Late-Round Perspectives: Scott Barrett

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

Scott Barrett is the Chief Executive Officer of fantasypoints.com. He spent time as a Senior Fantasy Analyst at PFF. He's a five-time FSWA finalist. He likes Matt Jones more than you do, and he's always providing some hashtag dank stats. These are his late-round perspectives.

I realize that you have different insight on me compared to other perspectives guests.

Scott Barrett (0:34)

Oh, we gotta talk about that.

JJ Zachariason (0:35)

Yeah, compared to other perspectives guests that have been on. So you wrote under me at Numberfire for, I don't know, how long were you at Numberfire for? Two years-ish?

Scott Barrett (0:44)

Three years maybe?

JJ Zachariason (0:45)

And yeah, I mean, like you have a different perspective on me as a human because you got to feel my wrath as an editor for those three years.

Scott Barrett (0:55)

But I lived in fear of you. You were such a sweetheart, but I was such a delicate little flower in my fragile ego.

JJ Zachariason (1:03)

I mean, but you, so like I was only, I mean, I was in my mid-twenties at that point, right? Like this is a pretty long time ago. And so like, I still hadn't fully like developed into, you know, the analyst that I am and wanted to be and all of that. And I was kind of like learning as I went, you know, with the editing side of things and with the management side of things. And so I think it really helped me become a better writer and analyst, like through working with all of you guys. Cause I mean, it was you, there was Graham Barfield, there was Chris Raybon, obviously Jim Saunders, Brandon Gadula, who are still a fan duel. But there's so many really, really good writers and analysts that were at Numberfire for at one point in time.

And it definitely pushed me to at least be better.

But I really think that it's sort of like, I think that people can all, and Denny Carter talks about this all the time, but I think that people can become better writers and such if they just read more, right? If they just consume more information and whatnot. And I felt that way to a degree with the analysis is that when I'm breaking down someone else's work and trying to help them get better, that's just naturally gonna make my stuff hopefully a little bit better too. But I remember distinctly with you where we were going back and forth on some, I mean, you were doing some baseball stuff for Number of Fire 2 at one point.

Scott Barrett (2:24)

Yeah, I started off as a baseball guy.

JJ Zachariason (2:26)

Yeah, but then you wrote an article on Frank Gore and it was the turning point. It was the turning point for you. What exactly went down there? You probably have better recollection than I do.

Scott Barrett (2:40)

Yeah, I think about this all the time. So I was legitimately one of your worst writers.

JJ Zachariason (2:45)

That's not true. To be fair, that's not true. There were some folks like Andrew.

Scott Barrett (2:52)

In comparison to a Graham Barfield, where just for him, it clicked, and he got it from the start.

And with you, you were so patient. You had so much handholding. We would go back and forth on edits for hours, and you would just repeat the same thing over and over and over again.

And I don't know what it was with me. I think it was trying way too hard.

I was also trying to do the Matthew Berry thing, where these overly long, quirky, funny intros. I'm like, that only works if you're Matthew Berry. I was not a stats guy. I was not good at stats. That took a lot of time and effort from studying people like you and Pat Thorman and Rich Rebar and like, okay, how did they arrive at this stat? Why are they using it? How can I get there myself?

But legitimately, painstaking hours and back and forth emails, you editing my work and getting it to a place where it was good. And I don't know what happened. I write this one article about why Frank Gore in his like age 37 season was a strong best ball value, which he was.

And I just like, I felt it right off the bat. I'm like, oh, that's good. That's a home run right there. And you send me this email back and you're like, yo, what is this? This is perfect. This is so good. You finally get it. And I'm like, I know, I finally get it. And so it dropped the day before my birthday. And the next, and like it did really well on social. You gave it a shout out and it was on my birthday. And Sig Bloom is like one of the people who like got me into this industry. I was working the soul crushing nine to five, where I just wanted to kill myself every single day. But they let you listen to podcasts. I would listen to his podcast every single day. So he was like one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. And he retweeted it. It was like, this is great work and followed me. And it was like the best birthday present. And from there, it was just like home run after home run. Like it really just clicked. And I think that speaks to, for some people you see this steady linear growth.