Job Title: Fantasy injury analyst Employers: ESPN, Sports publishers Openings: Build a following Salary Cap: Around $200,000 Number of Jobs: A handful

On a cool evening in Miami last month, New York Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez fired a 72-mile-per-hour curveball toward Florida Marlins catcher Matt Treanor—and heard a pop. While most people were probably fretting about the Mets' future as the team's star pitcher clutched desperately at his hamstring, another subset of fans—fantasy baseball players—were wondering what a real-life injury would mean for their make-believe baseball teams.

Enter Stephania Bell, whose job title sounds like something out of a Thomas Pynchon novel: fantasy injury analyst. A physical therapist by training, she's melded her grasp of all things musculoskeletal with her passion for sports, studying the latest pro athlete twists, tears, and fractures to offer her assessment on a variety of ESPN television broadcasts, blogs, and podcasts.

In the case of Martinez, that meant watching the tape of his hamstring injury 30 to 40 times for clues to what had happened and how long he might be out.

"I saw that he grabbed up high on his leg, near where the tendon is," she says, noting that injuries in that area take longer to heal and that Martinez's pitching motion puts extra stress on his hamstring. "When [the Mets] said he'd be back in a couple weeks, I knew that was optimistic."

Bell included her evaluation in her column on ESPN.com and presented it in her weekly fantasy-show segment, and sure enough, a couple of weeks later, the Mets announced that Martinez would indeed remain sidelined longer than expected. Undoubtedly, those fantasy fans who had factored Bell's analysis into their roster decisions were giving her virtual high fives.

To the data-obsessed fantasy-sports community—a population numbering nearly 20 million and driving a $1.5 billion-dollar industry—Bell is a hero, one of a handful of analysts covering sports injuries for the fantasy crowd that forms a sort of parallel universe of analysts, beat writers, and producers alongside that of traditional sports (and, yes, she does go to spring training and the Super Bowl).

Bell discovered the unlikely profession after she sustained an injury, underwent physical therapy, and developed an increased sensitivity to both the physical and psychological components of a sports injury. After attending graduate school in physical therapy, Bell opened up her own practice in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The fantasy aspect came through pure personal interest in fantasy sports—football and baseball in particular. After she let it be known to one league that she was a physical therapist, a fellow fantasy player begged her for a medical assessment of an athlete's injury. Soon enough, she became the go-to gal for injury tips in her league. Through connections, she landed a gig writing a column for fantasy-sports site Rotowire.com, which led to gig on XM Satellite Radio and ultimately caught the attention of ESPN. The sports channel flew her out to its headquarters, in Bristol, Connecticut, for a screen test and made her a regular on-air expert.

Now, she spends her days reviewing game footage, talking with medical sources, and otherwise tracking key athletes—in between TV and radio appearances in San Francisco and Bristol.

With the fantasy-sports business expanding to include sophisticated data-analysis products, videogames, and even news and player alerts sent directly to cell phones, Bell's in a good spot. "People are more involved now. They want to be their own general manager," she says. "And with so much money being bet on these games, there's a need for expert opinions. And the traditional sports world gets this."

Indeed. Last week, one of the programs on which she's a contributor—ESPN.com's Fantasy Football Now—received a Sports Emmy in the Outstanding New Approaches—Coverage category, the first fantasy show to ever win the award. Somewhere, a make-believe Gatorade cooler was being dumped on Bell's head.