Like the regular-season issues of Heater, the ST issues will appear twice weekly: once on Monday and then again on Friday.

 Craig Brown and I will be running the team. You can track our progress at http://flexbb.baseball.sportsline.com/.

2008 MLB Schedule

MINORS
The biggest request that I get is for more minor-league coverage. So we are going to boost our output in this area. The most likely option is a monthly mini-HEATER with stats for everybody in Triple-A, but I am not decided. If you have an opinion (on this or any other topic), email me at johnb@heatermagazine.com.

SPRING TRAINING
It is my goal to publish Spring Training stats this year. At a minimum, you should expect to see ST box scores in the Rundown. You may also see an abbreviated HEATER with ST stats. The route I go depends on the data that are available to me, and I will not know that until March. (If you want to be sure not to miss a box score, sign up for the Rundown today!)

FANTASY BASEBALL
In 2008, Heater is going to go our own way in fantasy coverage. Instead of the usual writeups, we are going to take a page (literally) from the strong-selling 2008 Graphical Player and present two pages of GP-style mini-profiles. Now, at a glance, you will be able to see how the recent performance of a player matches up against his season & career, as well as a comparison of stats from last year at the same spot in the season. Craig Brown & Marc Normandin will still provide their sharp commentary.

You still have time to order the 2008 Graphical Player and get the breakthrough fantasy book of the season, with pitch profiles for pitchers, spray charts for hitters, and three-year projections for everyone. See sample pages at http://www.heatermagazine.com/therundown. And then goto http://www.baseballhq.com/books/gp.shtml to get the rest!

WHEELHOUSE
Our scruffy web-in-a-box has gotten a lot slicker since September. We have cleaned up the interface, added more filtering options, and put a lot more stats in the main player box so that you do not need to drill down as often. But those improvements are only the tip of the iceberg:

Projections
Wheelhouse can now read projection files and present those numbers next to the career numbers for the players. You simply tell Wheelhouse where to find the files; the program does the rest. Whenever you get updates, just put them in the same spot and Wheelhouse will load the files anew! Moreover, you can view projections from multiple sources side by side!

Projection files from different sources have different layouts, so each source has to be programmed separately. At present, the only recognized projections are those by BaseballHQ. When another source puts out their projections for 2008, let us know and we will try to add them. To be clear, Wheelhouse is NOT bundled with proprietary projections; you must have your own subscriptions to the services and provide your own source files. We may also code for publicly available projections such as ZiPS (by Dan Szymborski), CHONE (by Chone Smith), & Marcels (by Tangotiger). We will email you when we add more sources.

League Manager
If you are fed up with tracking your draft in a cobbled-together Excel spreadsheet (or worse), now you have an alternative. Using Wheelhouse, you can create rosters and track projected standings during the draft. With ONE screen, you can view the rosters of every team in your league, plus projected standings using either 2007 or (if you have loaded them) projected numbers. The manager allows up to 16 teams and 30 positions. You should be able to set up any reasonably common 4×4 or 5×5 league.

Moreover, if you are the commissioner of your league, you can take the INI file for your league (found in the Leagues subfolder) and share it with the other owners. Instruct them to download the demo version of WH from the Heater site, and then they can set up the INI for themselves. Now you can set up the league once & be sure that all owners have the correct rosters! (Note: The demo version of Wheelhouse recognizes only one league per user, whereas the subscriber-only version has no limit.)

Split Stats
Wheelhouse will now export split stats along with YTD stats. At the end of each player record in the CSV file, you will find 16 fields with AB, BA, OBP, and SLG for vsRH, vsLH, Home, and Road. As with the Splits tab on the main screen, the splits export is available only to subscribers.

On that note, you will find, in the subscriber area of the web site, a file called Wheelhouse2007.zip. This file contains the full-year stats for all 1,276 players from 2007, including the new splits fields. So if you want this data for your own efforts, we have already done the work.

Smart Keying
The main player box of Wheelhouse now handles smart keying. So if you want to jump to Lance Berkman, you can type B-E-R and get right there.

Whew! To stave off the inevitable emails: No, Wheelhouse unfortunately does not run on Macs. Frankly, given my travails with Windows, I might retreat to supporting only the Commodore 64. For now, though, I will soldier on. If you have any problems, email me and I do my best to fix them. We had a squadron of testers, but something may have slipped by.

FUNGO
I have long believed that a magazine devoted to a sport should have a diversion for its readers. Well, we have come up with a pen-and-paper game that might actually replace your Klondike habit. Have you always wanted to face off against the likes of Curt Schilling, Jake Peavy, & Johan Santana? This is your chance.

And these are our ideas only as of January 1! Having been with us last year, you know that we never stop innovating (for example, the Rundown was introduced only in September of last year). We hope you can join us again in 2008 for what should be a great season of baseball and HEATER.