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Baseball Prospectus 2016
The 2016 edition of the "New York Times" Bestselling Guide
Welcome to The Show! After 20 All-Star seasons, the creators of this, the 21st edition of the industry-leading Baseball Prospectus annual, could have been content to rest on their laurels. Instead, "Baseball Prospectus 2016" contains significant improvements along with the usual key stat categories, player predictions and insider-level commentary that readers expect from Baseball Prospectus' annual guide.
"Baseball Prospectus 2016" once again provides fantasy players and insiders alike with prescient PECOTA projections, which "Sports Illustrated" has called "perhaps the game's most accurate projection model." Still, stats are just numbers if you don't see the larger context, and Baseball Prospectus brings together an elite team of analysts to provide the definitive look at all thirty teams-their players, their prospects and their managers-to explain away flukes, hot streaks, injury-tainted numbers and park effects.
Nearly every major-league team has sought the advice of current or former Prospectus analysts, and readers of "Baseball Prospectus" 2016 will understand what all those insiders have been raving about.
In a book that sports personality Ken Tremendous calls "The tip of the nerd spear," the team at Baseball Prospectus is proud to bring the following improvements to the 2016
Two full years of projections-PECOTA lines for 2016 and 2017
Historical Peak MPH added for major-league pitchers
Deserved Run Average (DRA) added for major-league pitchers
cFIP added for major-league and minor-league pitchers
Pitcher WARP redesigned, utilizing DRA and cFIP for all pitchers
Revised cFIP-driven PECOTA pitching projections
Catcher-specific defensive stats for all catchers Double-A and above
Outfield assists and catcher defense integrated in FRAA and WARP
Ballpark schematic and wall height study for every stadium
Hit List, finance, and farm system ranking graphs for each team
Every organization's key front office personnel and Baseball Prospectus alumni identified"
Welcome to The Show! After 20 All-Star seasons, the creators of this, the 21st edition of the industry-leading Baseball Prospectus annual, could have been content to rest on their laurels. Instead, "Baseball Prospectus 2016" contains significant improvements along with the usual key stat categories, player predictions and insider-level commentary that readers expect from Baseball Prospectus' annual guide.
"Baseball Prospectus 2016" once again provides fantasy players and insiders alike with prescient PECOTA projections, which "Sports Illustrated" has called "perhaps the game's most accurate projection model." Still, stats are just numbers if you don't see the larger context, and Baseball Prospectus brings together an elite team of analysts to provide the definitive look at all thirty teams-their players, their prospects and their managers-to explain away flukes, hot streaks, injury-tainted numbers and park effects.
Nearly every major-league team has sought the advice of current or former Prospectus analysts, and readers of "Baseball Prospectus" 2016 will understand what all those insiders have been raving about.
In a book that sports personality Ken Tremendous calls "The tip of the nerd spear," the team at Baseball Prospectus is proud to bring the following improvements to the 2016
Two full years of projections-PECOTA lines for 2016 and 2017
Historical Peak MPH added for major-league pitchers
Deserved Run Average (DRA) added for major-league pitchers
cFIP added for major-league and minor-league pitchers
Pitcher WARP redesigned, utilizing DRA and cFIP for all pitchers
Revised cFIP-driven PECOTA pitching projections
Catcher-specific defensive stats for all catchers Double-A and above
Outfield assists and catcher defense integrated in FRAA and WARP
Ballpark schematic and wall height study for every stadium
Hit List, finance, and farm system ranking graphs for each team
Every organization's key front office personnel and Baseball Prospectus alumni identified"
- GenresBaseballSportsNonfiction
Kindle Edition
First published February 9, 2016
15 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
About the author
Sam Miller
5 books19 followersSam Miller is the editor in chief of Baseball Prospectus, the coeditor of Baseball Prospectus’s annual guidebook, and a contributing writer at ESPN The Magazine. He lives on the San Francisco peninsula with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 28, 2024
Annual preseason baseball fix reading, and always worthwhile for its mixture of analysis and humor from a terrific cast of authors. Russell Carleton's "let's get real about what we're doing here" essay about the limitations of statistics is again a highlight.
Minor criticism this year: a bit sloppy editorially. Lots of typos, confusingly incorrect data in profiles, that sort of thing. Also a poor Kindle experience: no chapter breaks, table of contents, or index, and the profile boxes don't scale in the standard book orientation, so you have to rotate everything longways. It'd be nice if it were more e-reader friendly, because it's a bloody big book to be hauling around in print.
Also I do have a criticism on actual content. So there's a category of player whose corresponding statistical profile I'll call "The Punto," after Nick Punto. Nick enjoyed a long 14 year career in MLB, mostly with Minnesota, and six teams total. He played in 1163 games and had a career AVG/OBP/SLG of .245/.323/.323. He hit only 19 career home runs. There's no denying it, these are not good batting numbers for a starting player, plus he looks like a normal guy rather than an especially tall, muscularly imposing athletic type. As a result, most casual baseball fans thought he was terrible and his employment sort of an ongoing joke.
Analysts should dig a bit deeper to figure out how a "terrible" player stays employed for 14 seasons, and his stats profiles show that they do, at least numerically. He stole 104 bases, which boosted his value, as did the fact that he was a switch hitter (so even though he wasn't much of a hitter, he wasn't especially worse against right- or left-handed pitching). But anyway his real skill was as a good-to-excellent infielder, spread about equally at 2B, SS, and 3B over his career. His best years were at third. In 2006 one measure had him as the 5th best fielder (at any position) in the league. Baseball reference puts him at 159th all-time in defensive value, tied with Roberto Clemente.
Now, let's be careful to make it clear that Roberto Clemente also happened to be one of baseball's all-time best hitters, and the combination of skills made him one of the best players, period, ever. He's an easy Hall of Famer. (His skill and value is still exceeded by his work as a humanitarian, but I'll just worry about sports nonsense for now.)
Anyway Clemente's defensive value alone earned him 12 consecutive Gold Glove awards. For the same career defensive numbers, Nick Punto has zero*. That's a mainstream media award, though. Certainly good analysis rewarded him in discussions. Nope: in last year's Annual, after Nick's final season, in which he was yet again a plus defender who couldn't hit, he was again portrayed as a lovable good guy "playing out of [his] league". My point is, even the best analysts struggle with preconceptions. I think Nick Punto's problem is that he doesn't do the main thing non-pitchers are supposed to do, and (just my theory) his name sounds like a combination of "pinto" (a tiny bean, or a weird/defective '70s car), "punt" (to give up), and "runt." Listen, it's not a good baseball name.
OK, I was reviewing a book, yes. What I am trying to say is, I felt like there were more Punto-style "this guy's bad at baseball" lazy write-offs of fringe players than usual this year. Or maybe I'm just getting more sensitive to them. Anyway, it says here the Annual can do without them.
Also, Nick Punto's career earnings totaled $23,272,500.
*Standard caveats:
(1) Defensive metrics are not facts, and definitely things people argue about. They are taken to be true when they seem right and inconclusive when they don't. Like most sports statistics.
(2) The Gold Gloves are the notable award for MLB defense but notoriously unreliable. Good reputations often win out over results, and a good hitter with pretty good defense definitely has a better reputation than a pure fielder.
Minor criticism this year: a bit sloppy editorially. Lots of typos, confusingly incorrect data in profiles, that sort of thing. Also a poor Kindle experience: no chapter breaks, table of contents, or index, and the profile boxes don't scale in the standard book orientation, so you have to rotate everything longways. It'd be nice if it were more e-reader friendly, because it's a bloody big book to be hauling around in print.
Also I do have a criticism on actual content. So there's a category of player whose corresponding statistical profile I'll call "The Punto," after Nick Punto. Nick enjoyed a long 14 year career in MLB, mostly with Minnesota, and six teams total. He played in 1163 games and had a career AVG/OBP/SLG of .245/.323/.323. He hit only 19 career home runs. There's no denying it, these are not good batting numbers for a starting player, plus he looks like a normal guy rather than an especially tall, muscularly imposing athletic type. As a result, most casual baseball fans thought he was terrible and his employment sort of an ongoing joke.
Analysts should dig a bit deeper to figure out how a "terrible" player stays employed for 14 seasons, and his stats profiles show that they do, at least numerically. He stole 104 bases, which boosted his value, as did the fact that he was a switch hitter (so even though he wasn't much of a hitter, he wasn't especially worse against right- or left-handed pitching). But anyway his real skill was as a good-to-excellent infielder, spread about equally at 2B, SS, and 3B over his career. His best years were at third. In 2006 one measure had him as the 5th best fielder (at any position) in the league. Baseball reference puts him at 159th all-time in defensive value, tied with Roberto Clemente.
Now, let's be careful to make it clear that Roberto Clemente also happened to be one of baseball's all-time best hitters, and the combination of skills made him one of the best players, period, ever. He's an easy Hall of Famer. (His skill and value is still exceeded by his work as a humanitarian, but I'll just worry about sports nonsense for now.)
Anyway Clemente's defensive value alone earned him 12 consecutive Gold Glove awards. For the same career defensive numbers, Nick Punto has zero*. That's a mainstream media award, though. Certainly good analysis rewarded him in discussions. Nope: in last year's Annual, after Nick's final season, in which he was yet again a plus defender who couldn't hit, he was again portrayed as a lovable good guy "playing out of [his] league". My point is, even the best analysts struggle with preconceptions. I think Nick Punto's problem is that he doesn't do the main thing non-pitchers are supposed to do, and (just my theory) his name sounds like a combination of "pinto" (a tiny bean, or a weird/defective '70s car), "punt" (to give up), and "runt." Listen, it's not a good baseball name.
OK, I was reviewing a book, yes. What I am trying to say is, I felt like there were more Punto-style "this guy's bad at baseball" lazy write-offs of fringe players than usual this year. Or maybe I'm just getting more sensitive to them. Anyway, it says here the Annual can do without them.
Also, Nick Punto's career earnings totaled $23,272,500.
*Standard caveats:
(1) Defensive metrics are not facts, and definitely things people argue about. They are taken to be true when they seem right and inconclusive when they don't. Like most sports statistics.
(2) The Gold Gloves are the notable award for MLB defense but notoriously unreliable. Good reputations often win out over results, and a good hitter with pretty good defense definitely has a better reputation than a pure fielder.
February 28, 2016
I hate to cut down stars for this, but whoever let this go to actual print with all these errors is massively not good at their job. I know there have always been errata in BP annuals, but the ones in here are pretty awful.
Also, they seem to have picked up a bunch of new writers who are more into pop culture references and word salad than creating funny yet useful comments on players. Some team profiles are worse on this end than others.
Also, they seem to have picked up a bunch of new writers who are more into pop culture references and word salad than creating funny yet useful comments on players. Some team profiles are worse on this end than others.
November 10, 2017
i shall read no more bp forever. my youth is over
March 14, 2019
The bible for fantasy baseball.
December 30, 2016
I actually have a couple of team chapters yet to complete, but this was a 2016 read. This is my favorite baseball annual and I have the entire run of the books.
January 30, 2016
After a bit disappointing last year’s edition that was not so humorous, while in same time noticeably thinner because of the reduced font size, the good news is - 2016 Prospectus edition looks and weighs much better.
There are more than 600 pages full of stats that only baseball fans could fully appreciate, together with all the side information about favorite teams and players.
Compared to last season annual edition, it is evident the authors worked harder and spent more time in preparation of 2016 edition – again, beside statistics and myriad of data there is also good humor to be found inside that makes this year’s Baseball Prospectus something that could be again recommended for baseball enthusiasts.
There are more than 600 pages full of stats that only baseball fans could fully appreciate, together with all the side information about favorite teams and players.
Compared to last season annual edition, it is evident the authors worked harder and spent more time in preparation of 2016 edition – again, beside statistics and myriad of data there is also good humor to be found inside that makes this year’s Baseball Prospectus something that could be again recommended for baseball enthusiasts.
March 31, 2016
Always a fun read for the consummate baseball fan, this year brought back some of the sarcasm that was originally so appealing in each players reviews. Alas, the jokes are nowhere near as amazing as they were in the Cristina Kahrl/Joe Sheehan days, but they do a pretty good job. Three straight years of great essays on the Angels!
May 17, 2016
The only problem I had with this book was that it featured a number of essays that were less about "what Team X did last year and can expect to do this year" than think pieces about what Team X means to me and how some obscure aspect of it reveals the mysteries of the universe. Less of that, more analysis, please.
March 6, 2016
There are some glaring editorial issues and non-sequiturs that would have been better left as inside jokes, but overall this is a solid overview of the league's current rosters and prospects and what to expect in the year to come.
March 23, 2016
Liked it better than the 2015 edition. This one focused more on the synergy between front office strategies and what happens on the field. As always, part of the pleasure and utility is in the individual player projections, which is mostly/entirely for fantasy baseball players.
March 30, 2016
Great, as always.
August 4, 2016
IT's always good, but I dropped a star because some of the team chapters seem to be getting more abstract instead of explaining what happened last season and forecasting the new season.
April 8, 2016
One of my favorite annual traditions for preparing for the upcoming season is diving into the year's BP. It never fails to deliver.
April 20, 2016
As always, a delight. Some rough editing errors in this one, though.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews