Billions of people play fantasy baseball every year¹. To satiate this global appetite, countless websites provide fantasy-specific content to cater to these fanatics. There are plenty of books out there, too, which likewise provide custom projections, stats, commentary and other tools to help you win your fantasy league. While most of those resources cover similar ground, Graphical Player stands apart in its presentation of meaningful data in a visual way that, while confusing at first, can pack an astonishing amount of useful information into a very small space.

Longtime readers of this site will already know how much I love this book. You can go back and read my reviews of GP2008 and GP2007 if you don't believe me. Even if you do believe me I'd recommend going back and reading those anyway because while GP introduces new features every year, the basic premise and construction of the graphs haven't changed all that much.

Let's take a look at a sample pitcher and hitter graph and see what we can glean from them.

From this 8" x 2.5" graph you can tell about Mike Pelfrey:

• His age and pitching handedness
• His starter/reliever eligibility
• His relative defensive support
• His expectation for improvement/decline this season (in 40 opponent OPS point increments)
• His performance in W, Hld, Sv, K, ERA, WHIP and Points² relative to all other pitchers (starters in Pelfrey's case)
• His historical and projected K/BF (batter faced), K/BB and point performances, both overall and relative to his peers
• His weekly points production over the past three seasons
• His distribution of playing time between AA, AAA and MLB
• Rolling 6-game trendlines for the past three seasons for K%, BB% and GB%, plus indicators for every win and save. And the number of pitches thrown in every game.
• Weekly point production relative to other pitchers (starters, for Pelfrey) from 2008
• Career opponent OPS trend overall, versus LHB, versus RHB, plus projected opponent OPS
• Sim ERA distribution showing number of 2.00, 3.00, 4.00 and 5.00 ERA seasons achieved over 6,000 simulated 2009 seasons.

From this 8" x 2.5" graph you can tell about Carlos Beltran:

• His age and batting handedness
• His positional eligibility
• His relative defensive skill
• His expectation for improvement/decline this season (in 50 OPS point increments)
• His performance in HR, R, RBI, SB, OBP, SLG and Points³ relative to all other centerfielders
• His historical and projected power, speed and point performances, both overall and relative to his peers
• His weekly points production over the past three seasons
• His distribution of playing time between AA, AAA and MLB
• Rolling 20-game trendlines for the past three seasons for H%, SO% and AVG, plus indicators for every homerun and stolen base. And the number of plate appearances in every game.
• Weekly point production relative to other centerfielders from 2008
• Career OPS trend overall, versus lefties, versus righties, plus projected OPS
• Distribution of plate appearances by lineup position

Comments are provided for every player in baseball; the Mets comments are provided by Jessica Bader, so you know they're good.

If all of that wasn't enough, it doesn't hurt that the back cover of GP2009 features a blurb from this very website. Yea. We're big time now.

So pick yourself up a copy of Graphical Player 2009 at ACTA Sports. You can also save a few bucks by grabbing it from Amazon, but if you can swing it definitely buy straight from the publisher.

¹ Estimated.
² Pitcher Points = (10*W + 5*Sv +K +IP) - (5*L + 2*BlSv + BB +ER)
³ Batter Points = (Total Bases + Walks + Runs + RBI + 2*SB) - (K + CS)