xml:lang=”en” lang=”en” xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
Heater Magazine Blazes Into Third Year of Fantasy Baseball Coverage
Chicago, Ill (PRWEB) February 5, 2008
Heater Magazine, a stat-rich baseball magazine for fantasy leaguers and general baseball fans, kicks off its third season this April.
“We view ourselves as the ‘Investor’s Business Daily’ for fantasy baseball,” says publisher John Burnson. “There is a gap in the market for a baseball magazine that sees baseball stats as a resource to be tapped and not just as text to lay out in columns.”
Heater is digital – each Wednesday during the baseball season, subscribers download a new 65-page issue. Issues are standard PDF’s, so subscribers need no special software, and the magazine can be read on both Windows PC’s and Macs.
Heater features contributors from such leading baseball and fantasy baseball web sites as The Hardball Times, Baseball Prospectus, and BaseballHQ. Subscribers also enjoy such features as projected pitching rotations for the next week, actual batting line-ups for the previous week, and weekly tracking of the top minor-league prospects..
Still, the bulk of Heater is baseball statistics – lots of them.
“Our readers tend to be very detail-oriented – very into numbers and what the stats say about a player’s performance looking back and going forward. They want the edge in their fantasy baseball leagues that comes from being able to see reality from illusion.”
However, Heater is not just another baseball stat-oriented website. “The web is very good at answering questions – giving more information about Player X. But magazines are good at generating questions – helping you see that Player X is interesting in the first place. That’s our job.”
To that end, Heater Magazine includes two types of pages: team pages, which gather the stats about a team; and position pages, which gather the stats about the players at a position. Subscribers also receive a second supplemental issue on Saturdays with updated information to help them make weekend changes for their fantasy baseball leagues.
Helping readers to sort through the data is critical. “Fantasy baseball leaguers lack tools. The web is good at offering statistics but much less good at packaging it. And forget about printing it!” Readers of Heater relish having pages that they can easily scan at lunch or on a train. “For the serious baseball fan, there’s nothing finer than having a page full of stats to pick over.” Subscribers also get Wheelhouse, a Windows application with career stats, seasonal splits, and weekly breakdowns for all 1,300 active major-league baseball players, as well as a PDF emailed each morning with all the previous day’s MLB box scores.
Ultimately, what distinguishes Heater is that it’s a baseball magazine created by fantasy baseball players. “We’re fantasy leaguers ourselves,” says Burnson. “We know what information we would like to have in our own fantasy drafts or to make replacement decisions during the season. And because we put out the magazine, we can put it in.” Burnson notes that the digital format means that the magazine can be easily enhanced. “If we think of something, or a reader thinks of something, it goes in. We are constantly going back to our data provider and saying ‘Give us this’ and ‘Give us that.’ We are committed to making each issue better than the last.”
For more information about how Heater Magazine can help you win your fantasy baseball league, and to see a full sample issue, go to http://www.HeaterMagazine.com.
John Burnson is the publisher of Heater Magazine, the editor of the 2008 Graphical Player, and a writer with BaseballHQ.com. For press-related or other inquiries, please email John at johnb@heatermagazine.com.
###
Attachments
©Copyright 1997-, Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
