Justin and I attend the Arizona First Pitch Symposium for the first time this year.  This was the 13th year of this annual event which is a testament to its continued value to the dedicated Fantasy Baseball player.

The agenda spanned over three and a half days and was filled with a great mix of baseball discussion and getting out to the ballparks to see the kids play.  I will focus on the baseball discussion sessions here and fill you in on the game observations in another article.

DAY 1 - FRIDAY

While we were there to talk about Fantasy Baseball in general, a strong focus is put on the minor leagues and the players we would be scouting at the AFL games.  There is probably no better person to lay the ground work for this than Deric McKamey.  Deric is a professional scout for the St. Louis Cardinals, and the author of the Minor League Analyst, published by BaseballHQ.  Deric ran through all the significant players appearing in the AFL and on Team USA, discussed strengths and weaknesses, and fielded questions from the crowd.  Deric was also very accessible for one-on-one conversation and Justin and I spent alot of time picking his brain.

The minor league goodness continued with a panel of minor league experts debating the futures of various prospects.  The panel included Jim Callis (Baseball America), John Sickels (minorleagueball.com), Jason Grey (fantasybaseball.com), and Deric McKamey.  That is fantasy players wet dream to get to watch that group breakdown and debate players.

After the morning sessions we were off to the park, but the learning did not stop there.  the various analysts spread out around the park and led discussions on topics ranging from Player Analysis, to league management, you could even get your own fantasy rosters analyzed.

DAY 2 - SATURDAY

On Saturday we broke away from the heavy prospect emphasis and dove in to major league players with a discussion on the surprises of 2007.  this was another panel discussion where the guys would try to come to a consensus about surprising seasons from 2007.  Is Andruw Jones as bad as last year looked?  How about Jason Bay?  Is Ryan Braun really this good?  If you were there, you would have the answers to these questions and many many more.

Of great interest to us was the next segment called "In Quest of Accuracy".  This discussion revolved around the challenge of defining accuracy as it pertains to baseball projections.  What is accuracy?  What does a fantasy player consider accuracy when they pay for a projection set?  How can we do better?  What obstacles must we overcome?  Naturally this was very relevent to us since Rotochamps publishes our own projection set each year.

Fantasy Baseball is an every changing game, and the evolution is not slowing down.  In an very interesting segment called "Rules Innovations" we talked about interesting rules that people have added to their leagues to spice it up.  Many unique ideas were presented and debated, and I think several leagues will be testing new rules in 2008 as a result.

If you have ever wanted to watch an expert auction, the XFL Expert Keeper League holds their auction during the First Pitch Symposium and allows all attends to view the event.  At the same time, there was a Scoresheet Forum for all the SIM players to get their fix.

DAY 3 - SUNDAY

The last day kicked off with a discussion about the trends of injuries in baseball, realistic time frames to return from these injuries, and then a discussion of the significant injuries from 2007.  Rick Wilton (baseballinjuryreport.com) is the leading independant baseball injury analyst and shared his thoughts on many players and also fielded questions from the crowd.  If you have not checked it out yet, his website is an invaluable resource all season.

To finish the weekend off we got back to our roots and got a final hit of prospecting from professional Toronto Blue Jays scout Kimball Crossley.  Kimball was equally entertaining and knowledgeable as he filled us with nearly 2 hours of minor league info.

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This event offers something for every fantasy player, no matter what kind of league you compete in.  No matter which group session you liked best, the most fun came from meeting fantasy players from around the country, all brought together to share this passion.  We meet so many great people that I really can't wait to get back there again next fall.

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by Heath Shaffer (aka rotochamp1)