In this episode, we sit down with Rob Dressler, the mastermind behind the indispensable scouting tool Pro Baseball Radar. What started as a quest for a fantasy baseball edge has exploded into a must-have platform for over 100 colleges, major league organizations, and agencies.

We dive into how a self-taught coder from Long Island created a system that levels the playing field for evaluating talent from the SEC to the SWAC—and everywhere in between. Rob pulls back the curtain on the data, the park factors, and the “eye test” that make his system so unique, and explains why he’s become such a believer in the wild, diverse world of junior college baseball.

In this episode, we cover:

⚾ From Fantasy to Reality: How winning his home fantasy league (and subsequently getting kicked out) led Rob to teach himself to code and build a platform now used by professional teams.

🧮 The JUCO Adjustment: How Pro Baseball Radar accounts for the wind in Kansas, the heat in Arizona, and massive differences in strength of schedule to create a fair rating for every player.

🤖 Data, AI, and the Grunt Work: The surprising role of ChatGPT in modern coding and the immense manual labor required to clean up misspelled names and incomplete rosters from team websites.

🌎 A Tampa Baseball Hub: Why moving to Florida has been a game-changer for his business, from watching D2 national champs to being surrounded by a hotbed of high school and JUCO talent.

🎯 Why He Bought Into JUCO: Rob’s outsider perspective on the incredible diversity and value of junior college baseball, from international recruits to SEC bounce-backs and everything in between.

🏈 Confessions of a Flexible Fan: The story of how a lifelong Giants fan became a Buccaneers supporter after experiencing the electric atmosphere of Tom Brady’s Tampa.

Tune in for a fascinating look at the analytics revolution at the grassroots level and the story of how one guy’s passion project became an essential tool for the baseball world.

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