The Amazin' Avenue Annual 2010

After alluding to it twice already, it's time to finally let the cat out of the bag. In addition to our regular contributions on Amazin' Avenue, the crew here has been hard at work on the inaugural Amazin' Avenue Annual, which will hopefully be the first of many season preview/review guides we do. The AAA will feature player comments, prospect profiles, and other analysis/commentary articles by Sam, James, Alex, and myself. It will also include guest columns from the following sexy and well-regarded baseball writers (note: parenthetical remarks are topics not actual titles).

* Tim Marchman (Foreword)
* Ted Berg (Suggested Philosophical Changes For The Mets' Organization)
* Justin Bopp (DiamondView Projections)
* Brian Borawski (Mets Business Report)
* Derek Carty (An Honest Appraisal Of The Mets' Front Office)
* Matthew Cerrone (Mets Media Piece)
* Jason Fry and Greg Prince (Mets History Piece)
* Toby Hyde (Mets Minors Piece)
* Sky Kalkman (Most/Least Lucky Mets Seasons)
* Howard Megdal (Mets Poetic Couplets)
* Marc Normandin (Alternate Universe 2009 Season)
* Harry Pavlidis (PITCHf/x)
* Dave Studeman (10 Things I Learned About The Mets)

The AAA will also feature several years of player stats, CHONE projections for 2010, NL East team previews from SBN bloggers, and some other stuff. While the annual is likely to rehash some of our more memorable articles from the past year on Amazin' Avenue, virtually all of the content will be brand new and exclusive to the book. The likely release date is 3/1/2010, which is right around the time spring training games begin, which not coincidentally is the same time all of the media entities run their obligatory daily columns on how one player or another is in the best shape of his life. When you get sick of reading those, the Amazin' Avenue Annual will be waiting for you with a wink and a smile.

Now for the price. I have to say right off the bat that we've been extremely fortunate to stumble upon some very talented people who have been extraordinarily generous with their time, lending invaluable experience, patience, and tutelege to this project. As a result, we've been able to secure professional-level layout, graphic design, photography, and editing for basically -- well, exactly -- free. We decided pretty early on that our main goal was to bring the annual to as many Mets fans as possible, and that's what we're going to do. On March 1st (or thereabouts), anyone who wants to read the annual electronically (PDF) will be able to do so entirely free of charge. You'll be free to read it on your computer or your favorite PDF-compliant e-reader, or even print it out to read at your leisure. We're also working with Amazon to make a Kindle version available for a nominal delivery fee (enforced by Amazon; we won't make a penny on it).

If you simply hate the idea of reading a book on your computer you will have the option of ordering a hard copy of the book at cost (likely $7-10). Whatever the book costs to print and distribute is what you will pay. This way my mom and a few other people can own a physical copy of the first ever Amazin' Avenue Annual.

That's it for now. We'll pass along updates as March 1st draws closer.