Internet blogs are a wonderful thing. Anyone can start a blog, and then develop their blog in anyway they want to. The real possibilities are literally endless. The trick with blogs is motivating one to continue writing one, eventually to hopefully develop a fan base. Having a good reason to start a blog isn’t a bad idea either. Perhaps the writer wants to start something new, maybe the writer thinks they can do better than the predecessors, or like me would like to develop my writing skills in a very fun way.

This blog, Fantasy by the Book will serve many purposes on the subject of baseball. The blog will be 3 parts fantasy baseball, 1 part fictional baseball, 1 part sabremetric understanding, and 1 part off topic. However like any good recipe there is room for tweaking, eyeballing, and changes. So if you enjoy baseball this blog is for you. If you play in fantasy baseball this blog is for you. If you are my mom (no I do not live in her basement), or my beautiful fiancee (she is real) this blog is for you.

I love fantasy baseball and since I was introduced to Tom Tango’s “The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball” I have striven to find a more true to baseball experience to fantasy baseball. Tom Tango and his team have developed many new ways to measure value in baseball and based on these measures I have developed a scoring system that brings out what I believe to be a truer fantasy baseball.

In baseball the object is to win on a day to day basis by outscoring your opponent. Your team’s pitching and defense prevent runs, and your offense scores runs in an attempt to win every day. Fantasy baseball is limited as we have no real control over the players (and luckily I get that urge to control satisfied with my fictional baseball ventures) making it really tough to pull that off. But my league features a week to week game structure that basis its points scoring on measures that give points for runs produced and runs prevented.

Fantasy Baseball is gaining much exposure and continues to grow every season. Most fantasy leagues still run rotisserie format with 5×5 scoring structures. While this a tried and true tradition of fantasy baseball in my opinion it is quite old. Many of the categories actually have little to do with the players actual performance and has more to do with the team he is playing on. I will get more detailed into this later on as its a great subject for debate for me.

With all of that in mind the blog’s name, ‘Fantasy by the Book’ was one of the easiest creations I have ever had to name. Typically I struggle forever and a day trying to come up with names for things, sometimes even very mundane items. But this name came very quickly and I am very happy with it. My passion for baseball is very strong and I owe a lot of that to The Book by Tom Tango, other writers out there like David Cameron (ussmariner.com), and those at FanGraphs.com among many many others.

I truly hope you enjoy reading my blog as I know I will love reading it. Hopefully we can all learn something together!