By Steve Pessah
Follow me on Twitter @toeachtheirown
Bloomberg does it again. Already the best in the business at analyzing business, the brains at Bloomberg have their eye on the baseball market. And after getting an advance peek at what the Bloomies are offering fantasy baseball players starting Feb. 18, it looks like Bloomberg is going to be a heavy hitter for both fantasy baseball and your favorite major league team.
The Boys at Bloomberg rolled out their new baseball products on the last Sunday in January at Bloomberg Tower. They showcased the consumer product first, and it’s pretty much a dream come true for Fantasy Baseball players. There’s a Draft Kit to get you started, an In-Season Tool Kit to keep you ahead of the competition during the regular season, and an aggregated News Product to stay on top of what’s happening. It works on every platform—Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, whatever—and the best part: It retails for $31.95. So all you’re looking at is skipping one grande coffee a week until the All-Star break for the best new fantasy tool in the game.
Bloomberg stressed ease of use and access of data. Users can customize all three tools, mixing and matching categories with easy-to-use filters. All the information is on one, easy to read page, so there’s no down time while you wait for a new page to load. And the news updates are in real time.
There are lots of other cool features. My favorite: the Demand vs. Scarcity chart in the Draft Kit. This chart shows the importance of a player in each round, and round-by-round odds of that player being available. The moderator used Joe Mauer to show how this feature works. Mauer is the top catcher in the game, so he was highly ranked in the first round; the odds of Mauer being available in later rounds were non-existent. But you still need a catcher, right? Checking Bloomberg’s chart showed there was no rush to draft a catcher if you couldn’t snag Mauer—the odds of drafting all the remaining catchers were high round after round. Better to fill in the other positions first because chances are the catcher you want will always be available.
There’s a lot to like about the In-Season Tool Kit, but what really sells it is the ability to customize key stats in a number of different ways. You can use their analysis to check trends for each player against all pitchers or only lefthanders, all teams or only teams playing winning ball, all divisions or only your player’s division, and a whole lot more.
The News Product is simple but impressive. It aggregates news from all sources—mainstream media, league sites, and blogs. It gives you games and match-ups, injuries and transactions, and fantasy analysis. If a player switches teams, the move will be analyzed according to the player’s impact on his new team, at his new ballpark, and against his new league.
Nothing is perfect, and this product has a couple of issues when it does get up and running. Who knows if the load time will be too much to handle once more people get their hands on this. For all fantasy owners that play in keeper leagues, will there be a filter or algorithm to determine the best players to keep? But these are minor questions. If you’re playing Fantasy Baseball, this product is an essential part of your game.
The package Bloomberg is offering big league teams is even more impressive—and a whole lot more expensive. For Yankees fan, that’s great. The big joke among the 100 or so sportswriters/bloggers/fantasy players at the Bloomberg presentation was whether cheapskate Royals owner David Glass—one of richest men in the country as CEO of Walmart—would spring for this computer package. Hell, they just got Jason Kendall, what else could they need? The Bloomberg reps wouldn’t tell us what the company would charge major league teams for this product, but they said it would be a significant investment.
The MLB package is the consumer edition on steroids. The Strike Zone and On-the-Field charts gives breakdowns on what kind pitches each batters swings at, how often they swing at first pitches, what pitches they offer when ahead in the count or down in the count, and more. The Pitch Predictor provides insight into how and when a pitcher makes his pitch selection—curve, fastball, change-up, slider. The Regular Stats section is so customizable you can create your own stats—most of us at the conference were turned on by pitches per out, or PPO.
Bloomberg spared no expense on the product look and feel—each screen and every chart are almost pieces of art. The depth of statistical offerings may force teams to hire staff just to go through the material. And just to make sure the information remain secure, the MLB package comes with biometric security logins and finger print confirmations. Whoa!
The Bloomies didn’t reveal how many teams have ordered the MLB edition. We will be able to keep score on how well their fantasy product sells. Given what we all saw last month, bet on Bloomberg’s Fantasy Kit to be a home run.
For two other great takes, check out posts by Jerry Milani and Amanda Rykoff.
to each their own 