Welcome to Rotoheaven.com!
For some long time readers, this is may be a welcome back. For others, welcome aboard!
What is Rotoheaven.com?
I founded Rotoheaven.com or “Rob’s Fantasy Baseball Heaven” in the spring of 1997, focusing on baseball transactions, player injury, and prospect analysis. These later morphed into two article series known as “The Diamond Exchange” and then “The Prospector” over at Mastersball.com. While I’m still very much involved at Mastersball.com on the Platinum side of things, I will now be going back to my roots and combining these two pieces as the main feature here at Rotoheaven.com. For more about my baseball writing credentials, you can click here to skip to it.
I also take an interest in developing auction drafting, and Excel-based applications and may share them from time to time here as well.
However, as this is my very own corner of the Internet, I will not be limiting myself to merely fantasy baseball analysis, but will also on occasion foray into discussions of some of my other interests as well.
About Rob
I was born in 1974 in the suburbs of New York City. I’m the youngest of two, with an older sister. Both of my parents were civil servants, my dad being an auditor for a state agency and my mom, an accountant for our town.
Sports in My Life
Some of my earliest sports memories include watching the New York Mets, Rangers, or Giants while my dad lazed about on the floor in front of our wooden cabinet television set with me climbing over him. I took a particular interest in some of the fun names players had such as Lee Mazzilli, Craig Swan, and the Maloney brothers, not to mention some guy named George Thomas Seaver. I started attending Met games regularly in the early eighties (I believe I was 6 when I finally saw the Mets in person, with them losing to the Phillies). Interestingly, I ended up going to more Ranger hockey games with my dad in the early days, sitting up in the blue seats where I have distinct memories of cigarettes all around me while eating a chipwich.
I’ve never been much of an athlete, and that might be putting it generously depending on which of my friends you talk to, but I’ve always been passionate about it and enjoyed participating. I’d drop everything in a heartbeat to join a game of softball or go skiing if I could! I played organized little league from the time I was 7 till I was 11 and point of fact, I played and was more successful with soccer, participating until I was about 14.
Collecting was a big part of growing up. In addition to my dad’s day job, he was a part-time stamp dealer who would spend his evenings after dinner getting together orders for customers or going to stamp shows. That translated into collecting a variety of things, but of course, included baseball cards. I don’t have much of a collection anymore, but still have a pretty good Mets collection that dates back to some 1962 cards, as well as a collection of Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan cards. If you come to my office today, it is littered with sports memorabilia. (This next sentence needs editing) This is mostly because I moved out of my home office in favor of my kids and rather than sell it or store it away, it has made my workplace a home away from home.
My first foray into anything approaching fantasy baseball came two-fold. The first was with Statis Pro Baseball (a knock of Strat-O-Matic). I used to keep stats by hand on paper, run drafts, and have fun making up team names, simming them alone or with my friends. Similarly, we had an Apple IIE computer in the house and I loved playing micro-league baseball. I think I had more fun making up my players rather than using historic stats though.
Things changed in 1991 when walking home from school my close friend Jason asked if I’d like to partner with him in a fantasy baseball league. I’d never heard of it but said yes. The league was a lot of fun, but in retrospect rather silly considering it was a 6-team, AL-only league. In 1992, we realized that and got rid of the partnerships. I was completely hooked after that first season and my love of prospect analysis took off as I began scouring the AL for rookies choosing pitchers like Dave Fleming and letting others go after the more highly heralded Roger Salkeld. Of course, grabbing Brady Anderson for nearly nothing that year was quite the triumph too.
In 1996, I was commissioning my college fantasy league and decided to teach myself this HTML stuff so I could track our league stats and post our constitution. At the time, fantasy baseball and the Internet were still in their infancy and it didn’t take long to convert my Geocities site to better use! Things took off from there and you can see where I’ve been and where I’ve written in my baseball credentials located below.
Other Geekery
Sports were big in my household growing up, but so were other geeky pursuits. (Collecting things is also mentioned earlier) Collecting things was huge considering my dad helped the family out by being a professional stamp dealer in addition to his day job. To this day he still collects Lionel and N-Gauge model trains. My father is responsible for driving me toward collecting and reading comic books and baseball cards. The house was full of them growing up and only recently did I remove the last of my old collections to my home!
So expect semi-regular writings or posts on Rotoheaven’s Facebook page related to my non-baseball, pursuits including:
- Reading! Mostly fantasy and science fiction novels, but comic books, historical fiction, and more too – Add me on goodreads.com!
- Television and movies – From Drama to comedy to reality TV
- Gaming – Not as heavily into this as I once was, but still enjoy playing the occasional video game or tabletop.
- Parenting
- Coffee
Personal Info
I’ve been married to Rebecca since 2007 and we’ve been together since 2003. We have three wonderful children together: Julia, Andrew, and Joshua.
I hold Bachelor of Arts degrees from Binghamton University in History and Geography. I also hold a Masters in City Planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology and have been a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) since 1993. By day I serve as Principal Planner to an upstate NY regional planning agency, so don’t be surprised by my occasional urban planning digressions on this site or any of my social media feeds!
Enough Already!
Ok, so now you know a little bit about me, but you might be asking yourself, “So, what the heck qualifies this guy to advise me on my fantasy team?” Continuing reading, if you want that question, answered or need a read guaranteed to help you nap.
2019 Winner AL Tout Wars
2016 Winner of FSWA Baseball Article of the Year, In Print Award.
29-year fantasy baseball veteran
28-years as a fantasy baseball writer/analyst
24-year member of Tout Wars
Member of the Fantasy Sports Writer Association
Online
Rotoheaven.com (1997-1998)
Fantasy Insights Baseball – Manager (1998 – 2001)
Mastersball.com – Writer, Projections, Editor (2001 to 2005)
Fantasybaseball.com – (2006 to 2008) – Managing Editor 2008 (Mastersballs temporary merger with FB.com)
Fanball.com – 2009 – Baseball Analyst
Rotowire.com Rotosynthesis Blog – 2009 to 2010 – Contributor
Mastersball.com – 2009 to 2015
I’ve also appeared over the years at Sandbox.com, Rototimes.com, and ESPN.com.
Print Publications
Masters Guide to Fantasy Baseball 2002 and 2003 Annuals
Masters of Fantasy Baseball Guide to the Arizona Fall League – 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, & 2006
Fantasy Baseball Index – 2000 and 2001 Editions
Fanball.com 2009 Baseball Annual
Fanball.com 2009 Just Cheat Sheets
The Fantasy Baseball Guide – 2003 to 2022 Editions
The Fantasy Baseball Sourcebook – 2005 & 2006
-Picks and Pans
-2010 to 2015 – Rookie Rondelay – Editor
-Street and Smith’s 2018 Fantasy Baseball Guide – Contributor
-2016 – “The 2015 Rookie Class: Bubble?” – FSWA Award Winning Article in Print of the Year.
-2018 – “Young and The Restless: Top 30 Candidates, Ranked” – Editor/Contributor – Fantasy Baseball Guide 2018
-2018 – “A Look Back at the Young and Restless of 2017” – Writer – 2018 Fantasy Baseball Guide