Baseball Prospectus 2008: The Essential Guide to the 2008 Baseball Season (Baseball Prospectus)

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
The New York Times bestselling guide to major league baseball returns for the 2008 season

For over a decade, Baseball Prospectus has been the ultimate guide to the game for fantasy players, professionals, and casual fans alike. Baseball Prospectus 2008 continues that tradition, bringing together the top young baseball writers and analysts in the business to provide a definitive look at the season to come. Featuring groundbreaking essays on the performance of each of the thirty teams and an in-depth look at every major league player and all the top prospects, Baseball Prospectus 2008 offers the cutting-edge analysis that has inspired nearly every major league team to seek the advice of current or former Prospectus writers. Also included are projections of player stats for next year, as determined by the groundbreaking PECOTA system, which Sports Illustrated has called perhaps the games most accurate projection model. The most authoritative and entertaining book of its kind, Baseball Prospectus 2008 is as essential to the baseball-watching experience as hot dogs and cold beer.

Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Addictive even for first-timers February 29, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

Not having seen a Baseball Prospectus guide before, I was assuming this hefty guide would be a dry, stat-filled directory. I was wrong. This is a fascinating, readable guidebook. Once you start looking at it you can't put it down. If you buy this, plan to lose many hours of your life reading it.

Each team gets its own chapter. An in-depth article covers the team's chances for the season, including recruits, injuries, strategy, even history. Plenty of tables and figures back things up. Each player gets a paragraph about his abilities and prospects for the 2008 season, with a stat table that reviews his past four years and projected numbers for this season. The chapter concludes with a similar analysis on the team manager.

At the end of the book are articles on different baseball-related topics, with a list of the Baseball Prospectus Top 100 Prospects.

For help in deciphering the statistics, an introductory chapter called Statistical Introduction very calmly and clearly explains what all the terms in the tables mean. For example, it explains that "VORP" means Value Over Replacement Level, a cumulative stat that estimates total player value over a period of time.

I wish there was a book like this for college football! Then when my 'Noles mess up another season, at least I would know why!

5 out of 5 stars

Good start to the 2008 baseball season! March 1, 2008
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

The new baseball season will soon be upon us, with hope breaking out all over. Those of us who are Chicago White Sox fan see our team starting off even with every other time and hope abounding. What will the season hold? Only 162 games will tell us.

This book is one of those compendia that come out each year, providing information on major league baseball players. This has a sabermetric element to it, so those who love statistics will enjoy this work.

There are some nice features, including a listing of the top 100 prospects this season, how base running turns into runs, projected leaders in a variety of categories (e.g., they project Ryan Howard to lead in home runs with 44, Albert Pujols to lead in batting average with .327, Jose Reyes to lead in stolen bases with 60, etc.).

Those projections are based on a technique called PECOTA, in which players are equated with many other players--past and present--with similar characteristics. Then, that data base is used to project how well the particular contemporary player is likely to do this year. As an example, let's take a look at one team, the White Sox. Many of the Sox' key players are aging, and projections suggest declining performance among such stalwarts as Jim Thome and A. J. Pierzynski. Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye, on the other hand, are projected to perform in similar fashion to 2007. By the way, one of the nice features is that each player is compared to those whose career statistics define PECOTA. For instance, comparables to Joe Crede include Dave Roberts, Kevin Orie, Tim Wallach, and Tim Hulett. Just looking at comparables is fun! Jermaine Dye is equated with Dave Henderson, Joe Adcock, Jose Canseco, and Juan Gonzalez. Pretty good company (at least for statistics). Paul Konerko is compared with Kevin Millar, Gil Hodges, Jeff Conine, and Eric Karros. The mainstay of the pitching staff, Mark Buehrle, is linked to Ken Holtzman (the old Cubbie!), Greg Swindell, Jim Abbott, and Curt Simmons.

Enough comparisons. Another statistic is called VORP, value over replacement player. This statistic is created by assuming that a particular player would be removed from the lineup and replaced by someone of proven quality (the details are too lengthy to be presented in a line or two). The resulting figures are then used to estimate players who will rise and who will decline this coming year. White Sox fans might want to shiver a bit. Mark Buehrle is one of the projected 15 players who will decline the most.

A couple other figures to illustrate what the book provides. Jim Thome is expected to see his home run total decline from 35 to 29 and his RBIs from 96 to 79. If you're curious, by the way, his comparator players include Frank Thomas, Willie McCovey, Darrell Evans, and Cliff Johnson--some pretty good company!

Anyhow, this is a book that will be a lot of fun for baseball fans. It's a good way to start preparing for the new baseball season!

5 out of 5 stars

This year is better than ever February 28, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

I've been a long-time fan of the Prospectus. For my money, it's the best of the baseball annuals. Probably nothing will ever quite match the old Bill James Baseball Abstracts of fond memory. But if you are looking for thorough and entertaining reviews of every player's performance from the 2007 season along with projections for the 2008 season, you will not find a better book. In past years, the Prospectus often had big time editing problems. This year the writing seems very clean with only a few very minor goofs. Last year there was also an inconsistency between the PECOTA comparables and the text discussion. That problem was avoided this year. Finally, although the book is still about as thick as the Manhattan phone directory, it appears to be printed on higher quality paper, thereby avoiding some of the blurred print that marred last year's book. In short: Buy and enjoy!

3 out of 5 stars

Same analysis, however now humorless. March 4, 2008
4 out of 8 found this review helpful

I've purchased every Prospectus written and have thoroughly enjoyed each one. Gone from the 2008 issue, however, are the hidden easter-egg cleverly humorous player commentaries, which, though entertaining, were often insulting. This year's write-ups were pure vanilla, politically correct and seemly cut-and-pasted from player to player.

I miss the occasional humorous commentary, like from the 2007 edition on Tony Clark: "His 2005 was regal, impressive, and mighty, like the elegance of a trumpet voluntary. His 2006 season was more like a pack of fourth graders playing trombone for the very first time with no instruction during a locust infestation."

Granted, too much humor distracts from the purpose of the book, but being absolutely devoid of humor makes it a boring numbers read.

4 out of 5 stars

A good book to hold you over until the real stats are compiled. February 28, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

I really like the Baseball Prospectus website and I've been buying these books yearly for a few years now. It features pretty decent write-ups and PECOTA projections for most players. I enjoy the books and enjoy looking at the projections for my favorite players (even though I don't think they've ever projected one of my players to have a better year!).

I do wish they'd start adding a little more to the book than they already do though. For instance this year they had a pretty decent write ups on fielder's arm values and pitcher counts. It'd be awesome if they'd throw in more than a few extra pages at the end of the book for stuff like this.

That being said it's a good book to have fun with while we wait for spring training to wrap up and the real thing to begin. Just don't be THAT guy that decides to quote PECOTA projections as his only legitimate baseball argument.

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