Baseball Prospectus: The Essential Guide to the 2009 Baseball Season

by Baseball Prospectus and Steve Goldman

Book Overview

The 2009 edition of the"New York Times"bestselling guide to major league baseball that is simply the best book of its kind (Rob Neyer) Now in its fourteenth edition, the"Baseball Prospectus"annual is the industry leader among annual baseball guides and the rightful successor to Bill James s legendary bestselling"Baseball Abstracts." The 2009 edition contains critical essays on each of the thirty teams and player comments for some sixty players for...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452290112
• ISBN13: 9780452290112
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 648 Pages
• Weight: 2.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 8.4" x 10.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

The Filet Mignon of Baseball Forecasting

Except for the usual typos that occur as they rush this book for publication before the season, this is an excellent source for those looking for baseball insight and baseball theory. The team articles are well-done and incisive, even the ones for perennial doormats the Pirates and Giants. Player projections are interesting to read, and the notes accompanying each player help give you a sense about what to expect for the upcoming season. If a player will be on a new team, like Matt Holliday, the comments and statistical projections are geared toward how that player will perform for the new team in the new ballpark. The most valuable part of the book for me on draft day is the list of the 100 best prospects. I used the list last year to snag Kershaw, Scherzer, and Gamel in the late rounds of my 16-team league. I'll be sure to have the book next to me on draft day this year!

Baseball is my Religion and BP is my Bible

Baseball Prospectus is the best of the best. The stats are almost secondary to me. I love the paragraphs under each player. The in-depth team analyses are amazing. The writers are so talented and knowlegable that they can literally show how one seemingly small managerial decision during the season caused a team to make or miss the playoffs. If you like major league baseball, play fantasy baseball, or love baseball statistics, this book is for you.

My favorite baseball book of the year

The BP series has been my mainstay baseball book for 5 years now. Always chock full of information on almost every player that will matter in the '09 season. The predictions are pretty much dead-on for hitters and the pitcher ones very good as well, but pitchers are a funny bunch and are notoriously hard to predict. The essays at the end of the book are always great as is the top 100 prospects list. For those looking for the index, it is on their website. A minor gripe that I share with others, is that the editing leaves much to be desired. A small price to pay for my yearly baseball bible

Always a valuable resource-and this year's volume is no different

Baseball Prospectus has become one of those annual publications that comes out before the baseball season starts that helps give fans some perspective on the forthcoming season. Data freaks will love the statistics developed by the folks at Baseball Prospectus. Readers must digest the different key statistics (such as VORP and PECOTA). So, be sure to read pages vii to xvi carefully. These pages explain the variety of statistics that have been developed for pitchers and everyday players. There follows to bulk of the book, which analyzes each team and its players in turn, from Arizona Diamondbacks to Washington Nationals. The volume closes with about 35 pages of essays on subjects such as best prospects, stadium updates, and PECOTA leaderboards (predicting who will be tops in a variety of statistics). For the latter, take a look and then compare what the projected figures are actually like at the end of the season. For instance, C. C. Sabathia is projected to lead the majors in 2009 with 16 victories. Chipper Jones is projected as the batting leader in the big leagues, with an average of .341. Let's take one team as an illustration. Since I'm a White Sox fan, I'll be a chauvinist and take a look at some of the information there. Brian Anderson is your basic Good field, No hit" player. His PECOTA projects to a batting average of .232 (this would be the best hitting in his 3 major league seasons) with 8 home runs and 26 RBIs. Jermaine Dye's projections show some more decline, with a batting average of .271 (less than his average of the 3 preceding years, 25 home runs (another decline), and so on. What about A. J. Pierzynski, one of the most irritating players in baseball? A continuation of his recent slow decline is predicted. Another quick note on a feature. Each player is compared with a set of others (retired and active) whose statistics link them. For A. J.? Terry Kennedy, Javy Lopez, Sandy Alomar. The table for Pierzynski also provides guesses as to the odds of a collapse in his performance (41%), a breakout year (14%), improvement (30%), and attrition (38%). Pitchers? Let's take just one as an example--John Danks. First, his comparison group--Ken Holtzman, Kevin Appier, and Bob Shirley). He is projected as having a 10-9 season, with an ERA of 4.27. Anyhow, a lot of fun! I find myself in disagreement with some of the projections and that is a good part of the fun. For baseball fans who like their statistics in abundance, this book will serve you well.

Always a great read ... but what happened to the index?

The "Baseball Prospectus" is the best book of its type on the market. It carries on the tradition of the old Bill James "Baseball Abstract" much better than do similar books, including even the new "Bill James Gold Mine." The "Prospectus" contains an overview of every team, reviewing the 2008 season and looking ahead to the likely impact of offseason moves on the 2009 season. It also contains profiles of every player on each team's 40-man roster as well as the team's more promising players in the lower minors. "Lineouts" at the end of each team's entry give brief comments on more marginal players, such as minor leaguers who were once prospects, but whose careers have stalled because of injuries or poor performance. The conventional statistics are given for each player, as well as "translated" statistics that correct for the effects of playing in particular ballparks - such as the boost hitters get from playing in Coors Field in Denver - and several statistics that attempt to provide an estimate of the player's overall value. They also forecast what each player will do during the 2009 season using their PECOTA system. Finally, one fun thing is each player has a list of the four most comparable players in major league history. For instance, the four most comparable players to Ryan Howard are Mike Epstein, Cecil Fielder, David Ortiz, and Jim Gentile. What no Boog Powell or Frank Howard? Overall, it's hard to imagine a more complete overview of major league teams and players. I have a few quibbles, however. Because different writers handle different teams, the assessments lack the single voice of the old Bill James "Abstracts." For instance, the comment on Edgar Renteria in the Detroit entry offers the opinion that: "The Giants surprised a lot of people by giving him $18.5 million for the next two years, but we've all but given up trying to figure out what the Giants are doing of late." Well, the author of the Giants entry has apparently figured out what the Giants are doing: "While it's easy to laugh at the move because of Renteria's mediocre 2008 season with the Tigers, it's also important to note that even if he's merely adequate again, that's an enormous improvement, perhaps as many as three or four wins, over what they suffered through at short last season." Then there are the problems with rushing the book into print in early February. They have corrected some of the huge editorial problems of a few years ago, when the book was riddled with typos and some of the team comments were so poorly written as to be almost incoherent. But there are still problems. The most glaring one this year is the failure to include an index. Page ix of the Introduction reassures us that: "If you can't quite remember where a player ended up last September, there's an index in the back." Alas, presumably because of the rush to publish, there is no index this year. I also think some of the entries must be written before the translated statistic