Baseball Prospectus 2001 (P)

If you're a thinking baseball fan you need to read this book. It covers every player you've heard of, and most of those you haven't. After reading this book, your next step is to go to their website ... on a daily basis for more of their top notch writing and analysis.Their team articles are insightful, witty, biting and entertaining. I find myself grabbing one of my three copies from my shelf and enjoying them, even if I pick the one that's three years old. How many other baseball annuals can you say that about?Thanks guys...keep up the good work.

After years of withdrawal symptoms from missing my annual dose of Bill James, I have at last found a substitute. These guys are not always on the nose -- their obsession with positions is a bit limiting to my mind, for one thing -- but they're right a helluva lot more often than they're wrong, and they've already proven themselves prophetic in many instances (for example, the White Sox's migrating back to the middle of the pack and the Mets' collapse). Plus, they're good writers -- not only are their analyses far more cogent than most sportswriters (admittedly, not a difficult task, since most sportswriters, not to mention analysts, can't tell their rear ends from their elbows), but those analyses are great fun to read for aesthetic reasons.Anybody who really cares about the game will love this book.

BP remains the standard for baseball annuals, with zillions of player comments both informative and entertaining, and team comments which are generally excellent.They know more about more players than anyone else.Minor quibble: Every year the back cover exhalts BP's predictive prowess and gives examples, yet for some reason the 2001 edition fails to speak of, for instance, the success of the Minnesota Twins and Jeff Kubenka. But that's just marketing, I suppose -- it is a great book.

This is my third edition of BP, and the book is consistently excellent. The player comments have softened overall across the years, but they're still not without their humor, and the commentary can be tough (e.g. on Al Martin's transgressions). They're getting closer to a good balance on being critical.Team essays are not the garden variety review of offseason moves that are to be found in most preview magazines; rather, they often go into teams' philosophies of building, scouting, development and so on. I find this interesting in thinking about long-term health of franchises and looking forward to the new year.Some of the material can be pretty high level. Past player stats are all translated to a baseline according to league difficulty, park effects and other factors. This can be a little unsettling or annoying at times when you want to know how someone did at a raw level, but there isn't room for everything. Predictions are given as expected numbers.Such presentation probably isn't for everyone, so I'd suggest anyone looking to buy this book for the first time go to their website, http://www.baseballprospectus.com. Check out some of the essays, transaction analyses and such. Be sure to look at the historical EQA cards page, because this also gives an overview of the way they do their translations and present their stats. This will give you the best idea of whether this book is for you. But don't let the stat stuff scare you away. The detailed player comments and team essays alone make this worth the money for me.

There is no better book on the market for the analytical baseball fan or fantasy leaguer. Some people will be put off by the indepth statistical analysis but this book isn't for statheads only.The Baseball Prospectus covers every player you need to know, period, from superstars like McGwire to 25th men like Jay Canizaro. It also covers important minor leaguers all the way down to rookie ball. It gives objective translations of every player's statistics over the last three years and projections of every hitter's real life 2001 stat line. This is a must have for any analytical baseball fan or anyone looking to win in fantasy baseball.