The first part of the demo was showcasing their “consumer” product, a fantasy draft and in-season analytics tool. This is part of a working relationship with MLB and represents Bloomberg’s first foray into sports analytics. For those who don’t really know what Bloomberg does, they are the leader in info and analytics for the financial services industry. Every firm who works with the Street in some capacity – from brokerages, to M&A advisory, to law firms, etc. – all have at least a few Bloomberg terminals…these ubiquitous flat screens pumping out reams of news and data on the stocks and stories affecting the companies. Data analytics. It’s what they do and what they do best. Expanding into sports analytics is a natural extension, even if the market isn’t as large. After all, data is data and for all intents and purposes, a player is very similar to a stock. The trick is using the underlying data in order to help the user make the best decision using the best available information.The consumer product has two distinct components for which serious fantasy fans will have an interest:
A draft prep module ($19.95)- An in-season module ($24.95)
The two are available as a package for $31.95. As a long-time fantasy geek, the product looked sleek and helpful. You can import the league format (from what I could see, there was a drop down to CBS.com, ESPN.com and others) and customize your rules to fit the Bloomberg tool. For example, if your league uses OBP instead of BA, you can make this change and the tool will adjust. Adjust what, you ask? The “secret sauce” to Bloomberg is what they refer to as their “B-Rank”. Likely to be a well-challenged ranking system, the B-Rank takes a large amount of contributing factors, including age, team, position, etc. and blends it until there’s a nice froth. The B-Rank purports to help you in the draft and pre-draft rankings prep.
The tool allows you to filter on any number of criteria to best prepare for the draft. An example shown yesterday was that if you were weak in two categories last year, you can tweak the B-Rank to put extra emphasis on those two areas. To me, that’s unnecessary as one year does not a trend make. If, however, you are regularly at the bottom of the pitching side of the game for years on end, it might be more helpful.
To me, the main flaw is that Bloomberg is not linked up with your league, so if you want to have their draft and rankings running during your draft, you will need a second window open and be able to multi-task (if you’re draft is online rather than in-person).
The in-season mode also looks very good, but isn’t yet perfect. Like the draft tool, the in-season tool is independent from the leagues in which you participate. Not the biggest deal in the world, but if you make a trade or add/drop in your league, you have to make the corresponding roster adjustment in Bloomberg. An inconvenience, nothing more. I asked the developer about this and he indicated that this is something that they are working on. I suspect that the ESPN’s and CBS’s out there don’t want their players running elsewhere for information, pulling eyeballs from their own analyses. This is likely a thorny issue to overcome.
Like most fantasy sites, there’s a ton of information, concisely aggregated and presented. Without having the chance yet (we’ll review it once I get the keys on 2/18), I can’t accurately tell you if it’s definitively different, better/worse than some of the other available tools. What I can tell you is that it looks good. Hopefully you can judge for yourself with the screen grabs throughout this posting.
The tool will also ‘scrape’ countless info sources to give the most up-to-date info on the players you are interested in, including many blogs (this one included). While this sounds good, I fear an info overload and a very real “garbage in, garbage out” barrage of information. It will be up to you to trust the info sources in the crawl at the bottom of the screen. The good news is that the esteemed Jonah Keri will be on board to manage content, including a blog with several yet-to-be identified bloggers contributing.
At the end of the day, this is a tool for you to help make the best decisions for your fantasy team. A tool and nothing more. It’s up to you to use it to the best of your abilities, determining which parts work best for you. News/info might not be of interest, but being able to filter and measure position scarcity could be more helpful to you.
Bloomberg does not yet offer their own leagues and hasn’t yet expanded beyond baseball. There’s a logical next step into football and basketball, if the league’s are open to sharing data. Big ‘if’.
After a lunch break and some Q&A, the got everybody worked into a frenzy with a brief, but impressive, demo of their pro product. This is not some heavier weight version of the consumer fantasy product; it’s a wholly different product. And it’s about the best analytical tool that you might imagine. Like the monster child born from parents Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs, this beast is currently in trial mode by all 30 teams for six months. Again, it’s a tool to be used by scouts (entering player data), front office and on-field staff. You want to know what Chris Carpenter’s likely pitch sequence is in certain situations, this tool can help you.
[Funniest quip came from Matt from FackYouk, upon seeing the biometric sign-in (using fingerprints): "Bring me the thumb of Theo Epstein"]
David Appelman from FanGraphs was quick enough to snap a few pictures, as you can see below:
And their pitch-predictor tool, as mentioned:
The pro product takes that image of Ted Williams’ strike zone (with colored baseballs, right) and makes it possible to do that for any player, at any point in time, in any situation or circumstance.
Additionally, you can filter as deep as you can possibly consider and if you are filtering using the chart below, you can then click on any particular at-bat for the related video (I am not certain if this is currently available or ‘coming soon’).
While the lunch and presentation was fantastic, the best part (aside from an awesome shirt) was the networking component, putting faces with the names. Getting to meet Jonah, Ben and Joe P. from RAB, sitting next to the FackYouk boys (Jay and Matt), as well as finally getting to say hello the Subway Squawkers team (Lisa and Jon), Amanda Rykoff, Joe Hamrahi, Tommy Bennett, Eno Sarris, Mike Silva, Ken Fang, Corey Schwartz and others (if I forgot you, my apologies, I left my notes on my home laptop!).
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Additional screen grabs are below, courtesy of Bloomberg Sports:
