Sabermetric guide to the 2008 professional baseball season, with essays and player projections for each team, as well as essays on Latin American player development, new stadiums, MLB marketing, defensive ratings, and Wins Over Replacement Level sabermetrics. No red flags.

I have about 12 of these Baseball Prospectus annuals now, and I love them. But I'm beginning to wonder if the end is in sight. The writing is still good, the team-by-team analysis is still first-rate, the statistics are still amazing, but the overall product is declining. Several years ago they went to a cheaper paper, binding, and ink, and this year there's not even an index (you have to download it from baseballprospectus.com). Where the player comments used to be insightfully funny, they are now insightfully bland, and the articles at the back ("Fungoes") seem almost an afterthought. The good news is that the number of typos is not quite as high this year. But even so, they're still there and they've crept into the statistics, so that Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt is listed as having thrown over 2000 innings last year.

My suspicion is that one of these years the gang at BP will decide that putting out a print annual is just too much trouble, and they will instead put the book's contents online. That would be a shame--despite all the value-added opportunities--since grazing the print annual every spring and summer is one of the joys of baseball season. But they should really decide whether they want to put out a real book or not. If so, charge me the extra $10 so I can have real pages, real ink, and real editing. ( )