Joseph S. Sheehan was born inNew York City on February 26, 1971, and attendedRegis High School. He graduated from theUniversity of Southern California in 1994 with a degree injournalism. Sheehan lives in theNew York City area. He is one of the founders and was a co-editor of the first annual book ofsabermetricbaseball forecasts and analyses byBaseball Prospectus in 1996 as well as several later volumes.
On October 10, 2007, Sheehan took on an additional role as Managing Editor of the newly founded Basketball Prospectus.[1]
As of December 31, 2009, Sheehan no longer worked for Baseball Prospectus. However, he continued to make occasional contributions to BP's "Unfiltered" blog.
At the beginning of the 2010 baseball season, he began publishing a weekly "Inside Baseball" column inSports Illustrated.[2]
He also contributes toRotoWire and appears weekly on the RotoWire Fantasy Sports Today show on Sirius XM radio.
In an on-line interview, he recalled how he became involved with Baseball Prospectus:[3]
I’ve been involved with Baseball Prospectus since before it had a name. Gary Huckabay andClay Davenport had a plan to publish Clay's Translations and Gary's projections along with player comments in a book. They had been doing so onUSENET, in the rec.sport.baseballnewsgroup, for years.
Rany Jazayerli offered them his Organizational Pitching Reports for use in the as-yet-unnamed book. When Rany—who was a friend of mine though aStrat league—told me this, I offered my services as an editor on the project. Gary, who only really knew me through the newsgroup, invited me on board. I might even forgive him one day.
This all happened in the fourth quarter of 1995. We published BP 1996 just in time for Opening Day.
Sheehan wrote the "Prospectus Today" column for BaseballProspectus.com, and is a frequent contributor toESPN.com and commentator onESPN radio,Fantasy Focus on XM Radio and other baseball news programs and an occasional contributor to other publications, includingSports Illustrated.com and theNew York Times.[4]
In his first column writing as Managing Editor of the on-line Basketball Prospectus on October 10, 2007, Sheehan professed his lifelong love for basketball and outlined the plans for this new entry in the lineup of products by Prospectus Entertainment Ventures, LLC.[5]
On December 31, 2009, Sheehan became a free agent: his contract was not renewed with Baseball Prospectus. As he said, "No hard feelings or recriminations, just two entities doing business."[6]
By April, he had landed a position as a regular on-line columnist withSports Illustrated. He also publishes ablog, "Joe Sheehan," and a subscription newsletter, "The Joe Sheehan Newsletter".[7]