Customer Reviews

The Baseball Register & Fantasy Handbook 2006 Edition: The Complete Guide to Major League Players & Prospects

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been collecting the Baseball Register from the Sporting News since 1972. It has changed somewhat over the years and the 2006 edition features the most changes yet.

The Baseball Register and Fantasy Handbook 2006 bills itself as the "The Complete Guide to Major League Players and Prospects" and it certainly is that.

The book features major and minor league statistics for "every player who played in at least one major league game in 2005"

Besides the standard items like batting average, games home runs, wins, etc., the Register features on-base percentage, On-base plus slugging percentage and fielding averages

This year the Baseball Register has some new features which makes it a "Fantasy handbook" There is a scouting report for most of the players, which is a welcome addition. There is also a chart which gives batting averages for each player's hitting zones and a chart for batting average against for each pitcher's pitching zones.

The Baseball Register and Fantasy Handbook 2006 is a great reference source to look up statistics for each player's whole career. There is also some personal information , such as height, weight, date of birth and place of birth, as well as a pronunciation guide for difficult last names.

It also has a section for the managerial record of each of the 30 major league skippers.

Earlier editions of the Baseball Register used to also include the playing record of all the managers but that was dropped unfortunately with the 2005 version.

The Baseball Register and Fantasy Handbook has some competition in Who's Who in Baseball, which comes out annually also. The latter book also has photos of each player which the Register doesn't have. But Who's Who doesn't feature Fantasy information.

Obviously, one can look up statistics of players on the Internet, but the Baseball Register and Fantasy Handbook brings information together in one place for easy research.

My favorite baseball resource book each year was the Scouting Notebook. Sporting News discountined it this year and included a dumbed down version within the Baseball Register.

I can tell you I will never purchase this product again and I'm afraid Sporting News will think this new product is a sucess because Scouting Notebook purchasers probably purchased it but I'm sure they will not make that mistake twice.

I've been buying the Baseball Register for most of 10 years for its baseball statistics, and have preferred it to the STATS Inc. stats book as BR provides minor league stats as well as transaction notes such as DL stints. Also, the format is much easier to scan than STATS inc. versions. For the past few years, BR omitted postseason stats, and it's a welcome addition to have them again for this edition.

The new feature this year are its scouting reports and batting hot/cold zones, for fantasy purposes. As I am a big fantasy baseball participant and buy at least a few books/magazines every year, I thought this might save me a few bucks. However, the fantasy content does not justify the $10 or so hike in retail price, and I would have preferred they left them out and just had the statistics at the reduced price.

The scouting reports aren't really bad, but they are more capsules and seem more to be written or compiled by some roto guy than an actual scout (as they lack the insider's tone of the scouting reports of other magazines and books). They pretty much list the pitcher's overall arsenal (types of pitches, velocity) and hitter's tendencies as well as defense. The scouting reports don't really give you the tidbits that you can't read from the stats - ie. nagging injuries, off-the-field issues, mechanical/mental adjustments - from which can usually be gleaned valuable insight as far as projecting a player's future value.

Not all players have scouting reports (which I have no problem with, especially for the fringe and journeyman players) but it was very curious how Huston Street, the AL ROY last year, had no scouting report, but strictly backup guys like John Flaherty and Ross Gload did. Likewise, young, promising pitchers who debuted last year like Kameron Loe, Juan Dominguez and Robinson Tejada did not even have abbreviated scouting reports.

The hot/cold zones were pretty much useless, too. As each hitter/pitcher is only allowed one graphic, there's no way to tell how hitters do against righty pitchers versus lefty pitchers. Not to mention how switch hitters do. Same for pitchers against righty batters versus lefty batters. Distribution of hits around the playing field (as was done in a previous scouting notebook) would have been more useful, or even expanded split stats such as pre and post all star, month by month, home/away, etc.

Also, on the statistics side, only players who have logged major leagues service are listed. So, any prospects who might play significant roles this season but have no major league service time are omitted (ie. Delmon Young).

Ovewrall, good for stats but the addition of the scouting reports and hot/cold zones add very little to the book and do not justify the hike in price. If you don't mind getting your stats off the web, then I'd suggest saving your money.

I love Bill James' (ostensible) edition of this book because it includes win shares and runs created-- two essential stats for evaluating players. Unfortunately because the James book is rushed to press months before "The Baseball Register" it does not include post season stats. This is an egregious omission. "The Register" does include these stats. The Register also includes trades and career history which the James' book does not. These two inclusions make "The Register", for me, a better get. If only it included win shares and runs created "The Register" would be excellent and would rate 5 stars instead of 4.
One more point: This year "The Register" includes, as its "fantasy" aspect, a paragraph on each player that in a stat book, it seems to me, is peculiarly subjective. These paragraphs do not take into account any serious sabrmetric evaluations of the players and as such are often ill-informed and probably a poor "fantasy" guide. For example Ivan Rodriguez, despite advancing age and declining stats-- a sub-300 onbase average in 05-- is given a 9.0--one of the highest ratings. IRod would be a huge gamble as a fantasy player. I think "The Register" was fine without the "Fantasy" paragraphs and should return to its previous form.

The Sporting News has always made a great reference book called the Baseball Register. It had all the numbers you needed for all the major leaguers. Now they have added scouting reports and rankings for each of those players. This book now combines all the data and the written descriptions in one handy place. I don't know how I will watch baseball without it in the future.

I purchased my first "Baseball Register" in 1962,when there were only twenty teams,the first year there were even that many and many changes have occurred,over the years.Back in 1962 the register included the players' signature,photo,and marriage status and the complete playing and mangerial records of all the managers and all the coaches,but no scouting reports or players' rating,and it cost only $5.00.Most, or at least many, baseball fans love stats and this volume is just chuck full of all kinds of stats.A MUST for Baseball fans.

Although I greatly miss information presented from years gone by (records held, awards, managerial playing stats, achievements et al.) I do enjoy the new material (Scouting Reports, pitcher hitting totals and full stat lines (except for sacrifice hits and sacrfice flies), I still find it a cover-to-cover must read.