Lawr Michaels

Lawr Michaels has been a player in the fantasy baseball industry since he began writing for John Benson in 1993. Since the he has written for STATS, Inc, was the first fantasy columnist for CBS Sportsline, and has appeared in numerous journals and on websites. In 1996 he founded CREATiVESPORTS, a staple for serious fantasy players.

Over the past 15 years Lawr has been widely published and has participated in, and won a multitude of titles including AL Tout Wars crowns in 2001 and 2009. In 2010 Lawr and the CREATiVESPORTS team joined forces with Todd Zola and the Mastersball.com squad to form one of the most formidable fantasy organizations in the industry.

Along with his Mastersball duties, Lawr works for MLB.com as a statistician. He also fronts the band Strictly Olga, and plays bass in the Biletones. Lawr lives in El Cerrito , California, with his dogs Jazzmine and Pavlov. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Todd Zola

In 1997, after a failing to fleece him in a trade, Jason Grey decided if he couldn't beat him, he may as well ask him to join him, and Mastersball was born.  Focusing primarily on the science of player valuation and game theory, Todd carved out a niche in the industry, earning the respect of his peers.  In 2006, Mastersball.com was purchased by Fantasy Planet and Todd became the Research Director for www.fantasybaseball.com.  In 2009, Todd relaunched Mastersball as a private site, paving the way for the recent merger with CREATiVESPORTS.com.

Presently, Todd represents the site in Tout Wars and the XFL, as well as being a multiple league champion in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship.  He is a contributor to the fantasy content at MLB.com and SI.com, a frequent guest on Sirius/XM and Blog Talk Radio and an annual speaker on the spring and fall First Pitch Forum symposiums.

Todd has an advanced degree in Chemistry and is employed as a Peptide Chemist at Peptimmune in Cambridge, MA. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Rob Leibowitz

Rob Leibowitz is entering his twentieth season of fantasy baseball and has been a member of the fantasy baseball writing community since 1997 when he launched Rotoheaven.com. He then served as the editor and chief of Fantasy Insights Baseball before joining forces with Todd Zola and Jason Grey at Mastersbal.com in 2001 until 2006 when Mastersball merged with Fantasybaseball.com. In 2008 Rob served as content manager for Fantasybaseball.com. In 2009 Rob wrote for Fanball's Owner's Edge and Rototimes as well as for the Rotosynthesis blog. He returned to the newly reconsituted Mastersball.com in the Fall of 2009.

Rob has been a member of NL Tout Wars since 2001 and has finished in the top five in seven of nine seasons. He will be moving to AL Tout for the first time this season. His work has appeared in a myriad of magazines, web sites, and radio shows as well. This season he has brought back his transaction analysis blog “The Diamond Exchange” and has added a new series called “The Prospector”. He has also updated and will be providing support for the excel-based Auction Draft Worksheet.

Rob holds Bachelor of Arts in Geography and History from Binghamton University and a Masters in City Planning from Georgia Tech and works as a principal urban planner in Kingston, NY. He is happily married to his wife, Rebecca, and proud to be the dad of his one-year old daughter, Julia. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Brian Walton

In addition to his baseball and football writing duties currently with Mastersball and pre-merger at CREATiVESPORTS, Brian is a long-time contributor to Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball and Football Guides. He authors the St. Louis Cardinals prospect section in the annual FOX Fantasy Baseball / Scout.com Prospects Guide and been published on FOXSports.com, FOXSportsMidwest.com and Yahoo.com.

Brian is a full-time writer. His Cardinals organization-focused site is The Cardinal Nation, a part of Scout.com in association with FOX Sports and he also blogs daily at The Cardinal Nation Blog. Brian pens a weekly column on the minor league system for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and has a weekly segment on KXnO FOX Sports Radio in Des Moines.

In fantasy competition, he is the 2009 National League Tout Wars champion, having amassed the highest point total in the 12-year history of the league, and is a member of the XFL. He competes annually in the $100,000 National Fantasy Baseball Championship and National Fantasy Football Championship, placing in the top 25 nationally in each in 2009. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Perry Van Hook

Perry Van Hook, also well known as Captain Hook, has been playing fantasy baseball for over thirty years and is now returning for his second tour of duty at Mastersball.

Before many of his current readers were born, Perry like many of the staff elders got stats once a week and had to do league standings by hand. Fortunately some brighter bulbs from his college campus – UCLA, invented this interweb thing and now people have stats updated daily at numerous different sites.

Perry first joined Todd, Rob and Jason at Mastersball in 2004 and moved with them to FantasyBaseball.com in 2006. He is now the only one left there, a staple of their Live Advice program and contributing via his blog. He has also written for Fantasy Sports Magazine and Esquire. In his college days Perry was very active with the Daily Bruin and worked on the Herald Examiner prior to its print demise. He is now a regular contributor for Examiner.com

Perry’s daughter Megan and his three grandchildren live north of Seattle in Bothell, Washington and Chris’s daughter Jaimee has just become engaged and plans on adding more grandchildren to learn baseball from the Captain. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Jesse Draper

Jesse Draper has been playing fantasy sports since 1994, and has been a member of the Mastersball community since 2004. This year Jesse is editing our staff roundtable discussions as well as updating some of Todd Zola’s previous strategy and theory articles, posting to the blog, and whatever else he can manage to fit in (see below).

In 2005, Jesse got his break into the industry writing for Gridiron Grumblings (now Sports Grumblings, on and off, for the next three years. In 2008 Jesse took a position with FantasyBaseball.com where he covered the AL West among other things. Jesse wrote his Masters Thesis at Michigan State University on Fantasy Sports Communities in 2008.  He is also working on a book tentatively titled The Masters of Their Domain: Cashing In On the Gurus of Fantasy Baseball, 2000-2009. On top of all of that, Jesse is currently working on a Ph.D. in History, where his research focuses on ballpark-driven urban renewal policies.

Jesse lives in Lansing, Michigan with his wife Natalie, and their three kids Harley, Jack, and Wesley. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Chris Kreush

Christopher Kreush has been playing fantasy baseball since the days of weekly mail-in rosters. From there he graduated to the internet and got his feet wet in salary cap games and multi-list draft leagues, eventually moving on to single list draft leagues. He played exclusively draft leagues until being asked to take over a team in an auction league in 2002. From there, Chris was hooked on auctions and 95% of his fantasy teams have been auctions since then. The past few years have seen draft leagues starting to reappear in his portfolio and he is looking to cut his teeth in the NFBC.

Chris came upon Mastersball in the early 2000’s, was immediately drawn to the forum community, strategy and analysis and has been a member and very active forum participant ever since. He became a part of the staff in 2010 and now writes the Starter Report preseason and will be doing Starter Analysis during the regular season.

Chris has been a manager in the transportation and logistics industry since 1978. He has been a New York Yankees fan since he was a young boy. His hobbies are going to baseball games, playing golf and poker. He lives in west New Jersey and has a 25 year old son, David. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Jason Mastrodonato is a student at Northeastern University and a sports reporter for The Boston Globe. A competitive fantasy baseball player for years, Mastrodonato finished in second place in his first expert league last season, getting edged out by Patrick DiCaprio in the FantasyPros911.com expert competition.

He appears on the Fantasy Roundtable Radio Show every Tuesday night at 10:30 p.m. with DiCaprio, as well as other fantasy gurus from around the industry.

With aspirations to be a baseball writer, Mastrodonato joined the Globe at the end of 2009 as sports reporter covering high schools and colleges in the greater Boston area. He is especially knowledgeable in the AL East, specifically concerning the Red Sox. He will graduate from NU in 2011 with a degree in Business and a minor in journalism.

Mastrodonato is an editor and writer for Mastersball, having came over in the merger with CREATiVESPORTS. He has been with Lawr and the gang for more than a year and will be writing the Fact or Fiction blog as well as other fantasy content throughout the season. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Marc Meltzer

Marc Meltzer just completed his tenth year as the lead Fantasy Football writer for CreativeSports.com and is a contributing writer for baseball.  Marc’s weekly football contributions include the weekly Hotpage and NFFC Zone.  Marc’s baseball contributions include spring training coverage from Florida, NL East updates, and Florida State League minor league reports.  Marc has been a major contributor and editor of the Fantasy Football Guide since 2002.  Moving forward with Mastersball.com, Marc will have a variety of roles including the Closer Report.

Marc has been an avid fantasy sports player for over 20 years with multiple championships in football, baseball, and basketball.  2009 was a great season for fantasy football, as Marc finished 3^rd overall in the NFFC Primetime and 5^th overall in the NFFC Online.

In real life, Marc is married with two children and is a Senior Software Technical Leader for Belcan Engineering in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida working on the latest and greatest in aircraft control system technology. Marc holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Florida (Go Gators!) and an MBA from Embry-Riddle University. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Pasko Varnica

Pasko Varnica is currently collaborating with JP Kastner on the software development of a sophisticated fantasy baseball draft package. Upon its completion, the package will be offered by Mastersball.com to its subscribers.

Pasko started playing fantasy baseball at a local level in 1992. Through his association with Lawr Michaels and CREATiVESPORTS, he began competing at an expert level four years ago. In 2008, Pasko won the KFFL Experts league.

While with CREATiVESPORTS, Pasko has contributed with articles reporting on the expert leagues in which he participated. Pasko is a history buff of ancient Rome and writes short fiction about sports in Rome. CREATiVESPORTS published his short fiction work entitled “Fantasy Chariots Racing”. Readers can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .