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Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.
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2.19.2003
Okay, that post two days ago was a lie. I'm back now from what was effectively a week-long hiatus and there'll be more content here, I just wanted to get something up now. I'd like to again point our readers over to David Bloom's baseball.mywebportals.net site, which focuses primarily on the Devil Rays, but there's a lot of other good stuff there as well. There'll be a link on the left side of the page very shortly. Finally, on to some content. ESPN.com Fantasy Baseball As long as ESPN.com has been offering Fantasy Baseball services, I've been shelling out the $20-30 a year to participate, and Dan's joined me in every season but one. I think that the streak is about to come to an end, as I've found alternative ways to blow through my limited cash supply, like Diamond-Mind Baseball and Baseball Prospectus Premium. All the same, I was interested to see what if any new features had been added to FLB2003 at ESPN, so I took a look at the frontpage I've come to know so well over the past half decade. I've wondered over the past several years about the necessity of paid Fantasy Sports writers, particularly of the ilk you'll find at this particular site. While there are guys who bring forth information that's not readily available (notably John Hunt of BaseballWeekly, which is now SportsWeekly), many simply rehash information, minus a great deal of detail, that you'll find in other places. It struck me as I perused the site today that I could almost certainly produce this quality of work or better (almost certainly better) if I were being paid to do so, and I've got no expertise or insider contacts whatsoever. Does it really take an expert to tab Travis Hafner or Erubiel Durazo as a "sleeper"? How about Craig Biggio or Shea Hillenbrand as a potential bust? People who follow baseball know these things. I'd wager the vast majority of the people reading these words right now think Hafner's got a pretty good shot at breaking out this season and putting up some big numbers, even before Brandon Funston (not to pick on him specifically, he just wrote the "sleepers" article) mentioned it. I know most of you are well aware that there are far better sources for baseball information that the ESPN.com FLB frontpage (including the ESPN.com MLB frontpage, which is pretty decent), but I wanted to mention it. - |