I know you're more accustomed to seeing book reviews here, but this is something a little different. The good folks at Snapple were kind enough to send me some samples of their new Antioxident Water, which is their answer to now-Coca Cola-owned glacéau's Vitamin Water, the previously uncontested king of fancypants agua (Pepsi-owned SoBe also makes a similar product called Life Water).

Snapple got famous selling iced tea, but they were probably tempted by the burgeoning multi-billion dollar flavored water industry. So how do Snapple's products compare to the other guys? Remarkably well, to tell the truth. In fact, given a blind taste test I would have a tough time distinguishing them from the comparable varieties of Vitamin and Life Water. I gather that some flavors are better than others, but the four I was sent -- Tropical Mango, Orange Starfruit, Grape Pomegranate and Raspberry Acerola -- were all very tasty and satisfying.

These aren't health drinks, despite their creative marketing. They contain 50 calories per 8 oz. serving, and each bottle is 2.5 servings. Add it up and you're at around 125 calories for a 20 oz. bottle, all of which comes from sugar. It's real sugar -- not that high fructose corn syrup crap -- so you're much better off drinking one of these than an equivalent amount of Soda. That said, I do really like them. I've always loved Gatorade, and these might be even better. If you're a Vitamin or Life Water drinker definitely give Snapple's Antioxidant Water a shot. If you've already tried them, let us know your thoughts in the comments.

There are probably dozens of new Mets books published every year, and most of them are redeeming to varying degrees. I recently* got my hands on a copy of Mets By The Numbers, the softcover companion piece to the wonderful Mets By The Numbers website and blog.

*This is a lie. It's been sitting on my desk for a couple of months. I regret not writing it up sooner, but one thing or another always seemed to push it off my plate. I apologize to the authors and especially to their publicist Jen, who has made it her life's work to make sure that this write-up gets posted. Thanks, Jen!

Mets By The Numbers (MBTN) is, at its essence, the history of the Mets. Where MBTN differs -- and ultimately sets it apart from other Mets histories -- is its format. As you can probably gather from the title, MBTN is about numbers. Not stats, but uniform numbers, and the stories of the men who wore those numbers. So, rather than telling the story of the Mets chronologically, the book's authors -- Jon Springer and Matthew Silverman -- use ascending numeric delineation to weave their narrative. In other words, one chapter per uniform number.

Given the book's unique structure, it would have been very easy for each chapter to devolve into a tired roll-call, blandly cataloging every player to don a particular uniform. The authors deftly avoided that particular pratfall by interjecting humor with history, and leaving us with a chapter-long capsule for every number ever worn.

The book really shines when its spotlight is on the also-rans. Anyone can make Tom Seaver or Mike Piazza seem interesting, but one of the most enjoyable parts of the book for me was reading and subsequently ruminating on the tales of the less-than-stars. Some examples:

On Luis Lopez (#17):

Luis Lopez (1997-99) filled in for Rey Ordonez at shortstop, out-hit Rey-Rey as a Met (.250 to .245), and punched the Gold Glover on the team bus, which was something everyone wished they'd done when Ordonez later called the Shea fans "stupid". Lopez was part of two shocking developments on September 14, 1997. First, he started the game wearing 17 on "Keith Hernandez Day" when many fans hoped the number might be put in storage to honor Mex (it was the same year Jackie Robinson's 42 was retired at a Shea ceremony). Second, the banjo-hitting Lopez socked a homer for the only run in a 1-0 win that afternoon.

On Pete Harnisch (#27):

Pete Harnisch (1995-97) briefly assumed No. 1 starter duties, but he was no Tom Seaver. He was no Craig Swan (ed note: also #27), even. The Long Island native battled depression and tobacco withdrawal while clashing badly with manager Bobby Valentine.

On Jeff Innis (#40):

Sidearmer Jeff Innis (1987-93) was a beguiler in the Mets' bullpen and [a] good clubhouse interview. He was the first Met whose last name began withI, and while, of course there's no "I" in team, there was plenty of team in Innis, who gamely led the Mets in appearances during the sorry seasons of 1993-93.

Of course, the book has great stories about David Wright, Howard Johnson, Gary Carter et al, so if you want to read about the big boys they're definitely in there.

If you're looking to bone up on your Mets history, want to share the team's stories with a friend or family member, or just want some Mets reading to pass the time when there's nothing new to read here, go pick up Mets By The Numbers. It's ten bucks at Amazon, a steal at twice the price.

You already know about their website: it features some of the best baseball writers on the internets doing what they do. You already know about their baseball annual: it's more of the tremendous writing you can find on their website, only different and in book form. Now, we've got The Hardball Times Season Preview 2008, a companion piece to the regular annual, which is really a review of the prior season.

The regular THT annual is a must-own for the phenomenal baseball articles, nevermind the divisional recaps and stats galore. Is the Season Preview worth your hard-earned dough? Well, let's have a look at what we get.

The Preview clocks in at 238 pages, the vast majority of which is comprised of 30 team-specific write-ups. The team capsules are written using the "blank-in-a-box" style popularized by Bill James, which is a clever way to pack a lot of information into a small space, though the overall usefulness is probably something less than that of a full-blown treatise, a la the Baseball Prospectus annual.

Each team "box" features:

• A runs scored/runs allowed projection for 2008
• A short review of 2007
• General team comments (strengths, weaknesses, GM tendencies, manager tendencies, ballpark, minor league system)
• Notable team blogs (including this one!)
• Keys for 2008 (losses, additions, good news, bad news, likely improvements, likely regressions)
• Most likely outcome

After that we have batter and pitcher projections for every player likely to don that team's uniform in the coming season. These forecasts are based on a system developed by THT, the details of which -- aside from the fact that they used three years of data -- are not revealed. It isn't terribly surprising that the guts of the system aren't discussed; the casual reader probably wouldn't really care to read about them (perhaps fueled by a "what goes into a hot dog"-like aversion), but mostly because the exact formulas and data points used to derive most projection systems are simply not published. PECOTA has been around for years yet we know startlingly little about what really goes on behind that iron curtain.

Along with 2008 projections, each player is given a short comment, usually two-to-four sentences. It may not sound like much, but when you aggregate the notes for 30-some-odd players the result is a pretty robust team commentary. The Preview didn't go to press until after the Mets had acquired Johan Santana, so his projection and comments all appear (and are relative to) the Mets' section of the book. As with other baseball previews, a chunk of the content here is geared towards the fantasy baller. In addition to the normal stats, each projection line includes a recommended auction amount, a helpful guide if you're in a pinch and you're not sure whether to go to $40 for Jose Reyes or save some chips and settle for a Derek Jeter or Edgar Renteria.

Rounding out the book are a couple of articles ("Rookies to Watch in 2008" by Chris Constancio and "Projecting Career Statistics" by David Gassko), projected 2008 standings (woot, Mets in first!), and a John Burnson invention called "Star Maps", which is a pretty neat graphical (of course!) representation of every big league hitter's value relative to the "big three" of fantasy baseball: homeruns, stolen bases and batting average.

I would love to compare the THT season preview to the more established annual of Baseball Prospectus, but I didn't happen to buy the BP annual and nobody was kind enough to send one to me. Even if they had, I would still give The Hardball Times Season Preview 2008 a strong buy recommendation on its own marits. It has plenty of information about each team and player, and enough unique content to differentiate itself from the other preview volumes out there.

Some parting thoughts: though I dig the whole "team in a box" concept in general, at the very least I would like to see the verboseness of this particular paradigm expanded in future iterations of the annual. The chapters are penned by some of the great baseball writers out there, some from THT and others from baseball blogs around the web (including a handful from SBNation), and I would prefer to read more of what they do best, rather than have them constrained by the "box" format. I would also like to see one-to-three years of historical stats for each player, especially if I'm to use this as a fantasy baseball guide. The 2008 projections are great, but it would really help to be able to juxtapose those with each player's actual performance in recent seasons to get a more complete picture of someone I am thinking about drafting.

The fantasy baseball season is in full swing right now, with auto- and live fantasy drafts numbering in the thousands every day. I spend countless hours every year preparing for my drafts, poring over tables of stats, ogling assorted fantasy player rankings and scrutinizing every projection system I can get my hands on. I tabulate the results, ranking players by position as well as overall, formulating an overall plan for my draft, oftentimes walking through mock drafts just to see where players may land and who is likely to be available at certain critical junctures.

Despite all of that preparation, I invariably find myself at multiple points in a given draft where I can't seem to decide between two players of seemingly comparable value. The seconds on the draft clock tick away as I nervously waffle back and forth between my targets. Where did ESPN rank them? What about Yahoo!? What does PECOTA think? All of the prep work in the world still leaves me frantically unprepared to make decisions that could wind up making or breaking my season.

The information necessary for making good draft-time decisions is out there, but it's all over the place, and it's often difficult to make sense of it all when you only have moments to make your selection. Enter: Graphical Player 2008 by John Burnson (you can read my review of GP2007 here.

In a nutshell, GP2008 provides a detailed statistical profile of every player in baseball in a graphical format that makes quick analysis and comparison very easy to accomplish. At first glance, the unique charts and visual identifiers are a little overwhelming, as the book crams an awful lot of information into a 7.25" x 2.5" box, but the function of each graph, chart and diagram is sufficiently explained in the introductory pages to each of the book's sections.

Here is what the pitcher charts look like (click to enlarge):

The upper left chart shows the player's positional age relative to his peers. The x-axis is age and the y-axis is positional population (i.e. the number of total players at the player's position). This adds context to the player's age, so we can quickly tell whether he is old or young for his position. Older players are more likely to regress, whereas younger players might still be expected to show improvement in the year(s) to come.

The upper middle box represents the player's game log and includes a timeline of wins, saves, pitch count, walk rate, groundball rate, and strikeout rate. Was the player stronger in the first half or the second half? Did his strikeout rate fluctuate wildly or was he generally consistent?

The upper right box indicates the player's actual ERA last season (black bar) as well as the likelihood that he will achieve a specific ERA next season. The white bar that extends the farthest to the left is the most likely ERA for the player. This isn't really a forecast, but rather an adjustment to ERA based on last year's peripherals (K%, BB%, GB%). So, technically, it was the player's likelihood to achieve said ERAs *last* year, but it gives you an idea of how he pitched relative to his ERA and whether he is likely to improve or regress next season.

The lower left box shows career fortunes, which is basically just a player's hit rate and strand rate. What you're looking for here are deviations from the norm. If the pitcher had a solid ERA last season and his strand rate was abnormally high, he is due for a dropoff. If his ERA was inflated last year and he posted an unusually low strand rate then he might have caught some bad luck and is due for a rebound.

The lower middle box shows career trends in workload (i.e. number of total pitches) and two metrics exclusive to GP2008 -- GOG3 and GOG4 -- which are measures of pitching value based on strikeouts, walks, groundball rate, flyball rate and line drive rate. GOG3 shows the influence of those five outcomes on ERA, WHIP and Wins. GOG4 is the same as GOG4 but also includes the effect on strikeouts. The actual methodology is not described, but a value of 0 represents a marginally useful pitcher. Values above zero indicate pitcher "worthiness".

The lower right box is a pitch profile, which breaks down a hurler's pitch selection by type, speed and frequency as well as how often a hit was allowed on any particular combination of type/velocity.

A comment is included for each pitcher, along with a buy ($) or not (--) recommendation.

Here is what the hitter charts look like (click to enlarge):

Like the pitcher charts, the hitter charts also include positional age comparison and game log. The hitter game logs include rolling percentages for hits, strikeouts and batting average, as well as indicators for homeruns and stolen bases. The left y-axis shows plate appearances for each game. This is a great way to see the player's season at a glance in order to measure consistency and overall competence.

The upper right box measures the player's overall OPS and plate appearances -- plus lefty/righty splits for same -- relative to others at his position. This provides an easy way to see how well a player performs in relation to his peers and is a good barometer for whether said player is a standout at his position.

The lower left boxes show games played by position as well as the player's lineup distribution (i.e. how often he batted in each spot), plus the team's OPS by batting spot relative to the league. This is useful information if you want to know how likely a player is to get RBI or runs scored opportunities.

The lower middle boxes indicate career trends in homeruns and stolen bases, overall and relative to the league. Both charts use age for the x-axis and include three years of projected values. The power chart shows the player's isolated power (slugging minus batting average) and the speed chart shows the player's speed index, or the likelihood that he will attempt a steal.

The lower right box is a hitter's spray chart, indicating the general location of his homeruns, flyballs and groundballs. This is particularly useful if a player is moving to/from a good hitter's park.

Each hitter also includes a comment and buy recommendation.

Craig Brown, Marc Normandin and Jeff Sackmann provide the hitter comments; Burnson provides all of the pitcher comments.

There are plenty of books out there that are marketed -- at least implicitly -- at the fantasy baseball player. They invariably provide historical stats as well as future projections, and most or all of them are genuinely valuable. None of them are Graphical Player, which is what makes this book so special. The statistical usefulness of the other baseball annuals are largely interchangeable, with writing and breadth of content distinguishing one from another. GP2008 contains very little writing aside from the single-line player comments, but its uniqueness of presentation is what sets it apart from the pack and makes it a must-own for fantasy ballers.

After staring at columns of data for hours on end, GP2008 will be a refreshing change of pace for your pre-draft research. And when your draft finally rolls around, assuming you have acclimated yourself to the meaning and purpose of each chart and graph in this book, you will have a leg up on your fellow managers, and will be better prepared to make an informed decision -- either in advance or at the very last second -- that could swing the fate of your fantasy team.

You can buy John Burnson's Graphical Player 2008 at BaseballHQ.com or Amazon.com. Burnson also produces Heater, a PDF magazine published twice weekly targeted to the fantasy baseball GM.

Every offseason, publishers far and wide churn out baseball annuals. By my count, roughly 384* annual baseball books come out every year, a handful of which are actually worth buying. One of them is The Bill James Handbook. Another is The Hardball Times Annual, which is actually my favorite perennial baseball publication. Every annual has a handy assortment of stats and charts, but the good folks at The Hardball Times distinguish their work from the pack with an unrivaled collection of original baseball writing which I will cover in greater detail later on.

The THT annual is broken down into four sections:

1. The 2007 Season
2. 2007 Commentary
3. History
4. Analysis
5. Statistics

Section 1: The 2007 Season

Dave Studenmund, who basically took the THT reigns following Aaron Gleeman's defection to NBC Sports, gets things rolling with a one-page introductory letter and an article entitled "Ten Things I Learned This Year", the latter of which has become a regular feature of the THT annual. From there we launch into divisional reviews of the 2007 season where THT regular John Walsh tackles the NL East, the results of which nobody here would likely care to revisit. Ever.

The divisional summaries are well-written, though each is only a few pages long so you won't necessarily find the detail that team-based summaries might provide. Nevertheless, if you decide a few years from now to revisit what happened in 2007, this section will give you a solid high-level synopsis of the goings-on.

Section 2: 2007 Commentary

Here's where the fun really starts, and where we begin to see the THT annual distance itself from nearly every other annual out there. The internet is a phenomenal resource for baseball statistics, and the need for up-to-date statistical tomes this time of year is no longer a priority. As a result, I find that the books that offer something different -- either more written analysis and commentary or statistics presented in a unique way -- are the ones I keep coming back to. In that respect, the THT annual is second to none. The writing here is unrivaled in both its quantity and its quality, and that's where you'll spend most of your time with this one.

As with the first section, Dave kicks the commentary section off with a neat article on WPA (Win Probability Added), or what Studes calls "The Story Stat". That particular nickname derives from WPA's unique ability to narrate a game play-by-play after the fact, as opposed to just reiterating the cold endgame (not that I don't love me some cold endgame, too). As Dave sums it up:

Imagine a statistic that captures the drama of a game, play by play. Imagine a stat that allows us to quantify the current status of a game, and the importance of a situation. Imagine a statistic that assesses the true impact of a play's outcome, based on what we know of the game at that moment.

Studenmund then looks at several of 2007's more compelling stories -- including the Mets' September collapse -- through the prism of WPA.

Next up is a tabloid-style recap of the 2007 season by Deadspin's Will Leitch, a recap of the season's homeruns by David Vincent, and an article called "Championship Hangover" about the Cardinals' season by Brian Gunn.

The following articles round out the commentary section:

• "The Year of the Improbable in Seattle" by David Cameron recaps the Mariners' surprising surge towards the playoffs that ultimately fell short but left Seattlites with some optimism about the state of their sinking ship that is hopelessly helmed by Bill Bavasi franchise.
• "The Top Minor League Prospects" by Chris Constancio of FirstInning is a positional breakdown of some of the game's best minor leaguers. Fernando Martinez is the only Met farmhand included.
• "The Business of Baseball Report" by Brian Borawski continues to be one of my favorite features of the annual, as well as of the THT website. Along with Maury Brown of The Biz of Baseball, Brian consistently writes interesting and readable articles about the business side of our favorite sport. In this edition he touches on stadium deals, teams for sale, the cable vs satellite entanglement of last Spring, MLB's continued penetration into international markets, and much more.
• "Fantasy Baseball: Thinking Ahead" by Derek Carty takes an overvalued/undervalued look at some of this year's more interesting fantasy baseball picks.
• "The Growing Game Abroad, The Changing Game at Home" by Jonathan Helfgott looks at the development of the game of baseball in various areas of the world. His insight into the often cutthroat world of baseball scouting and representation in the Dominican Republic is especially enlightening.
• "GM in a Box: Dave Dombrowski" by Bill Ferris dissects the Tigers' general manager and his approach to organizational management. Nothing specific about him trying to pawn Bobby Higginson onto the Mets all those times.

Section 3: History

More great articles, bullet style:

• "The Months of 2007 in History" by Richard Barbieri analyzes one fairly significant baseball event from each month since the prior annual (November 2006 through October 2007. The Mets' announcement of the naming rights to Citi Field is the featured event for November 2006. The deal is worth $400 million over 20 years (assuming Citigroup can still foot the bill come 2009, let alone 2028), the most lucrative naming deal in baseball history.
• "The Decline and Fall of the MLBPA" by John Brattain is a wonderful chronology of the MLBPA, and includes early attempts and player unionization, the actual realization of the players' union, and the diminishing clout of the union over the past few years. I'm a big fan of Brattain's work at The Hardball Times, Sympatico/MSN Sports as well as his blog. This one's a must-read.
• "Manager Grinders and Boppers" by Chris Jaffe looks at the relative small ball tendencies of managers through the years.
• "Billy Southworth ... in a Box" by Jon Daly is a breakdown of the managerial styles of Southworth, manager of the Browns and the Braves in the first half of the twentieth century.

Section 4: Analysis

Still more great articles.

• "Signals and Noise" by Mitchel Lichtman, aka MGL, projects 2007 team winning percentages based on actual 2007 playing time. The result is a comparison of actual records to expected records which perhaps illustrates which teams might have played better than they appeared to (Yankees, Royals, Giants) or worse (White Sox, Cardinals, Mariners, Diamondbacks).
• "The Best Fielding Teams of 2007" by John Dewan uses the plus/minus defensive system that Dewan introduced in The Fielding Bible a couple of years ago to break down the defensive prowesses (or lack thereof) of every team. The Mets were second overall in team defense, buoyed by the tremendous outfield duo of Carlos Beltran and Endy Chavez.
• "A Random Walk Through a Markov Model in 2007" by John Beamer uses Markov chains to calculate expected performance relative to actual performance. Markov models are very useful for analyzing problems that contain distinct states. In baseball's case, we have 24 distinct base-out states, or combinations of outs in an inning and base occupancy. Knowing the particular state at a given time, as well as the historical outcomes of teams in that particular state, we can tell the probability of specific events happening (e.g. runs scoring, teams winning, etc.). Markov models are the basis for WPA.
• "Mr. Clutch" by Bill James is an interesting lesson in how we (read: Bill James) might go about answering a particular question about baseball. In this case, the question deals with the existence of clutch hitting. What follows is the Jamesian approach to the study of baseball, and is really quite fascinating. If you want to know why Bill James is as revered as he is, read this article (or any of the Baseball Abstracts).
• "With or Without You" by Tom M. Tango attempts to assign responsibility (read: blame) for the results of non-batter events like passed balls, stolen bases, wild pitches, and more. Definitely an interesting take on a subject that hasn't been covered very much.
• "With or Without ... Derek Jeter", also by Tom Tango, adds to the growing library of evidence that continues to suggest that, despite what Tim McCarver claims to see with his own eyes, Jeter is very, very bad at converting batted balls into outs.
• "The Dollar Value of Player Development" by Vince Gennaro looks at the importance of player development in the context of the overall goal of building a successful franchise. Good stuff here.
• "Do Managers Matter?" by David Gassko attempts to quantify the seemingly unquantifiable: What does a manager add/subtract to the performance of a team in terms of wins and losses.
• "The Origin of the Platoon Advantage" by John Walsh finds that fastballs and sliders -- off-speed pitches like the curveball and changeup -- lead to the greatest platoon splits.
• "Of Home Runs and Free Agents" by Greg Rybarczyk is a breakdown of 2007's homeruns by the proprietor of Hit Tracker.

Section 5: Statistics

We have team stats, league leaderboards, and individual player stats organized by team. We get batted ball type percentages, FIP, batting runs, and much more. Most of it is available in some form or another via THT's website, but it's nice to have it all in one handy volume that can be plucked from your bookshelf at a moment's notice.

Wrapping It Up

Hopefully this turned out to be a pretty comprehensive look at the 2008 THT annual. If you like baseball annuals but can't decide which one (or three) to get, definitely put this one at or near the top of your list. All of the annuals have stats, and THT's is no exception. Where this book really shines is in the writing, the commentary and analysis by some of the best and most innovative baseball writers around. All of the articles here are exclusive to the book; none of them can be found on THT's website. If you do decide to pick up a copy for yourself, please consider buying it directly from ACTA Sports. It'll cost you a few bucks more than Amazon, but buying it from the publisher ensures that the folks that made this book possible get the most out of your purchase.

* wild guess, probably wrong

There are a lot of great things about the baseball offseason. Some of those things, in no particular order:

1. More time to spend with family, friends and loved ones
2. Woot, football!
3. Umm.. the hot stove?
4. Baseball annuals!

Every year, baseball authors and publishers toil away in dank, poorly-lit caves, carefully crafting compendiums of bountiful baseball beauty. What better way to reflect on the prior season's highlights and heartaches than with a top-notch baseball annual. The first annual to hit store shelves each year is the Bill James Handbook, (BJH) which typically becomes available at the beginning of November. How does Sir James get his annual out so quickly? Robot monkeys, I'm told.

The BJH really shines in the stats department. It is decidedly short on prose, but it makes up for it (to some extent, more on that later) with loads of stats, many of them unique to this volume. After the requisite acknowledgments and introduction, the BJH dives right into standings, won/loss matrices and team efficiency summaries, the latter of which are particularly interesting. Each team's runs created and expected runs allowed are compared to their actual runs scored and runs allowed to arrive at "efficiency" measurements -- expressed as a percentage of expected versus actual. The Mets were inefficient at scoring and preventing runs, clocking in at 95% and 97% efficiencies, respectively. Somewhat ironically, they won more games than they might have been expected to given their actual runs scored and allowed, so despite being inefficient in the two main areas that determine wins in and losses, they were marginally efficient at winning overall.

Next up are the Fielding Bible Awards, the BJH's version of the much-maligned gold gloves. You can check out the results of the awards here. Basically, the gist is that a panel of ten "experts" assign marks of one (highest) through ten (lowest) for players at each position. One award is given for each position regardless of league. No Mets took home the virtual hardware, though Carlos Beltran finished second in the center field voting to Andruw Jones. Beltran is vindicated in the plus/minus fielding section, as he narrowly edged Jones for that crown, technically the more objective of the two measures.

I have a love/hate relationship with the next section of the book, its largest by a good deal. As they did in the first four incarnations of the BJH, the editors included career registers for all active players. This means career batting statistics for any hitter who was in the league in 2007 and pitching statistics for any pitcher who was un-retired in 2007. It's an incredible collection of numbers, and it can certainly come in plenty handy if you need to look something up and aren't within arm's reach of a computer. That being said, 265 of the book's 482 pages are consumed by the career registers, and given the utter availability of internet access I can't help but wonder if their inclusion is a bit superfluous.

Following the career registers are the 2007 basic fielding stats for every player in the league. Again, it's a nice thing to have if your intertubes go down, but otherwise there is nothing here that you can't find at ESPN.com or elsewhere.

Enough complaining and onto some more good stuff. The BJH includes player baserunning tables that feature far more than your standard stolen bases and caught stealing. For every big leaguer we get detailed baserunning data that clearly illustrate who the good -- and the bad -- baserunners are. We get 1st-to-3rd, 2nd-to-Home, and 1st-to-Home, plus extra bases taken, outs committed on advancing, times doubled off, and aggregate plus/minus ratings for each player. I talked about this particular section back in November, so refer to that post for more information on these fun stats and their specific methodologies. In addition to individual player baserunning measurements we also get those same metrics at the team level

Next we've got a neat little section called "Pitchers Hitting, Fielding and Holding Runners" and "Hitters Pitching", which are collection of data not normally (or easily) found within typical baseball stat pages. Apparently Aaron Miles pitched two innings spanning two appearances, allowing a couple of runs on three hits.

Next (getting a little tired of that particular noun) are "Manufactured Runs" is an effort to quantify that portion of run scoring that happens incrementally and without the customary benefit of extra-base hits. Or, in some cases, any hits. BJH defines a manufactured run as one that includes at least two non-hit, non-walk bases. In other words, if a runner scores and only two (or fewer) of the four bases he covered came as a result of a walk or a hit (by himself or a teammate), we consider that a manufactured run. Stolen bases, wild pitches, ground outs, fly outs, etc. all contribute to manufactured runs. Unlike Buster Olney's ill-fated Productive Out Percentage from a few years back, BJH isn't claiming that manufactured runs are nearly as important as their non-manufactured counterparts. We are just trying to get a handle on how these runs score and who is good (and who is bad) at scoring them.

"Manager's Record" is another fun section, which gives a snapshot of managerial tendencies such as lineup variance, pinch hitting/running, pitching changes, allowing starts to go deep into games, and even such minutia as the results of intentional walks. As James himself points out in the introduction to the section, the purpose of including this information isn't to determine which managers are good and which aren't, but rather to "understand better how one manager is functionally different from another.".

BJH also includes park factors for 2007 as well as three-year factors for 2005-2007. In addition to the customary factors for runs, homeruns, etc., we also get platoon factors -- LHB and RHB -- for batting average and homeruns. This helps to differentiate between a good homerun park and one that *looks* good but actually just greatly inflates homeruns for one type of batter and not another. For instance, PNC Park in Pittsburgh has an overall homerun factor of 79, meaning that it suppresses homeruns by 21%. The platoon splits tell us that PNC has a homerun factor of 107 for left-handed batters and 66 (!) for right-handed batters.

Speaking of platoon splits, BJH includes lefty/righty splits for every batter and pitcher in baseball for 2007.

League leaderboards are up next, and in addition to having pedestrian rankings of RBI and homeruns, amongst others, we get into some great lists that are exclusive (to my knowledge) to the BJH. Some tidbits:

• Grady Sizemore led the AL with 3,112 total pitches seen.
• Ryan Braun led the NL with a 1.306 OPS on curveballs.
• Barry Bonds led the NL with 67.2% of his pitches taken.
• Scott Thorman had the longest average homerun in the NL at 409 feet.
• Ryan Howard led the NL by swinging and missing at 25% of the pitches he saw.
• Greg Maddux led the NL by throwing 57.6% of his pitches for strikes.
• Matt Morris led the NL with 1,550 pitches that were slower than 80 MPH.
• Matt Lindstrom led the NL with 9 pitches over 100 MPH.
• Tom Glavine led the NL with by throwing changeups on 44.1% of his pitches.
• Brandon Webb led the NL with a .251 OBP against versus batters leading of an inning.

We also get career win shares for all active players, which makes for a handy reference.

The "Young Talent Inventory" is basically a Top-50 young players in baseball, or the proverbial "guys you would start a franchise with". This section also represents the only significant bit of writing that Bill James contributed to the handbook, which is a shame. The Baseball Abstracts, aside from being groundbreaking with respect to the information they presented, also represent some of the best baseball writing you'll find. James has a very readable, humorous style to his writing that I really enjoy, and the fact that an annual bearing his name features just one entry of considerable breadth is disappointing, to say the least.

That said, the "Young Talent Inventory" is a very interesting read, and includes David Wright at #4 and Jose Reyes at #7.

The BJH is rounded out with 2008 batter and pitcher projections, something called "Career Targets" (which replaced James's Favorite Toy), and a very useful and verbose glossary of terms.

Overall, BJH2008 is a very solid pickup for around $20. It makes a great stocking-stuffer this time of year, and despite the fact that it seems to have less and less to do with Bill James with each passing year, it is still one of the few must-own baseball annuals of the offseason.

Other Reviews
Baseball Analysts Part I, Part II

If you're reading this, you're probably a pretty big baseball fan. Too, you're probably a Mets' fan. You probably think about baseball too often when you're not supposed to, talk about baseball too often when nobody cares or is even listening. If so, The New Ballgame: Understanding Baseball Statistics for the Casual fan probably isn't for you. However, you probably know someone who cares an awful lot about you who doesn't know what the hell you are doing spending so much time looking at baseball player pages, scrutinizing tables of numbers, and cursing the baseball telecast for not including on-base and slugging percentages with each player's season stats. This book, then, is probably for them.

=> Vitals

# of Pages: 160
Author: Glenn Guzzo
Publisher: ACTA Sports
Suggested Retail Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0879463182

=> What's Inside?

Ten chapters designed to enlighten even the staunchest baseball Luddite to the ways of the modern baseball fan. Early chapters are devoted to baseball lingo and statistic before the author plunges right into the why cross-era comparisons of players is nigh impossible, and also why such arguments are typically the most oft-debated among baseball fans. There is a whole chapter on filling out a scorecard, reading a boxscore, and much more.

=> Why Should You Buy It?

Either (a) you feel like you have missed the boat on today's newfangled baseball statistics and would like to play a little bit of catch-up, or (b) you know someone who doesn't understand your obsession with this game of baseball and wish they would take the time to understand and appreciate its intracacies, or (c) you know someone who *is* obssessed with this game of baseball and *you* wish to understand them better.

If you are already a baseball whiz you will still find the book to be an interesting read, but you won't get nearly as much out of it as someone with less experience watching and following baseball.

=> Where to Buy It?

Support the hard-working folks that bring you great basbeall books like this one by buying direct from the publisher, ACTA Sports. You can also save a few bucks by getting it through Amazon.com.

What started as a simple question -- "Why would Bill James, of all people, appear on Time Magazine's list of the one hundred most influential people in the world?" -- quickly developed into a project all its own as editor Gregory F. Augustine Pierce began reading some of the responses. It turns out that Bill James has been instrumental in influencing a new generation of thinking, both inside and outside of baseball. As it turns out, the genius of Bill James -- though he would never proclaim his work as such -- has never been about what he has done, but rather how he has done it. His gift to baseball (and other sectors of society, we learn) is that we no longer accept conventional wisdom simply because of convention.

=> Vitals

# of Pages: 144
Publisher: ACTA Sports
Suggested Retail Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0879463175

=> What's Inside?

Lots of stories about Bill James. If you don't like reading about Bill James, you probably won't enjoy this book. If you appreciate baseball just a little bit more because of Bill James -- and almost all of us do, whether we realize it or not -- then you'll probably appreciate this collection of experiences and anecdotes.

• "Freeing My Mind" by Alan Schwarz
• "Ten Things I Learned from Bill James" by Dave Studenmund
• "The Arrogance of Bill James" by Gary Huckabay
• "Prove It" by John Thorn
• "James, Tenace, McGraw and Kluszewski" by Hal Richman
• "Selling My Soul to Bill James" by Sam Walker
• "Slapping Myself on the Forehead" by Steve Moyer
• "The Collision of Sabermetrics and Fantasy Baseball" by Ron Shandler
• "Baseball, Basketball, Whatever" by Daryl Morey
• "Ready for the Next Question" by Susan McCarthy
• "The Bill James Way of Life" by Rob Neyer
• "Bill James Is Worth the Wait" by John Dewan
• "The Last Word" by Bill James

To be clear, this book is not a 150-page tongue-bathing of Mr. James. It isn't a collection of love-letters from hopeless sycophants. These are genuine thoughts from people whose lives Bill James has affected -- some directly, some indirectly -- and in bringing them all together, the editor (Pierce) paints a picture of the man who, behind all of the numbers and all of the facial hair, basically just loves the game of baseball.

=> Why Should You Buy It?

Either (a) because you love Bill James and want to know why a bunch of other people do, too, or (b) because you're on the fence about Bill James and want to know what all the fuss is about. Or, possibly (c) that you think Bill James is an overrated hack and would like to know which other baseball visionaries you should avoid reading or mentioning during your ESPN chats or Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts.

It's a fun read which even a casual reader could polish off in an evening, and is a nice companion to James's own writing which should already be liberally sprinkled throughout your baseball library.

=> Where to Buy It?

Support the hard-working folks that bring you great basbeall books like this one by buying direct from the publisher, ACTA Sports. You can also save a few bucks by getting it through Amazon.com.

Thousands of anxious baseball fans flock to Florida and Arizona in March every year to take in some sun and some Spring baseball. Unwilling to wait the extra month for the regular season to begin, these fans flock to Spring Training to watch their favorite teams work to get into game shape. If you're a Spring Training novice looking for a bit of direction or an old pro interested in checking out a few different parks this year, Florida Spring Training: Your Guide to Touring the Grapefruit League by Alan Byrd is the only tourguide you'll need.

=> Vitals

# of Pages: 256
Publisher: The Intrepid Traveler
Suggested Retail Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-887140-68-3

=> What's Inside?

Full chapter breakdowns for all eighteen teams that ply their trade in Florida, including seventeen different parks (the Marlins and Cardinals share Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter. Each chapter is broken down thusly:

• An introduction by Byrd
• Contact information including stadium address, phone number and URL
• General directions to the stadium
• Parking information, tips and cost
• Ticket information, including availability, seating chart, seating capacity, ticket prices and average attendence
• Description and review of the game program
• Ease of finding your seat
• Availability of shade at stadium
• Concession variety and quality, including a beer breakdown
• Souvenirs
• Autograph approachability
• Just a game, or a real baseball experience?
• Proximity of seats to game action
• Ease of evacuation at the end of a game
• Things to do before and after a game:
  • Restaurants
  • Sports Bars
  • Attractions
  • Activities
• Hotels near the ballpark

Byrd also provides soup-to-nuts rankings of all of the stadiums, rating each on a ten-point scale for intimacy, autographs, comfort, food and style. The Mets' Spring Training home at Tradition Field in Port St. Lucie ranked sixth out of seventeen with a total score of 39 (out of 50) (Yankees' home base Legends Field in Tampa ranked fifteenth).

If that's not enough for you, Ryan includes five week-long itineraries for the intrepid Spring Training traveler that will empower you to hit multiple ballparks as efficiently and enjoyably as possible.

=> Why Should You Buy It?

If you want to be prepared for your Florida Spring Training experience, this book will give you that and more. For the more adventurous fan, the pre-planned trips will keep you busy for a while.

=> Where to Buy It?

Get it at Amazon.com for around ten bucks.

Ignoring for a moment the fact that I wouldn't be here blogging if it weren't for Bill James, his annual is one of the best purchases you can make in any offseason. The Bill James Handbook 2007 is the first annual released every year, hitting e-bookstands about a month after the regular season ends. However, it's quick time to press is in no way an implication of hurried copy. The book is a terrific, necessary inclusion on any baseball fan's winter reading list.

=> Vitals

# of Pages: 467
Publisher: ACTA Sports
Suggested Retail Price: $21.95
ISBN: 0-87946-311-2

=> What's Inside?

Over four-hundred pages of Jamesian goodness! In truth, while the annual was very much the brainchild of Bill James, it takes the tireless contributions of many to crank this baby out just a few short weeks after the baseball season ends. Here's a breakdown of the various sections in the first annual released this year:

• 2006 Team Statistics

  Team-based statistics from the 2006 season, includes won-loss records against all other teams, divisions, starting pitcher handedness, conditons, run differential, monthly, semiannually, and more. It also includes team batting, pitching and fielding stats.

• Team Efficiency Summary (by Bill James)

  Based on the idea that a team's results are essentially predictable given the performance of its individual players, team efficiency compares each team's runs scored and allowed to its expected runs scored and allowed to determine how efficient they were at winning ballgames.

• The Fielding Bible Awards (by John Dewan)

  Basically an experts' version of Tom Tango's Fans' Scouting Report, Dewan asked ten baseball experts, including James and Tango, to rank players at each defensive position. Two things that separate the Fielding Bible Awards from the Gold Glove Awards are the former's lack of deliniation between the two leagues -- there is only one award for both leagues at each position -- and the fact that Bobby Abreu and Derek Jeter will never win Fielding Bible Awards.

• Plus/Minus Leaders

  In an update to last year's Fielding Bible, John Dewan introduces some enhancements to his defensive system and ranks the top ten players at each position. Jose Valentin finished first among second basemen despite being a regular for only four months.

• Career Register

  Career stats -- including minor league numbers for younger players -- for every active big leaguer. This section consumes more than half of the book.

• 2006 Fielding Statistics

  Regular 2006 fielding statistics, plus catcher ERA and stolen base numbers.

• Basrunning (by Bill James)

  Nifty baserunning rankings that include first-to-third (single), second-to-home (single), first-to-home (double), and other bases taken (e.g. on a wild pitch, passed ball, etc.). Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes rank among the best in the league; David Wright and Jose Valentin are both better than average; Carlos Delgado and Paul Lo Duca are slightly below average.

• Pitchers Hitting, Fielding & Holding Runners / Hitters Pitching

  Just what it says. Nine position players actually appeared as pitchers last year, which is about five or six more than I would have guessed.

• Manufactured Runs (by Bill James)

  A neat analysis on manufactured runs. James meticulously lays out his rules for manufactured runs and then sorts all manufactured runs into one of two categories: runs created by deliberate acts (bunting, stealing, etc.) and everything else (infield hits, defensive miscues, taking extra bases, advancing on outs/throws). He concludes the analysis with 2006 team rankings for both types of manufactured runs.

• Manager's Record

  Data on managerial tendencies, including lineup variance, substitutions, bullpen usage, and tactical decision-making (sacrifices, intentional walks, pitch-outs).

• 2006 Park Indices

  2006 and 2004-2006 park factors for all big league ballparks, including batting average, runs, hits, doubles, triples, homeruns, walks, strikeouts and errors, as well as average and homeruns for lefties and righties.

• 2006 Lefty/Righty Statistics

  Lefty/righty splits for all batters and pitchers from 2006.

• 2006 Leader Boards

  Standard leader board stuff, plus some goodies not found anywhere else like percentage of pitches taken, BPS (batting plus slugging) on pitches outside the strike zone, first swing percentage, swing and miss percentage, easy/regular/tough saves, and more. Includes 2006 and career leader boards.

• Win Shares

  2006 plus yearly and career win shares for all players active in 2006.

• Hitter Projections

  Everybody and his brother has a projection system and this is Bill's.

• Projected Career Totals for Active Players

  An expanded version of James's "Favorite Toy", this section projects career totals for active major leaguers. Albert Pujols is projected to hit 867 homeruns by the time he is through.

• Pitcher Projections

  Just what it says.

• Career Assessments

  Also an offshoot of "The Favorite Toy", this specifically ranks players' probability of reaching certain specific milestones, like 700 homeruns, 4,000 hits or 1,000 stolen bases (Jose Reyes is given a 12% chance of that last one).

• 300-Win Candidates (Bill James)

  Tom Glavine and Randy Johnson are the only active pitchers with a better-than-20% chance of reaching 300 wins (74% and 70%, respectively).

• Baseball Glossary

  Definitions of terms in use throughout the book. Definitely handy for the statistical neophytes.

=> Why Should You Buy It?

Statistically, the Bill James Handbook is probably the most complete and unique annual there is. There's enough good stuff in here to keep you going for a while.

=> Where to Buy It?

Get it at ACTA Sports. While you're there, pick up a few of their other great books as well. Nobody churns out the quality and quantity of great baseball writing of ACTA, so buy your books direct from the company and help support the folks that make these books possible. You can also buy the book at Amazon.com.