I. What is PlayerTrack.com?
II. The PlayerTrack Ideology
III. Who is behind this?
I. WHAT IS IT? Top
PlayerTrack.com is a baseball statistics chewer that manipulates statistics to maximize the effectiveness of a fantasy baseball team.
Essentially, it is like an interactive fantasy baseball magazine. Whereas the magazine is stagnant and does not allow you to pinpoint players who fit your needs at a given time in the draft, PlayerTrack.com does exactly the opposite.
SCENARIO ONE: You are running out of money, but your 1B/3B spot on your roster is not filled in yet. You are happy with your team's power, but you need a 1B or 3B with speed (SB) and a great batting average. You do a search on Playertrack.com for the highest ranked first baseman and then third baseman who has not yet been drafted by clicking the stat categories of SBs and AVG solely.
SCENARIO TWO: You are in a 4x4 NL-only league with ten teams. You have not yet filled your 4th and 5th OF spots, but every single OF that you can think of has been snagged. You can't even think of anybody, so PlayerTrack to the rescue! You select the position OF, and you click all 4 of your league's stat categories. You click "Track'Em" and you look for the highest two OFs in the ranking who have not yet been drafted. Wow! Can it be that Matt Holliday hasn't been taken yet? (Note on 2/28/08: Before you get crazy here, I am leaving this here because I wrote this before the season started in 2006, when Matt Holliday was not a household name in fantasy baseball. I drafted him that year when nobody expected superstardom from him, and I won the league).
Try doing those things with a fantasy baseball magazine!
II. THE PLAYERTRACK.COM IDEOLOGY Top
In my ten+ years of fantasy baseball, I have learned three important things that form the basis of my PlayerTrack system. Rely on past success. Stay away from "sleepers" until you already have a solid roster. And, rely on BALANCE.
First, recent, past success of a player is usually the best indicator of the next year's level of success.
Second, gambling on new talent is as bad an addiction as, I suppose, heroin (i.e., the desire for that "fix" that comes with being able to grab that 2001 Albert Pujols, that 1996 Arod, that 1997 Nomar Garciaparra is unbearable).
Third, balance is king. You don't need to have the BEST players in their particular positions, but you DO need to have the best BALANCE among all of the categories.
Regarding the first point, I have found that baseball careers generally span a bell curve, where the middle of the bell is the career year. The goal is to try and get lucky by drafting a guy when he hits the peak of the bell curve. So, I wanted to design a system that would ultimately show me that in the LONG term, but in the short term, I could discern who just might be poised for that career year. It is exactly because of PlayerTrack, for instance, that I pegged Derrek Lee to be my first baseman in BOTH my fantasy leagues in 2005. I got him for $12 in an auction league. I drafted him in the TWELFTH round of a serpentine draft league.
Regarding the second point, in the past, I never got lucky with a Pujols, Nomar, or Arod. Instead, I was the one who would draft Todd Walker, A.J. Hinch, Marlon Byrd and end up with these huge, gaping wounds in my lineup before I even started. As with heroin, you should take the attitude that with regards to trying to find "sleeper picks," you should just never try it at all (or, only AFTER you have already drafted a strong lineup and have some leeway to take some chances).
Regarding the third point of balance, PlayerTrack is designed to compare (aka "balance" out) all of the players against each other, according to the statistics used in your league (or against specific stats that you select). This works particularly well with offensive players. Pitchers are, of course, more of a crapshoot (who woulda thunk that Roger Clemens, for instance, would post his BEST career ERA in 2005?).
Concluding, let other teams go for the glory of finding that new gem for cheap. New gems won't win you the league... they'll only show your fellow players that: (1) you know your baseball, and (2) you don't know how to play the fantasy game. Look to create a team that is balanced in ALL categories. Look for players who, last year, tore it up (especially those who were not in a season where they were facing free agency).
In the end, PlayerTrack will lead you in the right direction by meeting all of these goals.
III. WHO IS BEHIND THIS? Top
Rob Reed is a 38-year old Los Angeles personal injury and work comp lawyer, hack musician, hack web programmer, and baseball enthusiast, who has been playing fantasy baseball in various incarnations for 15 years. He is an avid player of Baseball Manager, which he started playing in the early days when it was exclusive to the Prodigy online provider, and he has fared well in every season he has played since 1993, except for one when he was hit majorly by the injury bug.
For ten long years, he played in a roto league with a doctor, a few lawyers, and a few more sane individuals, and he failed to ever crack the top 3. In an attack of frustration, he got the bright idea to design a database that would rank players from the previous years, according to the fantasy categories. So, he got to work (with help from his wife), inputted player stats from 2004 manually, and got to work on the programming.
PlayerTrack.com has been a labor of love, and -- as it turns out -- a lucrative one for Mr. Reed. For the first time in his ten years of participation, he ended the season in first place. Now, all of the other players in his league want a piece of this action. For the small price of $12.99, they now can have a piece... and so can you.
His other website credits include BaseballGeeks (a baseball news, blogging, and discussion group), RRBBS (a general interest blogging and discussion group), and RobReed.com (personal blog, showing the power of the free RRBBS blog service).
He hosts the BaseballGeeks.com Podcast (link goes to podcast code), which can be found on Itunes (link goes to Itunes podcast page).
