandler