A Web site probably deserves a quick review of the latest in the annual series called Baseball Prospectus.
It's easy to praise this year's book as well as all of the others in the series. The authors clearly have a pretty good track record when it comes to examining all aspects of the game. They achieved some level of fame in 2008 for predicting the rise of the Tampa Bay Rays, which put them in a subset of one. The authors also had one of their members, Nate Silver, become famous in politics for his Web site, fivethirtyeight.com. Silver was a great source of information through the election season, and got the final results almost exactly right.
Getting back to baseball, the book has the usual format as well as size (about as big as the phone book of a Triple-A baseball team's city). There is an introduction to each team, followed by a small section on virtually every player that matters on a particular team. The players are listed with their 2008 organization, which does make it a little tough to find a particular player if he moved over the winter. (Note to authors; bring back the index.) There are a few essays in the back of the book.
The writing always has been pretty fearless, and that's still the case in 2009. These guys aren't afraid to say when they think teams are making poor judgments or when players are headed for the scrap heap. It's striking just how few players out of the seemingly endless pool of talent ever make it to become major league regulars, and the authors are more than willing to point out that out -- even for prospects, who probably don't even know that their best case is of a left-handed relief specialist in the majors. It's also striking how many players get hurt along the way in baseball. The most quoted name in the book might be "Tommy John," as in the surgery.
The statistical theories could be considered a little daunting to some. Each player gets numbers in such categories as EqAVG, VORP and BABIP. There are explanations for all of these figures, but it's easy to get the idea after a while. A positive VORP (value over replacement player) is good, a number above 30 is very good, a number over 60 is really really good. And so on.
Not only does "Baseball Prospectus" serve as good spring training reading, but it's a handy reference tool for the regular season. Your enjoyment of summer games will be enhanced if you pull out the book for page-turning, and that applies to major league or minor league contests.
This is the one baseball book that I'm sure to buy every year. You should too.
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