Posts Tagged ‘Ron Shandler’
RSOB Chapter 6c: Thirdbasemen
New to “Ron Shandler’s Other Book”? Read the Introduction. Third base is another position deep in power and batting average, though not quite as deep as 1B/DH. That means you will most likely be filling your corner infield slot with a firstbaseman. One thing does stand out at the hot corner – the full-timers are relatively…
Read MoreRSOB Chapter 6b: Firstbasemen / Designated Hitters
New to “Ron Shandler’s Other Book”? Read the Introduction. This is a position loaded with power and batting average, top to bottom. There are over a dozen extreme power options, depending upon how long you want to wait and how far down into the pool you want to go. There are 21 full-timers with significant or…
Read MoreRSOB Chapter 6a: Analyzing the Player Pool – Catchers
New to “Ron Shandler’s Other Book”? Read the Introduction. Most of us will take a look at the player pool and see a massive collection of hundreds – even thousands – of players. The prospect of having to analyze, project, value and rank these players is incredibly daunting. It’s never made a lot of sense to…
Read MoreRSOB Chapter 5: BABS Draft Planning
New to “Ron Shandler’s Other Book”? Read the Introduction. There is a podcast on Freakonomics Radio called “The Cheeseburger Diet.” This is the story of a Louisville, Kentucky housewife who embarked on a year-long project to rate over 100 local burger joints in her city. She decided to devote two days per week to a dinner…
Read MoreThe Best Seed to Draft From
I thought I had it figured out. When given a choice as to what seed to draft from, there was never a decision to make. It was always crystal clear. Here is the standard advice I have been giving those who’ve asked the question (from the Baseball Forecaster): “Most drafters like mid-round so they never…
Read MoreRSOB Chapter 4: The BABS Player Profiling System
New to “Ron Shandler’s Other Book”? Read the Introduction. The foundation of BABS is a basic accounting concept – the balance sheet. On the left side are your Assets; on the right are your Liabilities. For batters, your Assets are Power, Speed and Batting Average. For pitchers, your assets are Pitching Effectiveness (a proxy for ERA…
Read MoreRSOB Chapter 3: The Broad Assessment Balance Sheet
New to Ron Shandler’s Other Book? Read the Introduction. For decades, we have been told that the goal in fantasy baseball is to assemble a group of players whose aggregate statistics exceed those of all the other teams in the league. In fact, that is the actual verbiage in the Official Rotisserie Baseball League Constitution. But…
Read MoreRSOB Chapter 2: How Psychology is Out to Get You
New to Ron Shandler’s Other Book? Read the Introduction. For the sake of argument, let’s say that you buy into everything I wrote in the last chapter. (I won’t delude myself into thinking that everyone is drinking my Kool-Aid.) Let’s say that you agree that player projections are garbage… um, flawed. Still, our brain plays its…
Read MoreRSOB Chapter 1: How the Stats are Out to Get You
From Ron Shandler’s Other Book 2016: The Manual of Baseball Roster Construction. “This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” — Nuke Laloosh, Bull Durham The structure of the game of baseball lends itself to analysis. The result…
Read MoreRSOB Introduction: My Conversation with YOU
From Ron Shandler’s Other Book 2016: The Manual of Baseball Roster Construction. ME: Hey, welcome. YOU: C’mon Ron, do we really need another fantasy baseball annual? What? Already with the questions? How about a little “Hi Ron, how ya been? We’ve missed you at Baseball HQ but it’s nice to see you’re still doing the Forecaster…
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