Meet the Experts...
Shandler Enterprises, LLC. began publishing statistical reports for baseball analysts and fantasy leaguers in 1986. Since then, we've grown into one of the largest information providers in the industry, producing quality products continuously and over a longer period than any other fantasy baseball company.
Our writers and analysts are paid professionals, not weekend hobbyists or corporate staffers. While other information services seek out professional journalists who play fantasy baseball, we seek out successful fantasy players with innovative ideas who know how to write. That's our difference, and it's a huge one.
Directors
RON SHANDLER
(Editor and Publisher) has been publishing his unique brand of statistical
information since 1986. A fantasy leaguer since 1985, he was the first author to develop sabermetric applications for fantasy play. His annual book, the Baseball Forecaster, is now in its 23rd year of publication. Ron
is the founder of Tout Wars, the national experts league featured in the 2006 book, Fantasyland. In national experts competition, he has finished in the top three 11 times, including five titles. He has been a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) since 1985 and is a member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA), which presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. In 2004, he was selected to help form an advisory board for the St. Louis Cardinals. Ron has an MBA from Hofstra University and is a professional forecasting analyst by trade. Complete bio.
RAY MURPHY
(Managing Editor) has been playing fantasy baseball in various formats since 1988. Ray competes in, and has numerous money finishes in, AL-only, NL-only, and mixed Rotisserie leagues. Most recently, he and co-manager Win Murray won their league and finished 4th overall (out of 390 teams) in the 2009 National Fantasy Baseball Championship. He is also an avid player of simulation games, both Scoresheet and APBA. Ray resides in the Boston area with his wife, Jennifer.
HAROLD NICHOLS (Director of Skills Analysis) has played Boxscore Baseball since the mid-1980’s and is among the league’s all-time win leaders. Since 1999, he has won five NL and four AL titles. In both 1999 and 2005, he won the Dick Houser award as the outstanding owner in all Boxscore leagues. During the working day, he is Dean of the Meridian Campus of Mississippi State University. He teaches theatre history and is one of the few theatre historians in the country with advanced training in statistics. Harold lives in Meridian, MS with his wife Anna Marie.
JOCK THOMPSON (Director of News Analysis) Often referred to as "The Father of Deep 5X5 Mixed Keeper On-line Rotisserie Leagues", Jock has won 18 championships with 26 money finishes in 33 attempts, spanning two leagues since he began playing in 1989. He resides in Orange County, CA with his roto-playing wife Sandie, with whom he spends most of his time between March and November taking in as much MLB, minor league and college baseball as possible. He is HQ's preeminent SoCal and Arizona baseball enthusiast, is unmatched in his own mind with respect to his knowledge of the Angels, and makes regular efforts to provide some balance to the East Coast bias found in the HQ Forums. The #1 entry on Jock's Bucket List is to play in the same rotisserie league as Keith Olbermann and Jason Bateman.
DAVE ADLER
(Director of Games Analysis) has been a member of the ultra-competetive "I Want to Be George Steinbrenner" Baseball League (ironically based in Boston) since 1986. He's served as commissioner ten years, won the league five times, and had 14 money finishes. When not managing his beloved Cygnus A's, he is an astronomer working with the Hubble Space Telescope, living near Baltimore with his wife, Beth. Dave has a BA in Astrophysics from Boston University, and MA and PhD in Astronomy from the University of Virginia.
BRENT HERSHEY (Director of Interactive Features) has contributed to BaseballHQ.com in various capacities since 1998. He grew up a Phillies fan in Pennsylvania in the late 1970s/early 1980s, endured the John Felske years, and now is enjoying the Howard/Utley/Rollins resurgence. A consistent money finisher and four-time winner (including 2008) in a local AL roto league, he spends most of his fanalytic energy on several Scoresheet teams and dabbles in other sim formats. He has earned a B.A. in journalism from Temple University, an M.Div. from Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and an M.A. in religious studies from the University of Iowa. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Philadelphia.
RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
Ray Murphy, Director
Matt Beagle (Market Pulse) exemplified the depth of fanalytic commitment as an expansion manager a decade ago. Appendix bursting, he coerced a hospital release to retrieve his Strat-O-Matic materials to draft from the recovery room. In 2008, Matt added the Strat-O-Matic Bevy of Experts League to his numerous titles. He also shares his views on HQ Radio while contributing Daily Gaming and Points Leagues columns Matt obtained his JD/MBA from Wake Forest after attending Ursinus College, near his beloved Phillies. He now follows the Indians as closely after a Jacobs Field wedding. A bank Vice President and Instructor at Bloomsburg University, Matt brings 27 years of experience from Bloomsburg, PA
Bill Macey has been playing fantasy baseball since 2000. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin and works for a big 4 accounting firm. A transplanted Cubs fan, he lives in Houston with his wife and son.
Michael Weddell has been playing fantasy baseball continuously since founding a Rotisserie league in 1987. A long-time customer of BaseballHQ, Michael joined the writing staff in 2009. Professionally, Michael is employed by the leading international employee benefits consulting firm and helps large employers with their 401(k) and other defined contribution retirement plans. Michael roots for the Tigers with his wife and adult children in metropolitan Detroit.
SKILLS ANALYSIS
Joshua Randall (Batting Buyers Guide) has been playing fantasy baseball since the last millennium, primarily in mixed draft leagues, but he makes time for single-league auctions in order to maintain his street cred. He is entering his eighth year writing for BHQ. Joshua is a long-time Cleveland Indians fan who grumbles every year at the rising season ticket prices, yet always buys them anyway. When not undertaking fanalytic research, Joshua works as a business analyst at a large automobile insurance company.
Skip Snow (Weekly Planner) is a 20-year vet of baseball gaming, from dice to Diamond Mind and from front office to fantasy league. He spent ten years on the Cleveland Indians' Sales & Marketing force and now heads the business development department for an education management company in Cleveland. He's a lifetime Yankee fan who had his belt and shoelaces taken from him after the Red Sox disrespectfully ended the eternal Curse of the Babe after merely 86 years. In the fanalytic world, he wrangles a herd of several fantasy teams in several sports. In the real world, he and his wife Anne Marie live in Rocky River, Ohio and wrangle a herd of four children - Michael, Maria, Andrew, and Lauren.
Tom Kephart has been competing in various fantasy baseball formats (primarily Rotisserie Mixed and NL-only Leagues) since 1991. He is a life-long Cincinnati sports fan, a diehard Reds fan, and an enthusiastic student of baseball history. He earned a B.A. in Communications and Political Science, with M.A. in Political Science/Policy Analysis from American University, and an M.A. in Political Science from Ohio State. He lives in Columbus Ohio.
NEWS ANALYSIS
Greg Pyron is in IT software/web development and is from Atlanta, GA. With 12 years of fantasy experience, he has written for FantasyBaseball.com and RotoTimes.com/Fanball.com. He is a lifelong fan of the Braves and the Georgia Bulldogs.
MINOR LEAGUE ANALYSIS
GAMES ANALYSIS
INTERACTIVE FEATURES
Josh Paley RHP, UI.....43.....2008 NDFA Illinois
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Patrick Davitt (Baseball HQ Radio) has been playing 4x4 Rotisserie since 1988 in the Regina Rotisserie League in Saskatchewan, Canada. His PaperBoyz franchise has been in the money in all but four seasons and won titles in 2001, 2002 and 2008. Patrick joined the Baseball HQ team in 1999, writing about Rotisserie strategy and rules. He has since written the AL Market Watch, the Batting Buyers Guide column, and independent baseball and fantasy research. Patrick now hosts Baseball HQ Radio, a weekly free "podcast" program about fantasy baseball, available as an MP3 download from Baseball HQ 
Ed DeCaria has seen his fantasy baseball sophistication increase markedly since co-founding a three-team mixed league with his brothers in the early 90's... it seemed so challenging at the time. Ed spends all day, every day doing some combination of creative thinking, analysis, writing, or presentation. He holds a full-time job as VP of Technology Product Management at a global data/analytics provider, a part-time job as a researcher at BaseballHQ, and a minimal-time job as an aspiring children's book author. Ed lives in Chicago with his wife Jamie, daughter Elena, and best friend Excel Spreadsheet.
Rick Wilton (Dr. HQ) was the fantasy baseball industry's first injury analyst, and is the only one with experience in sports medicine, radiology, pharmacology and physical therapy. Rick started his sports career as the co-host of the University of Utah's pre-game football and basketball shows from 1981 to 1984. He was also a regular on Sports KALL, the weekly sports call-in show in Salt Lake City. Rick began baseball writing with free-lance articles for Baseball Weekly and Fantasy Baseball magazine. From 1992-1995, he was the president of Sports Journal Publications, Inc. which published Fantasy Baseball Journal, Diamond Alert and the Hot Sheet. He researched and co-authored the book, Forecasting Pitching Careers, and was the fantasy baseball expert for WMVP radio in Chicago during the 1996 season. Rick is an alumnus of the University of Utah and lives in Racine, WI, with his wife and daughter.
Harold Nichols, Director
Doug Dennis (Bullpen Buyers Guide) has almost 20 years of 4x4 and 5x5 experience. He has won his home league seven of the past eight years, won the XFL in 2007 and has been a regular in USA Today's LABR league. Doug wrote the Tip Sheet for Sports Weekly in 2003-2004, served as a consultant to the St. Louis Cardinals in 2004-2005 and has contributed to several annual publications. Doug has been working at HQ and speaking at First Pitch Arizona since way back in the 20th Century.
Joe Hoffer (Facts and Flukes) is in his third year as a Baseball HQ Market Watch analyst. He's played 5x5 NL-only keeper leagues since he graduated Lake Forest College with a BS in Psychology in 1988. When he isn't at Wrigley Field (he once attended 88 Cubs games in one year), he is selling advertising for Rolling Stone magazine, running marathons with his wife Anne or hanging out with his two-year old daughter, Tessa.
Stephen Nickrand (Starting Pitching Buyers Guide), entering his tenth season with Baseball HQ, already is on the prowl for this year’s next Wandy Rodriguez. Stephen has been a baseball analyst for most of his adult life, a fact that he inserts into casual conversations among his slightly unstable friends but keeps obsessively hidden from normal humans. In his free time, Stephen masquerades as an amateur movie critic and obsessively follows the band Pearl Jam on tour across the world (note: Eddie Vedder understands how the concept of strand rate can apply to concertgoers). Stephen is an alumnus of the University of Michigan, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Organizational Studies and French and an MBA. During the day, he works in the Human Resource field in the automotive industry. Therefore, he really hopes he’s invited back for an eleventh season at Baseball HQ.
TODAY'S MATCH-UPS
Matthew Baic joined HQ in 2006 after a two year stint with another fantasy sports service. He has more than 10 years of fantasy baseball experience in Rotisserie, head-to-head and Strat-O-Matic. He was chosen as a "Regular Guy" in the 2004 LABR-NL league. In 2007, he finished 1st for Fantasy Sports Magazine in a mixed experts league. The previous two seasons saw him finish 2nd and 4th in the same format for the Fantasy Auctioneer Invitational Experts League. He recently celebrated his 10th year anniversary to his wife Beth. Sons Samuel, Seth, and Keegan are in intense training for their Fantasy Sports careers. He is a programmer, lives in Cranberry Township, PA, and still remains a diehard Pirates fan.
Brandon Kruse is in his second season as a Buyer's Guide analyst, after two years spent as an AL Market Watch analyst, and is a regular contributor to Baseball HQ Radio. He was the Grand Prize winner (#1 in the world) of the Sporting News Ultimate Salary Cap Baseball game in 2003, and nabbed a Top 50 finish in 2005. He also enjoys AL-only Rotisserie and Out of the Park Baseball (v6.5), where he is a GM/manager in an online fictional league. Brandon is a lifelong Twins fan, and lives in Minnetonka, MN with his wife Christi, daughter Grace, and son Nathan, all of whom are good sports about rooting for players they've never heard of before just because Daddy needs a save or an RBI.
Paul Petera has been with Baseball HQ since 1998. He has been involved with Data Analysis since his arrival, and has worked extensively on the past nine editions of the Baseball Forecaster. His writing has appeared on Baseball HQ for the past eleven years, as well as in Sports Weekly and ESPN - The Magazine. Paul has been active in fantasy baseball since 1987. In his spare time, he enjoys distance running. In October, he qualified for the 2010 Boston Marathon with a 3:19 qualifying time at the Twin Cities Marathon. The Virginia native holds a B.S. in Business Management from Virginia Tech, and is an avid Hokie fan. Paul serves as a Risk Manager for a St. Louis-based brokerage firm, and lives in Edwardsville, IL with his wife Andrea and daughter Abby.
Jeffrey Tomich is in his sixth year at Baseball HQ. He's among the founders of the Inky Wretches League, a 6x6 NL-only keeper league, and has competed in a 5x5 mixed league for the past decade. Jeffrey has a B.A. in English and economics from Tulane University and works as a business journalist. A native of Houston, he lives in St. Louis with his wife Elisa and daughter Gabriella, and loves needling Cardinals fans when they lose to the Astros. When not studying baseball stats, he enjoys distance running, cooking and traveling.
Jock Thompson, Director
PLAYING TIME AND ROLES
Scott Gellman has been playing Rotisserie baseball almost as far back as he can remember, both mixed and single leagues. He is a veterinarian in Philadelphia, PA where he lives with his wife, their beagle, 2 cats, and guinea pig, most of whom are Phillies fans.
Scott Monroe is now in his ninth year of writing for Baseball HQ, including four as Director of News Analysis, and has been involved in various forms of fantasy baseball since the mid-1980s. He has served as commissioner of one of his two local leagues for several years, and has won championships in two of the past three years. Scott typically competes in NL-only or mixed Rotisserie leagues, and as a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan has thus far avoided joining an AL-only league for fear that the heart would indeed rule the head. Scott and partner Ray Murphy have also competed in the first four years of the National Fantasy Baseball Championship. Scott is an attorney by day, but also worked for several years as a data analyst honing his enjoyment of numbers and statistics. He lives with his wife and two children in Richmond, Virginia.
Brian Rudd has participated in fantasy baseball for the last 10 years. He is a graduate of the University of Louisville with a degree in Sport Administration. A big St. Louis Cardinals fan, he currently resides in St. Charles, MO with his wife, Mona, daughter, Kaelyn, and son, Evan.
Kris Olson is editor of the Marblehead (Mass.) Reporter newspaper and www.wickedlocalmarblehead.com, where he has achieved honors including 2005 weekly Journalist of the Year from the New England Press Association, and 2007 Editorial Writer of the Year among the 289 weekly newspapers owned by GateHouse Media. Olson holds an undergraduate degree in public policy studies from Duke University and a law degree from the Boston University School of Law. He also teaches in the Communications Department of Salem State College. A lifelong Red Sox fan whose loyalty was cemented during the horrific collapse of 1978, Olson lives on Boston's North Shore with his wife, Wendy, and 6-year-old son Max. He has been playing fantasy baseball for about 20 years, with numerous championships to his credit.
Nick Richards began playing rotisserie in the late 90's just as the Net was bringing the sport into our computers. Quickly realizing he needed an analytical approach in order to compete, he researched the field and settled on BaseballHQ as the site that was using analytics the best. Three championships in those early years proved HQ's worth to him and he's been a faithful reader ever since. He is married and lives with his wife in New York where he works as a business analyst for a Fortune 500 company. He's easy to find in the forums where you just have to look for the Snoopy avatar.
TEAM ANALYSTS
Andy Andres teaches what is likely one of the first ever college courses in Baseball Analysis and Sabermetrics at Tufts University in Medford, MA. When not spending time scheming victory in the very competitive Boston Baseball League, he also teaches biology at Boston University and Harvard College. Andy is a diehard Red Sox Fan and lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife, Kate, and their three children, Maddie, Aubree, and Griffin. He also plays 3B for the Jumbo's Peanut Surprise in various Tufts Softball Leagues, and has been schooled at Universities Brown, Harvard, and Tufts.
Matt Dodge began his formal fanalytic training in college, when his Quantitative Methods professor allowed him to use baseball statistics for data analysis projects. Player valuation studies came next, when this third-generation Yankee fan and his die-hard Oriole fan wife debated at length the comparative statistics for Brooks Robinson and Graig Nettles. Since then, Matt has spent most of his non-working moments competing in national and local 4x4, 5x5 and ultra Rotisserie games, with several first place league finishes (including the 2nd annual Arizona Challenge). After graduating with an Industrial Engineering degree from Clarkson College, he is now located in the I-95 corridor, where he cheers on the High A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals and manages transactional systems integration for a major business unit in a Fortune 50 chemical company.
Philip Hertz has been playing Rotisserie Baseball since 1985, and has finished first or second in his primary league in all but three seasons. Phil, like Ron, is a die- hard Mets fan, who attended the Mets first game at the Polo Grounds. He has an A.B. in history and urban studies from the University of Michigan's Residential College and a J.D. from the Boston University School of Law. When not pursuing his first love; i.e., baseball, he serves as the Deputy General Counsel for a United States government corporation. He and his wife live in North Bethesda, Maryland, just outside the nation's capital, and travel around the world annually -- but almost always with laptop in hand!
Troy Martell has been playing fantasy baseball, particularly Scoresheet, for approximately 12 years. Troy manages teams in three Scoresheet keeper leagues, winning a league championship in 2008. Troy was born in Minnesota and is a die hard Twins fan. He has a B.A. in political science from Marquette University and a J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law. Troy lives in Milwaukee and spends most of his free time with his wife, Erin, and his dog, Lando.
Mike Shears has managed teams since 1992 and has earned two Scoresheet division championships and several top-half Rotisserie finishes on his pitching strength. He's familiar with the Rotisserie, Ultra 4x4 and 5x5, and Scoresheet formats. Mike's an 1987 Engineering graduate of Ohio State and lives in Indiana as a network admin. A former men's softball coach, he understands the never-ending struggle to find a good leadoff hitter.
Rod Truesdell joined Baseball HQ in 1999. Rod has performed in numerous roles with Baseball HQ, including Scoresheet Baseball and AL Market Watch analyst, and most recently AL West Playing Time analyst. Rod also serves as co-editor of Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster, and has been a contributing Forecaster author since the 2004 edition. A native Texan, Rod has followed the American League since the Senators became the Texas Rangers in 1972. He has won eight Scoresheet Baseball championship trophies, including the inaugural 1999 championship in the Scoresheet Champions Internet League, AL-SCIL. Rod is a meteorologist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC, where he lives with his wife, three kids, four dogs, and one cat.
Rob Gordon and Jeremy Deloney, Directors
Jeremy Deloney is in his fifth year with HQ. He appears daily during the season with the minor league callup reports. He spends most of his free time scanning minor league box scores and teaching the values of baseball to his three children. Jeremy lives in Lebanon, OH and works in compliance for a securities firm.
Rob Gordon has been a minor league analyst for Baseball HQ since 2003. He writes the weekly Minor League News and Scouting Column, covers most of the traffic in the Minor League Forum, and this year teamed up with Jeremy Deloney to produce the Minor League Organizational Reports. When he isn't lurking in the shadows of some dingy minor league stadium or scouring the internet for scouting reports or video clips of the next can't miss prospect, Rob can be found teaching History at Wayne State Univeristy where he completed his Ph.D. in 2003. Rob also works an 8-5 job at the University of Michigan advising undergraduates on what to do with their lives and the importance of using Runs Created and xERA as a way to better understand the true value of a baseball player.
Dave Adler, Director
Dylan Hedges (Head-to-Head) has been playing competitive Mixed and NL-only leagues for several years. He is an IT sales consultant from Franklin, TN where he lives with his wife, April, and chocolate lab, Dakota. He also covers college baseball and competes in the Music City Baseball Association.
Craig Neuman (Rotisserie) has 13 years of Roto experience. He is a poster boy for the success HQ can provide. Before discovering HQ and the Forecaster, he finished in the money only once in 7 years. Since becoming an avid fanalytic player in 2004, he has finished in the money every year but one including 3 titles. Craig is a life-long Cardinals fan and was thrilled to move back to St. Louis where he could attend games more regularly. Craig now lives in suburban St. Louis with his wife and two children while working as a Director for a non-profit social service agency.
Peter Sheridan (Salary Cap) has a computer
programming background and has been a Minnesota Twins fan since he can remember. He has
been active in fantasy baseball since 1999 and fantasy football since 1984. Pete is a
graduate of Northwestern University and avid supporter of the Wisconsin Badgers. He lives
in Madison, WI with his wife Jennifer and two daughters, Molly and Sammi.
Brent Hershey, Director
Frank Noto has played various Roto formats since 1991 and written on baseball sabermetrics for over a decade. He typically finishes in the money, and has won 8 league championships. In real life, he is president of the community outreach firm, GCA Strategies. There he conducts state-of-the-art public opinion surveys and helps build community and political support for controversial real estate projects. He wins for 93% of his clients, with an ERA of 3.52. Frank is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Strengths: 25MPH eephus pitch. Command. Comfort sitting on pine. Bats both and drives ball with authority with fungo bat.
Weaknesses: Velocity (55 MPH "economy" fastball). Kind of scrawny. Bengie Molina speed. What's with that twitch?
Comments: Recognized as fantasy baseball expert at high school by students because he knows how to pronounce "Yovani Gallardo." Won CDM Diamond Challenge in 2000 and MLB.com inaugural experts league in 2002. Member of 1996 Palo Alto C league softball champs.
MLB Debut: Never
Potential Rating: 1E
Tom Todaro has been a Mets fan for 35 years. Growing up on dice baseball and Strat-O-Matic, Tom's been active in Rotisserie leagues since 1990, both auction and straight-draft. When not perusing stats or chasing his two kids around the house in Middletown, NJ, Tom works as a Java programmer for a software company in New York City.
Lynda Knezovich is the voice on the phone that many of you have come to recognize over the past nine years. While not a fantasy player herself, she
appreciates the enthusiasm and eagerness of the BaseballHQ customer! She may
not understand all the intricacies of the game but she takes pleasure in
hearing your stories of victory. Her ultimate goal is to respond to your
customer support issues as quickly and efficiently as possible. She
appreciates your patience, during the busy season! Prior to coming to
BaseballHQ, Lynda worked for IBM in Baltimore, Maryland as an Account
Administrator. She now lives in Roanoke, Virginia with her husband, their
daughter, a Great Dane, two Chihuahuas, and two cats.
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