Winning Fantasy Baseball


Book Description

Play smart. Play to win. Play like a champion.




Fantasy Baseball


Book Description

The Wizard of Oz meets America's favorite pastime! Alex Metcalf must be dreaming. What else would explain why he's playing baseball for the Oz Cyclones, with Dorothy as his captain, in the Ever After Baseball Tournament? But Alex isn't dreaming; he's just from the real world. And winning the tournament might be his only chance to get back there, because the champions get a wish granted by the Wizard. Too bad Ever After's most notorious criminal, the Big Bad Wolf, is also after the wishes. And anyone who gets in his way gets eaten! From beloved baseball author Alan Gratz comes a novel in which classic literary characters are baseball crazy, and one real-world boy must face his fears and discover the surprising truth about himself.




Fantasyland


Book Description

Recounts the author's experiences with playing a season of fantasy baseball against a host of armchair contenders, during which he researched the activity's popularity as well as the factors that contribute to winning fantasy teams.




The Extra 2%


Book Description

What happens when three financial industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing major league franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens—the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history. In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team’s Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. When former Goldman Sachs colleagues Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman assumed control of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2005, it looked as if they were buying the baseball equivalent of a penny stock. But the incoming regime came armed with a master plan: to leverage their skill at trading, valuation, and management to build a model twenty-first-century franchise that could compete with their bigger, stronger, richer rivals—and prevail. Together with “boy genius” general manager Andrew Friedman, the new Rays owners jettisoned the old ways of doing things, substituting their own innovative ideas about employee development, marketing and public relations, and personnel management. They exorcized the “devil” from the team’s nickname, developed metrics that let them take advantage of undervalued aspects of the game, like defense, and hired a forward-thinking field manager as dedicated to unconventional strategy as they were. By quantifying the game’s intangibles—that extra 2% that separates a winning organization from a losing one—they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay something that Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” had never brought to Oakland: an American League pennant. A book about what happens when you apply your business skills to your life’s passion, The Extra 2% is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.




The Kingdom of Liars


Book Description

In this brilliant debut fantasy, a story of secrets, rebellion, and murder are shattering the Hollows, where magic costs memory to use, and only the son of the kingdom’s despised traitor holds the truth. Michael is branded a traitor as a child because of the murder of the king’s nine-year-old son, by his father David Kingman. Ten years later on Michael lives a hardscrabble life, with his sister Gwen, performing crimes with his friends against minor royals in a weak attempt at striking back at the world that rejects him and his family. In a world where memory is the coin that pays for magic, Michael knows something is there in the hot white emptiness of his mind. So when the opportunity arrives to get folded back into court, via the most politically dangerous member of the kingdom’s royal council, Michael takes it, desperate to find a way back to his past. He discovers a royal family that is spiraling into a self-serving dictatorship as gun-wielding rebels clash against magically trained militia. What the truth holds is a set of shocking revelations that will completely change the Hollows, if Michael and his friends and family can survive long enough to see it.




Professor Baseball


Book Description

It happens every summer: packs of beer-bellied men with gloves and aluminum bats, putting their middle-aged bodies to the test on the softball diamond. For some, this yearly ritual is driven by a simple desire to enjoy a good ballgame; for others, it’s a way to forge friendships—and rivalries. But for one short, wild-haired, bespectacled professor, playing softball in New York’s Central Park means a whole lot more. It's one last chance to heal the nagging wounds of Little League trauma before the rust of decline and the relentless responsibilities of fatherhood set in. Professor Baseball is the coming-of-middle-age story of New York University professor and Little League benchwarmer Edwin Amenta. As rookie manager of the Performing Arts Softball League’s doormat Sharkeys, he reverses softball’s usual brawn-over-brains formula. He coaxes his skeptical teammates to follow his sabermetric and sociological approach, based equally on Bill James and Max Weber, which in the heady days of early success he dubs “Eddy Ball.” But Amenta soon learns that his teammates’ attachments to favorite positions and time-honored (if ineffective) strategies are hard to break—especially when the team begins losing. And though he rejects the baseball-as-life metaphor, life keeps intruding on his softball season. Amenta here comes to grips with the humiliation of assisted reproduction, suffers mysterious ailments, and finds himself lingering at the sponsor’s bar, while his partner, a beautiful but baseball-challenged professor, second-guesses his book in the making. Can he turn his team—and his life—around? Packed with colorful personalities, dramatic games, and the bustle of New York life, Professor Baseball will charm anyone who has ever root, root, rooted for the underdog.




Trading Bases


Book Description

An ex–Wall Street trader improved on Moneyball’s famed sabermetrics and beat the Vegas odds with his own betting methods. Here is the story of how Joe Peta turned fantasy baseball into a dream come true. Joe Peta turned his back on his Wall Street trading career to pursue an ingenious—and incredibly risky—dream. He would apply his risk-analysis skills to Major League Baseball, and treat the sport like the S&P 500. In Trading Bases, Peta takes us on his journey from the ballpark in San Francisco to the trading floors and baseball bars of New York and the sportsbooks of Las Vegas, telling the story of how he created a baseball “hedge fund” with an astounding 41 percent return in his first year. And he explains the unique methods he developed. Along the way, Peta provides insight into the Wall Street crisis he managed to escape: the fragility of the midnineties investment model; the disgraced former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who recruited Peta; and the high-adrenaline atmosphere where million-dollar sports-betting pools were common.




The Process - 2020 Edition


Book Description

The Process - 2020 Edition The Process - Integrating Valuations and Biases into a Winning Fantasy Baseball Formula (thefantasybaseballprocess.com) is written by Jeff Zimmerman (Rotographs, Sportsline, two-time Tout Wars champion) and Tanner Bell (SmartFantasyBaseball.com, author of Using Standing Gain Points to Rank and Value Fantasy Baseball Players). The Process contains over 300 detailed pages on how to run a fantasy baseball team, including over 50 new pages of groundbreaking studies and research, over 50 additional pages of stats, projections, and useful information for the 2020 season. Some of the highlights are: Detailed analysis of how to use industry projections and when they should be modified. How to use valuation procedures to turn projections into rankings and dollar values. Take advantage of industry biases and norms to pull as much value out of a draft and auction. A groundbreaking study on when breakouts happen and how owners should take advantage of this information. Pages of hints and secrets to accumulate extra stats during the season. Basic Steamer hitter, starter, and reliever projections Standings gain points equations for various league sizes (12- and 15-team) and formats (average and OBP leagues, AL- or NL-only) from major industry leagues (NFBC, Tout Wars). Average league standings for the same leagues to help owners know what statistics are required to win a league and to help plan category targets for 2020. What Are Others Saying About the Book? What lies in these pages is the most thorough tackling of the larger questions of rotisserie baseball that you'll find anywhere in this world (physical or digital). Jeff and Tanner examine concepts such as cognitive biases and measurement of intrinsic value, they dig into the trick, inexact science of FAAB, and they also introduce new ideas and theories. ~ Clay Link, Rotowire, 2018 TGFBI Champion After reading 'The Process', I realize I will never write a book about fantasy baseball because Jeff Zimmerman and Tanner Bell wrote the book I would have written, only way better. ~ Rob Silver, NFBC Main Event Overall Champion Most books just tell you how the author won his leagues. What makes Tanner Bell and Jeff Zimmerman's effort so epic is that it not only shows their work in every step of their own methods, it gives the reader a great sense of how they could innovate further, and how they could build their own league-winning process. This is a must-read for any fantasy baseball lover. ~ Eno Sarris, The Athletic This is undoubtedly the most comprehensive fantasy baseball guide I have ever come across. Jeff and Tanner are two of the smartest minds in the industry and are part of the few I make sure to read everything from. 'The Process' will provide you with long-term value and make you a better fantasy baseball player not just for the upcoming season, but for many seasons to come. ~ Mike Podhorzer, Fangraphs, Projecting X 2.0, Former Tout Wars Champion 'The Process' is one of the smartest, most comprehensive fantasy baseball books to hit the market in years. If you're a valuation fanatic like I am, you'll enjoy and devour every page of this book. 'The Process' is an essential part of any fantasy player's bookshelf. ~ Mike Gianella, Baseball Prospectus, Former Tout Wars and LABR Champion




Diamond Dividends


Book Description

Why not collect dividends on the investments we make in the world of sports? This was the question FantasyPros expert Mario Mergola asked when starting Sporfolio, and it was the driving force behind the words in Diamond Dividends: Creative Strategies to Profit Through Fantasy Baseball. Sprinkled with anecdotes, unique strategies, and baseball players who can be targeted today in a fantasy draft, Diamond Dividends approaches baseball as a market ready for investment opportunities. The methodologies explained by Mergola will help fantasy owners gain a competitive edge in any league, both today and for years to come.