Ron Shandler
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Ron Shandler is the author of Baseball Forecaster, an annual publication focused on applying sabermetrics to fantasy baseball, and founder of Baseball HQ, a website with the same focus.
Shandler is seen as a revolutionary thinker in both sabermetrics and fantasy baseball. Among his innovations in fantasy baseball are:
- LIMA Plan - Which stands for Low Investment Mound Aces, is a draft strategy for traditional 4x4 Rotisserie leagues. LIMA is named after pitcher Jose Lima, who was exemplified the strategy. The strategy includes spending just $60 max out of your $260 budget on pitching. No more than $30 on saves. Have your pitchers use as few innings as your league rules allow. Look to buy pitchers with strong strikeout-to-walk ratios, high strikeout per inning ratios and low home run per inning ratios. Spend the rest of your budget on hitting.
- Strand Rate - The percentage of baserunners a pitcher allows who fail to score (Baseball Prospectus has a similar statistic, Bequeathed Runs Prevented). Shandler discovered that 72 percent of baserunners on average never cross the plate, so if a pitcher has a higher or lower strand rate there's a chance it will affect his ERA in the opposite direction in the future.[1] It should be noted, however, that the very idea of runners being stranded on base was likely not first conceived of by Shandler. Sabermetrician Keith Woolner has been researching support-neutral statistics since at least 1993, and has often discussed concepts similar to Strand Rate (e.g., Bequeathed Runners inherited/stranded).[1] [2]
He created Tout Wars in 1997 after being fed up with the lack of promotion USA Today gave its annual LABR fantasy baseball experts league.[2]
Shandler's success includes the most wins in major fantasy baseball expert leagues.[citation needed] He won both the NL and AL Tout Wars competitions in 1998, AL Tout Wars in 2000, NL LABR in 2001.
