Remember when someone showed up to your fantasy baseball draft using a laptop? At first, you probably wrote him off as a total dork, but when he left the draft with more talent on his bench than in your starting outfield, you might have reconsidered. At this very moment, we may be at another fantasy technology paradigm shift as it is now possible to use just an iPhone to draft and manage your fantasy baseball team.

I took the liberty of looking at the available iPhone applications that would enable this not-to-distant future:

• 2010 RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit ($3.99) This is the mobile version of RotoWire’s fantasy baseball draft kit and is complete with rankings, historical stats, projections, and analysis on the names you will hear on draft day. RotoWire also has a free fantasy news application that you may want to look into.
• Fanball.com Fantasy News and Updates (Free) Another players news application from a completely different source than RotoWire uses. For hot news, I like to check to multiple sources for the latest information, so having two player news applications on your iPhone can be nothing but good for you.
• CBS Sports Mobile (Free) This application is a mini-version of the full-fledged CBS Sports site. In addition to easy up-to-the-minute player news, you can adjust your fantasy baseball roster on the fly.
• Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball (Free) Not officially released yet either, this application will allow fantasy players to manage their teams and get real-time scoring. Conceivable, you could go the entire season without ever having to use one of those antiquated laptops.
• MLB.com At Bat 2010 (TBD $14.99) The pricing for the 2010 edition has not been announced yet, but expect this year’s version to improve on an already stellar product. Just released, MLB.com At Bat 2010 will allow users to watch any game they want (subject to blackout restrictions). In addition, just like last year’s version, fantasy players can listen to audio from every game. We can only hope that the 2010 version will feature video from every MLB game. It has in fact, gotten even better!
• ESPN ScoreCenter (Free) Just think of this application of all of ESPN’s scoreboards tucked into a nice little application. You can check out in game boxscores and even watch the gamecast of a your game of interest. This is a great free alternative to MLB.com At Bat.

Between all of those application, you can prepare for your draft, adjust your rosters, and follow player news. The days of staring at laptop during your fantasy draft just may be over. And if you get an iPad when it is released, your laptop days are definitely over.

One of the things that disturbed me about putting this list was that the fantasy baseball applications worth mentioning were either by the major or mid-major players in the fantasy industry. There is definitely a business opportunity for a killer fantasy baseball application.

There may be additional application releases in the next month, so I plan to adjust this list accordingly.

Hot off the presses, RotoWire has announced the purchase of Mock Draft Central. We reported earlier that Mock Draft Central was for sale and that Mock Draft Central had received an offer and was negotiating terms. This concludes four months of negotiations by both sides.

The official RotoWire press release did not disclose the terms, but it was definitely more than the $195,000 the original Mock Draft Central online auction would have started. Mock Draft Central’s founder Jason Pliml will stay on with RotoWire for a while to ensure a smooth transition.

These is a great acquistion by RotoWire, as the draft software will perfectly compliment its commissioner product. Even though both sites will be maintained as separate entities, Mock Draft Central’s and RotoWire’s user bases are what you would describe as the heavy fantasy user, which creates a great opportunity to market the two products to both user bases. I would not be shocked if the deal paid for itself just through new subscriptions in the next two to three years.

Congratulations to Peter Schoenke at RotoWire on his new acquistion and to Jason Pliml on the sale of his baby.

Lots of really good articles have been written in the last week or so, and these are a few I thought that I would pass along to you. Go ahead, take a read:

• From RotoWire: Usually the argument is whether fantasy football is better than fantasy baseball. But, Kenn Ruby dares to argue both sides of the “which is better, fantasy football or fantasy basketball” argument. Check out Why Fantasy Football is Better Than Fantasy Basketball and Why Fantasy Basketball is Better Than Fantasy Football
• From Open Sports: Daniel Dobish of Open Sports writes about ten reasons to play Fox’s Fantasy Quick challenge. Expect he never mentions that Fox Sports is a major investor in Open Sports and that Open Sports actually built the game for Fox (see: Fox Sports Outsources Fantasy to Open Sports). It is perfectly fine to promote your products, but let users know you are, because it is sort of illegal now, according to the latest FTC guidelines on advertisements.
• From USA Today: Looks like ESPN is looking to bid for March Madness, which has been on CBS Sports for the longest time. Honestly, I could careless which network broadcasts the NCAA Tournament, but if this means the end of March Madness on Demand, there will be some very upset fans (and happy managers).
• From Bleacher Report: I love this diatribe about how fantasy football on the whole needs to really start including real defensive stats. In Walter Kirkwood’s Man Up, America: It’s Time for Defense in Fantasy Football, I love how he asks if I even knew about Patrick Willis‘ phenomenal rookie season, and then he read my mind by daring me to name his team. I had clue (it’s SF), but the article is an entertaining read.

Don’t forget to come back here often for more fantasy goodness.

Rotowire, which is based in Madison, Wisconsin, recently received some great coverage from Madison’s WKOW-27, an ABC affiliate. In a two-minute piece about the upcoming fantasy football, Rotowire and its president Peter Schoenke were featured interviewed on two-minute piece about the upcoming fantasy football season. Check out the embedded video clip:

You cannot buy that kind of coverage. Congratulations to Peter and the whole RotoWire team on the press!

The economy is hitting everyone to some degree, with feeling it harder than others. Spending money on a fantasy football subscription might be a harder decision these days, so I am happy to see that RotoWire has found a way to still get its subscription fees, while fantasy players get their RotoWire subscription for free.

RotoWire partners with CheckoutFree.com to present the RotoWire for Free. To get the free subscription, users have to purchase or try out another product, and that that product pays the RotoWire subscription fee. While this is an option RotoWire has offered for a while, with the current state of the economy, it might be a much more appealing option this fantasy football season.

In case you were wondering, this was not a paid ad by RotoWire. I think it is a good idea, and something which people should know. So, I wrote an article.