The bestselling annual baseball preview from the smartest analysts in the business The essential guide to the 2010 baseball season is on deck now, and whether you're a fan or fantasy player-or both-you won't be properly informed without it. Baseball Prospectus 2010 brings together an elite group of analysts to provide the definitive look at the upcoming season in critical essays and commentary on the thirty teams, their managers, and more than sixty players and prospects from each team. - Contains critical essays on each of the thirty teams and player comments for some sixty players for each of those teams
- Projects each players stats for the coming season using the groundbreaking PECOTA projection system, which has been called "perhaps the game's most accurate projection model" (Sports Illustrated)
- From Baseball Prospectus, America's leading provider of statistical analysis for baseball
Now in its fifteenth edition, this New York Times bestselling insider's guide remains hands down the most authoritative and entertaining book of its kind. Top Ten Ways Your Friends Will Know You Haven't Read Baseball Prospectus 2010
10. You think signing Jason Bay for $66 million was a great move, and wish Omar Minaya had gone harder after Bengie Molina and Jarrod Washburn. 9. You drafted Derek Jeter and Derrek Lee early in your fantasy league this year. 8. You can't imagine why we'd need their new pitching stat--SIERA--when we already have ERA. 7. You think this might be Houston's year. 6. You've never heard of Jesus Montero, Jason Heyward, or Mike Stanton. 5. You've heard of Montero, Heyward, and Stanton, but without BP's new "MLB %" playing time projection, you overdrafted them. 4. You think your team will be better than the Yankees this year. 3. You're not bleary-eyed from staying up all night reading hundreds of pages of smart stats and witty commentary. 2. The name Matt Wieters doesn't make you giggle a little. 1. You're Brian Sabean. |
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 always a good investment |
| Review Date: March 4, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Heavy P, NY,NY |
| every year baseball prospectus just gets better and better it is one of a few must have annuals i MUST HAVE. i lug this big book everywhere i go in the month leading up to my fantasy draft. you cant beat the individual commentary and i love the player comparisons for each player which is unique to prospectus. last year i won my league and i couldn't have done it without this book. |
Previous years were better
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| Review Date: February 26, 2010 |
| Reviewer: W. B. Gray, california |
| Baseball Prospectus has had some personnel changes and the current roster is stronger in mathematicians than writers. This edition is dull. The imagination is all in the statistics, whereas the team sections tend to be boring recaps of the 2009 season that could have been written by anyone; there's no insight here. I usually look forward to this annual and tear through it greedily, but this year it keeps putting me to sleep. |
best annual baseball publication
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| Review Date: February 24, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Jeff R. Johnson, Milwaukee |
| The annual Baseball Prospectus is, IMO, the single best annual baseball publication available (and there's some dynamite competition - thank you Bill James and other sabermetricians). Lots of information and articles for the baseball junkie to read and digest here. Mine arrived the other day and I've been reading it non-stop! |
Great resource to start a new season of Major League Baseball
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| Review Date: February 20, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Steven A. Peterson, Hershey, PA (Born in Kewanee, IL) |
Each year, I buy a Bill James book and this volume to prepare for the new major league season. Both provide a delicious array of statistics. This volume surely stands on its own, though.
The book is, for the largest part, an analysis of each major league team. One of the most intriguing statistics developed is PECOTA, the projected statistics for each position player and pitcher for the upcoming season. Lots of fun when a season is over the check out the predictions! Consider these predictions: Batting average leader--Ichiro Suzuki; Home run leader--Prince Fielder; RBIs--Prince Fielder; Pitcher wins--C. C. Sabathia; Pitching saves--Joakim Soria.
My second favorite team in baseball is the star-crossed Chicago Cubs. They are fated, according to projections, to finish 82-79, so--by this book's predictions--another year without a World Series championship. My favorite team is the Pale Hose, the Chicago White Sox. Dreary news. They are predicted to finish 80-82. Looks like we won't be having an "el" series.
Let's take a look at the White Sox in greater detail. The section begins with a three and a half page narrative. Then, the player by player record (the past three years of performance) and the estimate of the 2010 record. Gordon Beckham had a nice season in 2009--.271 batting average, 14 home runs, and 63 RBIs. For the coming year? PECOTA numbers: batting average=.273, 16 homers, and 69 RBIs. Another feature is an estimate at what will happen--12% of a breakout year, 42% chance of improvement, 1% chance of attrition, and 14% chance of a collapse in performance. Paul Konerko is aging. His PECOTA scores indicate continuing decline. 23 homeruns, .251 average, 72 RBIs. Long gone are the 30 homer and 100 RBI seasons that once characterized his productivity. Another key player is the relief ace with the bulging belly, Bobby Jenks.34 savers and a 3.50 ERA, a decline from a handful of years ago.
Just to provide another example. . . . The New York Yankees are projected to finish first in the American League East with a record of 101-61. Derek Jeter is projected to hit .286 with 11 home runs and 58 RBIs. 26% chance of a collapse and 37% chance of attrition. A-Rod? .276 average, 31 home runs, and 92 RBIs.
So, another fine volume. If I can, I will crab at the rather snide comments about Bill James, who, as another reviewer notes, helped create the market for books like this. That said, this is a must read for baseball's figure filberts.
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The usual good stuff, and this year it has an index!
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| Review Date: February 18, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Hal Jordan, USA |
I'm giving it five stars, but my feelings are mixed. Given how much I look forward to it and how quickly I read it, and given I think it is the best guide out there to players and teams, five stars are merited. But, as always, I wish they took another couple of weeks and gave the book a thorough editing. Although I didn't find any errors as gross as last year's omission of the index, there is an unevenness in the writing that indicates that they are publishing what is essentially a first draft. For instance, consider this comment on Travis Ishikawa: "someone whose threat to right-handed pitching rated up there with a girlfriend's mom: inconvenient but unavoidable, so don't slip while she's in the room." I've read it four times and I have no idea what it means. Is he trying to say that Ishikawa (who bats left) does or doesn't hit right-handed pitchers well? If the book had an editor that sentence would never have made it to publication. Maybe the rush to publication has something to do with the timing of fantasy baseball drafts. Whatever the reason, year after year the Prospectus is less professional than it should be.
One other beef: Steven Goldman contributes a preface celebrating the Prospectus's fifteenth year of publication. A significant milestone, I guess, so some horn tooting is in order. But for a group that is so hard on the people who run major league teams, some acknowledgement of the Prospectus's own fubars would have been nice: The year they published on really low-grade paper and the print was smeared, the year the adjusted ERAs were totally bollixed up, the year the data on comparables had no relation to the text discussion, last year's omission of an index, and so on. And then there's Goldman's evaluation of Bill James. Now I understand that many in the analyst community are tired of genuflecting before the altar of St. Bill. But Bill James created the business these guys are in. Before the Bill James Baseball Abstract there was no market for this kind of commentary. It wasn't that the market was small or underdeveloped, there simply was no market for this kind of commentary published by a major firm and sold at places like Barnes & Noble. James created that market. Here is everything Goldman has to say about James in his discussion of the pre-Prospectus world: "Bill James came out with a book once a year, but skipped 1989 and then experimented with various flawed formats before disappearing altogether after 1995." This is roughly the equivalent of summing up Babe Ruth's impact on baseball by saying: "Ruth hit a lot of home runs for awhile, but then he got old and fat, his production declined, and he retired." If you read the whole of Goldman's preface, he is claiming for the Prospectus the role that was actually played by James's Baseball Abstract.
Ok, no more carping. If you like baseball enough to be thinking of buying this book, then you should buy it. You won't find a more complete or entertaining evaluation of players and teams. The book could be better, but even as it is, it's the best out there. |
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