Writing is good, Production is bad...: BP spent less money on production this year and it shows in the quality of book (possible to hold costs as the size increased). The binding and paper quality are pretty low. I would prefer a more expensive book with better staying power.

The 2007 edition of the Baseball Prospectus annual was underwhelming, and certainly did not match up to previous years efforts. BP went to a cheaper paper, and cheaper binding, and the lack of quality certainly showed - my edition fell apart within one week of purchase. I think they've forgotten these are the types of annuals that sit proudly on a baseball fan's mantle for years. The cheaper production model was done to make room for more content, a sacrifice I can somewhat understand, however, you can see the editing content suffer because of it. Spelling & grammatical errors were rampant, and the writers used the same cliches repeatedly throughout the book. Hopefully next year's edition improves. ( )

My first memory of the people who founded Baseball Prospectus is from the "Joe Carter" flame-war at the newsgroup rec.sport.baseball. Back in 1994, Joe Carter was widely assumed--because of his very high RBI totals--to be one of the best hitters in baseball. So when I came across people like Gary Huckaby arguing instead that RBI was a worthless statistic, my initial skepticism gave way to a conversion of sorts. After following their arguments for a few months, I realized that almost everything I had ever learned about baseball statistics was wrong.

And while I didn't always agree with (or even understand) the rationales for all the new statistics, I've always understood the larger project. And that project has been to isolate a player's contextual performance so that all player performances (past and present) can be both directly compared and--as a byproduct of historical comparison--confidently predicted.

Over the years, BP has been so successful with their project that what started as a truly revolutionary (ideologically as well as statistically) approach to player performance has become mainstream and fan-friendly without compromising its focus on context-neutral, evidence-based analysis. This success is reflected in BP's shift from a focus on confrontation with baseball's front-office types to one of selling them a product.

And what a product it is. Even though BP's recent work is less personality-driven than years past, it's also less foolishly cocksure and more consistent and dependable. The number of laugh-out-loud-funny player comments has declined, but the overall accuracy of those comments seems to have increased. The team profiles have also become more insightful as BP has supplemented its player analysis with insider knowledge of the organizations. The statistical essays are as inpenetrable as ever, but that's okay, since there's something in the book for everyone. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is the only pre-season MLB guide any baseball fan would really need to buy.

I just received my copy yesterday, so I haven't read it cover to cover yet (and probably won't, entirely), but my sole complaint so far is the poor quality of the cover and pages. The decision to go this way is probably cost-related, in the effort to keep such a thick book under $20. But since I keep my BPs forever (back to 1998), I'd gladly pay another $5-$10 for something a little more sturdy. Also, the number of typos is far too high--I would gladly proofread next year's edition for free just to stop all these misspellings. ( )