Franklin Fantasy Baseball Analyst

Sporting News, The, March 28, 1994 by Steve Gietschier

Welcome to the 21st century! The Fantasy Baseball Analyst is a digital book just a wee bit larger than a domino. It snaps into the back of the DBS-2, a pocket-sized, battery-operated device that utilizes a 16-bit microprocessor and displays data on a five-line LCD screen.

The DBS-2 can store two books at once, each of which can contain 20 megabytes of compressed information. According to Franklin, that's equivalent to 20 printed Bibles. Users can bounce back and forth from one book to the other, don headphones to hear speech and sound and use the 1,200-19,200 BPS-capable serial port to hook up to a PC, a laptop or a telephone. The DBS-2 will sell separately for $129.

The Analyst is geared toward fantasy players, but it is loaded with information valuable to non-rotoheads as well. It contains eight statistical databases plus 1993's final standings, the 1994 schedules and a list of players' birthdays. Access to the databases is menu-driven and quite easy to grasp. In a few minutes, almost anyone can be manipulating the data comfortably.

The Batting Register, for example, holds the complete career batting stats for all non-pitchers who batted in the major leagues last season. A user can access the stats for an individual player, all those at a particular position or a whole team, and then go on to ask more intricate questions. The typed request "max oba mi br al," for example, asks for players with the highest on-base average among middle infielders who batted righthanded in the American League.

Purchasers of the DBS-2/Analyst package also receive a hardcopy 1994 scouting report plus a mailer for sending the cartridge back to Franklin in July. Their promise is to return it by July 31 loaded with 1994's first-half stats. Fantastic!