The Guide

Ask Rotoman: Where are you?

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Rotoman!

Where can I buy the Guide? I can’t find it anywhere in New Jersey.

Thanks.

Thanks for asking.

This is a problem.

Something like 125K Guides are printed and shipped to outlets across the country. But moving this amount of physical paper around is inefficient. And given the size of our country and the many retail outlets not all the issues end up where someone wants to buy them.

Yes, we like having a physical magazine in our hands. That’s why we make the Guide. But it costs a lot to make that work, and sadly distribution gets in the way of getting our physical product into the right hands.

The Fantasy Baseball Guide does have a pdf edition. You can buy it at TheFantasyGuide.com. It costs the same and has the same content. You’ll have to decide any the other issues, but it will get you there.

In recent years there was an app called Mag Finder that helped you find where magazines were on sale. This year it seems to be broken for some reason. If it was working I’d give you a best shot, depending on where you were in New Jersey, but for now all I can say is good luck.

And the pdf is the fallback. Good luck!

The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2022 Is Here!

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Almost here!

We’re live!

This year’s model has more than 1200 player profiles written by old friends HC Green, Rob Blackstien, Jeff Zimmerman, Tim McLeod, and JD Bolick, and introducing a newcomer, veteran sportswriter Larry Fine, against whom I’ve been playing rotisserie baseball for almost 30 years.

Rookie profiles were written by the guys above, with additions from Perry Van Hook, Rob Leibowitz, Jeff Winick, and Scott Swanay. Rob put the section together.

You’ll also find more of JD’s unheralded rookies, a bit about the Perfect Pitching Staff by yours truly, and Strategies of Champions by Glenn Colton, Fred Zinkie, Ron Shandler, Alex Patton, and Don Drooker. Good stuff there.

Plus, the mag to have major league and minor league games played.

Finally, an All-Star mock draft, featuring in pick order Zach Steinhorn (Creativesports 2.0), Tim McLeod (Prospect361.com), Justin Mason (friendswithfantasybenefits.com), Doug Anderson (FantraxHQ.com), Todd Zola (Mastersball), Derek VanRiper (The Athletic), Ariel Cohen (FanGraphs), Clay Link (Rotowire.com), Howard Bender (Fantasy Alarm), Doug Dennis (BaseballHQ), moi, Ian Kahn (The Athletic), JD Bolick (The Guide), Steve Gardner (USA Today), and Eric Cross (FantraxHQ.com), all commenting on each of their picks. Tim McLeod put it all together, many thanks to him for that.

The Guide also has my fantasy prices and cheat sheet, along with Picks and Pans from Dave Adler, Rob Blackstien, JD Bolick, Ariel Cohen, Buck Davidson, Patrick Davitt, Doug Dennis, Don Drooker, Mike Gianella, Phil Hertz, Tim McLeod, Alex Patton, Mike Podhorzer, Vlad Sedler, Ron Shandler, Zach Steinhorn, Seth Trachtman, and Jeff Winick. So many opinions!

Find the Guide at Barnes and Noble, Wal Mart, and an assortment of drug stores, groceries, and magazine stands across the USA and Canada (though maybe not in Wal Mart in Canada). But there is a convenience store in Atitoken Ontario that is usually one of the first on the continent to put the Guide on sale. You’ll have to decide if it’s worth the drive.

There is also a pdf version for sale at thefantasyguide.com.

Look for updates about availability and corrections to mistakes (oops) on the Baseball Guide 2022 Corrections and Updates Page.

Ask Rotoman: We Need the Guide’s Prices!

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Dear Rotoman:

I saw you were editor and chief of my favorite magazine…”The Fantasy Baseball Guide”. We use this as our bible to set values for our league. Because of Covid I realize things may be delayed etc. Could you let me know if the magazine is coming out on time this year? Thank you!

A Reader

Dear Reader:

The publisher decided the retail environment was not conducive to publishing the Guide this year, so they have us on hold until next year (we hope).

I’ve been writing profiles and published a full price list and projections yesterday, available to Subscribers to the Rotoman Special at pattonandco.com (pattonandco.com/rotoman). It costs $10. We don’t yet have an automatic link to the prices page for a silly tech reason, but if you subscribe let me know and I’ll send you the link.

I also started a newsletter that contains samples of the profiles. It’s free and you can subscribe at rotoman.substack.com. 

Thanks for asking. I’m sorry we don’t have a Guide this year.

Sincerely,

Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2021 is Coming!

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The bad news is that the publisher decided the retail prospects were still poor enough that publishing The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2021 was not a good idea. We’re holding out hope for the football magazine, and all we can do is see.

The good news (and I hope you agree) is that I’m writing Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2021, kind of the same but obviously different, too.

What’s the same? There will be a lot of profiles, prices, and projections. How many? We’ll see. Everyone who is projected to be a regular, for sure, and lots of other players who might contribute in deep leagues will be profiled. I’m writing all the profiles myself, so there may not be quite as many bits about back-of-the-bullpen arms as usual. But if the season doesn’t start until June, maybe I’ll get to everyone.

There will also be draft at a glance lists by position, and some pieces about strategy and ways to play fantasy that I’m working on.

What’s different? No mock draft. I don’t think it makes sense when the start of the season is indefinite. Once we know for sure maybe we try one.

No Strategies of Champions. I inveigle my colleagues to contribute to the Guide each year by asking them to explain why they’re so good at this game. And so lucky. They do it for a copy of the printed Guide, which I greatly appreciate. That won’t be possible this year, so I let them off the hook.

There may not be a print version. My goal is to have a print-on-demand version of the book available at the start of February. But my experience with this tech is limited, I don’t think I can promise that at this point. But I’m going to try.

There will be an ebook version available in February if the season is going to start in April. It will be pushed back if the start of the season is.

In the meantime, please sign up for The Newsletter. I’ll be putting out an issue each week, containing the player profiles I’ve been working on, some notes on the news, recommended reading, answer reader asks, and some other fun stuff I hope. It will be free, so you have nothing to lose! Click here to sign up for The Newsletter.

I’m also publishing all the player profiles at pattonandco.com. Alex and Colin have made a special membership level for Rotoman’s Guide. For $10 my profiles for each player will appear at the top of each player page. Subscribers to the big package will have access, too, for no extra charge. Please check out the site, it’s great even if you don’t subscribe but you do have to sign up, the subscription page goes live on December 15th, and the first profiles go up about then, too, once we work out the kinks.

Ask Rotoman News, June 25 Edition

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The biggest news is that The Fantasy Football Guide 2020 is shelved. The publisher was getting too few advance orders from skittish retailers, and so we’re taking a pass for this season. We hope there’s a football season this fall and you can enjoy it without the Guide.

The goal is to be back for baseball come January, if possible.

In the meantime, we have baseball potentially starting up. Updated projections and prices for buyers of The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2020, reflecting the 60 game season and the unbalanced schedule, will be available on July 9th on the Updates and Corrections page here.

Feel free to ask Rotoman any questions about this strange and endangered season.

Despite pessimism about the chance the full 60 games get played, I’m looking forward to reconsidering baseball again.

Last time I bought this team in the Tout Wars NL auction back in March.

OUT NOW! The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2020

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People are finding it in Barnes and Noble stores in New York City and Cincinnati, so it’s out there. 160 pages of fantasy baseball info, enough I hope to last you through all of a 2020 season that will answer a lot of questions we have about home runs and strike outs.

More than 30 fantasy experts, people whose online columns you read, podcasts you listen to, radio shows you follow, Twitter feeds you devour, folks you mostly know, have written hundreds of Picks and Pans. They are funny, perceptive, opinionated, and sometimes right!

We (mostly Rob Blackstien, HC Green, Jeff Zimmerman and Rotoman) profile more than 1400 players, so that when you want to know something about a callup or a trade, there’s a good chance we’ll have an answer.

The Guide also features a Top 30 Rookies column, with extra sleeper prospect picks, and JD Bolick’s Unheralded column, which each season has pointed out non-prospects who have gone on to have major league impact that year.

Plus, a great group of fantasy experts gathers in November for our mock draft, and helps us by writing comments on why they made their picks. It’s a fun time for us, and a trove of fantasy baseball opinion by some of the game’s best writers.

Plus there’s more! We hope you enjoy.

Rating the Picks and Pans

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Every year I’m asked by quite a few people why we don’t rate the Picks and Pans from the Guide. There are two answers:

  1. There isn’t time. There are more than 300 of these comments in the Guide in any given year, and to do a fair evaluation each has to be looked at closely. Many Picks suggest modest gains for very marginal players, and many Pans concede good but not great performance for stars. Two comments, one pick and one pan, can predict the same things.
  2. It would be a little rude. I ask a lot of smart fantasy baseball people to participate in the fun of the Picks and Pans. When we first pick up the Guide after its January release, it’s hard to resist the lure of who’s picking/panning who. “Rick Porcello, 11 Pans! Incredible!” We all get some right, and some wrong, but the fun comes from the jokes, the word play, the odd stats, that crop up in the comments. I’m afraid putting them up on a scoreboard, from which reputation could be inferred immediately would spoil things. Everyone would be obligated to be more exacting, less free wheeling, or possibly suffer for it. That’s no fun!

But Don Drooker, the Rotisserie Duck (not a la orange), grades his own picks at his excellent blog, rotisserieduck.com. Maybe because they’re so good, or so much fun. This is something I endorse. Reading his comments and then his explanation of why he graded the P+Ps as he did is almost as informative as reading the original predictions.

Good work, Don!

The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2017 Projections Update Is Here.

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Actually, it was here a week ago, but a screwup on my part made it very hard to find.

If you would like the FBG projections and prices update, it is here. The password is the last name of the first player profiled on page 90 of the 2017 Fantasy Baseball Guide. It is case sensitive.

You do not have to sign up for Dropbox, or even sign in, to download the file.

You can track what changes I’ve made to the projections since March 15 here.

Corrections for The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2017

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fbg2017-cover-largeFirst off, if you want to read the Mock Draft Commentaries, go here.

If you would like the FBG projections and prices update, it is here. The password is the last name of the first player profiled on page 90 of the 2017 Fantasy Baseball Guide. It is case sensitive.

This is the place where I’ll post corrections and updates to the 2017 Guide. There is a link in the top nav bar, so you can always find it.

Page 6:  Talking about team names, as we do sometimes, Yoan Moncada and Lucas Giolito were traded from Boston and Washington respectively last winter. While the team changes for both, to the White Sox, made it into their capsules, the wrong team names linger on this page of rookies.

Page 6: Very embarrassing. The photo credit is wrong. The picture of Yoan Moncada is by friend and new contributor Buck Davidson. I’m sooo sorry Buck, and will get a fixed PDF for you to use as a clip.

A Reader Writes:

The Fantasy Baseball Guide is a great pub and is most useful.  I have one question and one suggestion:

Q. It appears to me that Matt Moore’s “Big Price” of $14 is not consistent with his projected stats of 4.44 ERA and 1.35 Whip.   I believe his Win and K totals of 11 W and 127 K are very average.  I understand he has upside potential, but it appears too me that the $14 projection is not supported by your projections. Please explain.

S. It seems to me it would take little effort on your part to include the player’s team either in the “Player’s by Position” section or the Full Profiles.  I play in a hybrid NL + 2AL teams (Houston and Texas) and many of us have limited knowledge of other AL players.  I understand there will be changes between the start of the season and your publication date, but that’s not near the problem of having no idea of the player’s team (and whether or not he is on one of our teams).  Please consider including the team for each player.

Thank you for your consideration.

Dear Reader. The projection in the Guide was the mechanical projection that derived from Moore’s history, and as you note looked rather pessimistic for a player I’m fairly keen on and three other writers made PICKS of this year. I work on the projections all winter and at some point I upgraded Moore to a 3.72 ERA and 1.23 WHIP. It just so happens this projection, also in 150 innings pitched, is worth about $12 and I’ve dropped his bid price to $13. Note that in CBS and LABR, Moore went for $13 and $11, so I was definitely in the ballpark on Moore’s bid price if not his projection in the Guide.

The Guide projections and price update is due tomorrow, probably in the evening, here on the corrections page. It will have hugely reworked projections and bid prices for those who bought the Guide. You may still find it on the shelves at Barnes and Noble and other magazine retailers, and you can also buy the online version at thefantasysportsguide.com. Use the promo code Rotoman17 and get $1 off.

As to the issue of team names, they are available in the stat lines for all the players with major league experience last year. And I do add team names to the end of the prospect capsules because readers very much want them, but it really is a problem to be more definitive. The magazine heads off to the printer just days after the Winter Meetings conclude, and at that point there are still hundreds of free agents out there. Plus, trades will be made. So, the choices are to either list the team name that the player ended last year with, which in hundreds of cases will be wrong, or their team name at press time, which means hundreds will be listed as a Free Agent.

It’s always seemed to me that the team name in the stats is just as reliable as either of the above methods, and doesn’t pretend to an authority that we don’t have in mid December. I’m open to suggestions, surely, so please feel free to send them along.

A reader named Jeffrey reports: I figure that if Tyler Anderson and Jon Gray are worth $2 apiece, then Tyler Chatwood should be worth a bid of $1. If I see anything else of note, I will send another email.

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