The thinking in the clubhouse when a position player is struggling is that he's giving it his all. Pitchers, on the other hand, are held to an entirely different standard; we might be ballplayers, but we're not necessarily athletes. At least, we're not the same kind of athlete as our position-playing teammates. When we struggle, the perception is that we're doing something wrong. We don't get beat; we beat ourselves.

Mets fans are already plenty familiar with Ron Darling. He pitched for parts of nine seasons in New York from 1983 through 1991, including outstanding campaigns in 1985 and 1986. He famously appeared -- albeit briefly -- in the Farrelly Brothers' 2001 "hit" "comedy" Shallow Hal. More recently, Darling has provided color commentary -- along with former teammate Keith Hernandez -- for Mets telecasts on SNY. Now, Darling, who long ago tired of playing a literary second fiddle to the twice published (now thrice) Hernandez, has put pen to paper for The Complete Game, a collection of ten chapters cleverly assembled to mimic the progression of a baseball game inning-by-inning. Alright, it isn't that clever, but it's a hook and it works.

The gist is this: each chapter represents an inning of "the complete game", with Darling selecting specific innings -- mostly his own, but a couple from recent Mets teams that he has broadcast -- to correspond with each of those innings. For example, the opening inning of his first big league start against the Phillies was fittingly chosen for his chapter on the first inning, "Getting Starter". The content of the chapter, then, represents Darling's memoir of that actual inning, including:

• His mental and physical preparation prior to the inning
• His thought process during the inning
• An actual account of the baseball game
• What went right, wrong, otherwise
• Other random insights, anecdotes, and musings

The narrative is dry and formulaic at times, and Darling will occasionally lapse into TBP (Tired Baseball Platitude) mode, but overall The Complete Game is really quite enjoyable. Long-time Mets fans will remember most of the games -- and even the innings -- to which Darling refers in meticulous detail, and while the author claims this isn't a "traditional baseball memoir" -- the chronology of biographical coverage is neither linear nor complete -- the book does leave the reader with a pretty good snapshot of Darling's career as a ballplayer.

As with his work in the booth, Darling is at his best here when he's providing details and stories from within the game that someone outside the game couldn't otherwise know. Some highlights:

• Darling's first big league paycheck, and how it was so small Tom Seaver offered to cash it with money he had on hand.
• Pitchers who make a mess of the mound.
• Sharing an on-field moment with his dad at Fenway Park before Game 4 of the 1986 World Series.
• The Emerson Fittipaldi Brazilian Rib Machine ('nuff said).
• How the modern baseball "quality start" is a joke.
• Reinventing himself as a veteran pitcher with the A's (with the help of Dave Duncan).
• Tony La Russa's nickname for him -- "Load" -- the meaning of which he still hasn't figured out.
• When he knew it was all over.

If you're a fan of the Mets, or of Darling, you'd have a tough time not enjoying this book. Fans of the game should appreciate Darling's "pitcher's-eye-view" of his career (and of baseball in general), and the inning-by-inning format of the book is unique and compelling.

For more coverage, check out Alex Nelson's review at MetsGeek.

In the spirit of the excellent Bill James Handbook and Hardball Times Baseball Annual comes the Maple Street Press Mets Annual.  This 128-page publication, edited by Matthew Silverman and Greg Spira, is devoted entirely to the Mets and features stories, stats, and photographs.  Here is a quick summary of its features:

2009 Mets Preview

• "New Home, Old Worries" (Spira and Silverman): A brief recap of the 2008 season and 2008-2009 offseason.
• "2009 Mets Projections and Scouting Reports": CHONE projections and in-depth reports on Mets regulars, including the recently departed Duaner Sanchez.
• "50 Greatest Mets Seasons": The top fifty seasons by Mets pitchers.  Tom Seaver appears ten times.  Steve Trachsel, Glendon Rusch, and Kevin Appier also make cameos.
• "Santanarific" (Spira): Johan is awesome.
• "Replace Mets" (Joe McDonald): Mets prospects that could make an impact in 2009 include Daniel Murphy, Nick Evans, Jon Niese, Bobby Parnell, and Eddie Kunz.
• "Comebacker" (Silverman): Fernando Tatis had a memorable 2008 - can he do it again in 2009?
• "Shea Memoir" (Michael J. Bielawa): Personal memories of Shea.
• "A Cut Above" (Jon Springer): Profile of no-longer-interim manager Jerry Manuel.  The title is appropriate.
• "Money on the Table" (Vince Gennaro): Analysis of the free agent market and the Mets offseason moves.  This is top-notch writing by a graduate professor of sports management and is my favorite piece in the Annual.
• "Keys to the Citi" (Tara Krieger): Preview of Citi Field.
• "Home Plates" (Springer): A look at the upscale culinary options at Citi Field.  Springer writes: "The Mets seem determined to be sure Citi Field food - from cotton candy to caviar - is served with a generous helping of hospitality that will set it apart from other facilities."  I'll stick with a hot dog and $8 Budweiser.
• "Around the League" (Ted Berg): Tour of the National League.  Berg notes the lack of a clear favorite in the NL East, and I agree.  Each team, save the Nationals, has a shot at winning the division.

Down on the Farm

• "Minor Upgrade" (Toby Hyde): Rankings of the top Mets prospects.  I liked this description of a certain catcher prospect: "Josh Thole knows the difference between a strike and a ball."
• "Minor League Statistics": Self-explanatory.
• "Needs Met" (Mike Emeigh): Review of the Mets 2008 Draft, which is looking pretty decent right now. 
• "Still the One" (Evan Drellich): The "one" is Fernando Martinez.  He can hit, but will he stay healthy?
• "Shuffling off to Buffalo" (Spira): Summary of the changing locales of the Mets AAA team.  The long-time affiliation with the Norfolk Tides ended in ugly fashion after 2006, and it wasn't practical to keep the squad in New Orleans.  Enter chilly Buffalo.  Three of the Mets six minor league clubs are now in New York state.
• "Buffalo Redux" (Bielawa): Buffalo was home to the Mets top minor league club from 1963 through 1965.  The team's stadium was featured in the film "The Natural."
• "Mets Affiliates 2009 Schedules"

Pieces of Mets History

• "There Are Some Words" (Greg Prince): Memories of the 1969 Mets, celebrating the fortieth anniversary this year.
• "As the Worm Turns" (Dan Schlossberg): 1984 was an eventful year for the United states (Ronald Reagan re-elected, Summer Olympics, Apple computer introduced) and also for the Mets (Dwight Gooden's rookie year, Keith Hernandez's first full Mets season).  That season planted the seeds for the 1986 World Series Champions.
• "Stepping Forward" (Silverman): An interview with the one and only Keith Hernandez.
• "1984 Acquisitions": How Frank Cashen Built the 1984 Mets.
• "Seconds, Anyone?" (Howard Megdal): How are the Mets like Susan Lucci?  They're both familiar with second place. 
• "Opening Jitters" (Andy Esposito): The Mets called the Polo Grounds home from 1962-1963 before moving to Shea in 1964.  The first game at each stadium resulted in a Mets loss - can the 2009 team buck this trend at Citi Field?
• "Shea Memoir": The editors and writers share Shea memories.

It's an excellent read for the daily commute, in between classes, or on a lazy weekend afternoon.  I particularly enjoyed the stories which take the reader through Mets history.  The pages are filled with photographs, including some great ones of the old Polo Grounds and its unique dimensions.  Buy it here, or at bookstores in the tri-state area.

Kim: Looks like you got another !@#$ing book in the mail.
Me: The new Bill James Handbook is here! The new Bill James Handbook is here!
Kim: [not quite under her breath] Loser.
Me: ::grinning like a goon::

That conversation may not have actually taken place, but it might as well have. I've nearly filled an entire bookshelf with baseball annuals, including six separate editions of the BJH. In a vast sea of baseball annuals, the BJH distinguishes itself from the pack by -- among other things -- hitting the streets just after the World Series ends. This year's edition was available on November 1st, and I think I may have received my review copy a day or two before then, even. I'm still not sure how they get it finished and shipped so quickly; I think it has something to do with elves.

Last year I tirelessly went through every section of the book and explained the just of the contents. The structure of the book is largely unchanged from last year, so I'm not going to bore you with all of that. I'll try to gear this review more towards Mets-centric nuggets from the book, of which there are plenty.

I mentioned it in an applesauce a couple of weeks ago, but the Fielding Bible awards are back, and Carlos Beltran was honored as the top defensive centerfielder, beating out former Mets Carlos Gomez and Mike Cameron, among others. A panel of ten "experts" voted on the awards, including Bill James, John Dewan, Joe Posnanski and Rob Neyer. David Wright finished tied for fifth at third base (Adrian Beltre won), Jose Reyes finished tenth at shortstop (Jimmy Rollins) and Johan Santana was the sixth highest-ranked pitcher (Kenny Rogers). The voting was somewhat subjective, though I suppose each panelist reached his conclusions using whatever means he considered the most meaningful. The objective counterpart to the awards are Dewan's plus/minus leaders, which would seem to cut into his profits on the forthcoming Fielding Bible 2009. Jose Reyes appears on neither the leaders nor the trailers list, so we may actually have to wait for the FB2009 to know how he actually rated. From the "Kinda Looks Like a Misprint" department, Chase Utley was 47 plays better than average at second base, which is mind-boggling. Also mind-boggling: Pat Burrell was -73 in left field from 2006-2008. Do. Not. Want.

As usual, the BJH devotes near 300 pages to the career registers of every player who was active in 2008. I understand why they include it, and it's theoretically handy to have that kind of information on hand, but in practice I just find it negligibly useful. All of that information -- and much, much more -- is seconds away on the internets. I've got a desktop and a laptop (and an iPhone), so there's rarely a time when it's more convenient to look up a player's statistics in a book instead of hopping online. Maybe I'm on an island here, but I'd prefer they save some trees, cut the career register, and maybe add a few more Bill James articles about the prior season in order to flesh things out a little bit.

The time I save by not looking at the career register I can spend on the 2008 baserunning statistics, which are just fascinating to me. If we can accurately measure runs created on the basepaths, there's no reason they shouldn't be included in a player's total value when we're quantifying his contributions to the team. Offense is X, defense is Y, and baserunning should be Z. The BJH's baserunning stats measure each player's ability at:

• Going first-to-third on a single
• Going second-to-home on a single
• Going first-to-home on a double
• Advancing on outs
• Not getting doubled off
• Not grounding into double-plays

All of those factors are thrown into a mixer which spits out a base runs gained/lost. That number is combined with stolen base gain/lost to arrive at a total baserunning gain/lost, expressed in runs. Carlos Beltran cracked the top ten with +35 base runs, which you can add to the list of things he does extraordinarily well. Jose Reyes was at +32. Derek Jeter was -13. Willy Taveras led all big leaguers with +70 base runs. Dioner Navarro trailed everyone at -39. As a team, the Mets were fourth in the majors with +85 base runs. The World Champion Phillies were first overall with +114 base runs.

The relief pitching section is also neat, as it breaks down saves into different types (easy, regular, tough), and also includes things like stranding inherited runners, pitching on consecutive days, high-leverage situations, long outings blown save/win situations, and some other stuff. A "tough save" is defined as one in which a reliever comes into the game with the tying or go-ahead runs on base. Tough saves were only converted successfully 22% of the time in 2008. The Mets' bullpen served to drag that number down a bit by going 0-for-8 in tough save opportunities.

We've also got a section on manufactured runs. This goes a bit beyond productive outs by determining actual runs that scored as a result of "productive" outs. A manufactured run, per the BJH, is "(a) any run on which two or more of the bases come from something other than playing station-to-station baseball, or (b) a run that scores without a hit, or with only infield hits". They're further separated into deliberately manufactured runs (runs that involve a stolen base, a bunt, or a pinch-runner) and non-deliberate manufactured runs (one that don't include the aforementioned managerial decisions). For whatever it's worth, the Mets manufactured more total runs -- 207 -- than any other National League team, and just shy of the 213 manufactured by the Twins. Yay! Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran are the top two manufacturers in the NL, craftily assembling 42 runs and 37 runs, respectively.

The book goes on and on. We've got managerial records, park factors, comprehensive ballpark statistics (Shea Stadium suppressed RHB batting average more than any NL park outside of San Diego), lefty/right splits for batters and pitchers, esoteric stat leaderboards (David Wright had the second-highest NL OPS among players under 25; Mike Pelfrey led the NL in GIDP/9 with 1.30; Oliver Perez was the most extreme flyball pitcher in all of baseball;), career win shares, and the Young Talent Inventory (Wright and Reyes are both among James's top ten players under 27). We also get 2009 projections, which I've already covered in great depth.

If that weren't enough, there's also career targets (formerly known as the Favorite Toy), which evaluates the likelihood of certain players hitting certain milestones. For instance, Jose Reyes has a 31% chance of reaching 3,000 hits and a 5% chance of reaching 4,000 hits. Alex Rodriguez dominates this section, and has a 49% chance of breaking Barry Bonds's career homerun record.

There's really just an astounding amount of information in here, and it's very easy to get lost within it for hours at a time. I urge you to pick up your own copy, and if you do, please buy it directly from ACTA Sports. You can save a few bucks through Amazon, but when you buy direct from the publisher you're supporting the folks that make this and other great baseball books possible.

Baseball's not a very complicated game, but a cursory glance at the MLB Rulebook might lead one to believe otherwise. I'm glad that MLB makes their rules available online; I used to buy the hard copy version of it to peruse at home, and even now I'll refer to it every so often, but since I spend much of my time online anyway it's a lot easier to research the nuances of the game without leaving my mother's basement computer. That, and the fact that the omnipotent Google will let you search the whole thing makes it a lot easier to explore the details of even the most esoteric of baseball's rules.

The casual convenience of having MLB's rulebook online doesn't change the fact that it's often written like stereo instructions that were translated from English to Japanese and then back to English again. That's where the Baseball Field Guide (BFG) comes in handy. The book aspires to present baseball's often convoluted rules using plain but descriptive language and meaningful diagrams, both of which are sorely lacking from the official rulebook.

The Infield Fly Rule has sort of become the de facto "what's the deal" baseball rule over the years, even though it really isn't terribly difficult to understand and its significance to the game is perfectly logical and reasonable: prevent the defensive team from putting one over on the batting team. The BFG does a nice job of illustrating the scenarios in which the infield fly rule is called, as well as what would happen were there no such rule. The juxtaposition of the two clearly show *why* baseball needs the infield fly rule. The book's website provides an excerpt of the rule's presentation and is a good example of the book's style.

The one smallish gripe with the book, and I recall reading this in someone else's review, is that the index does not usefully highlight the primary entry for a particular topic. For instance, while it lists five page references to the infield fly rule, all but one of them are merely passing references. There's no way to tell -- without thumbing through each page listed, that is -- which reference is the main entry and which corresponds to an entirely different rule that happens to make mention of the topic you're looking for. It's a minor complaint, but it would make an otherwise tremendously useful book a bit more usable.

The average fan would find plenty of interesting items in here, and I suspect that any parent wishing to teach their kids the rules or little league coach looking to get a leg up would get a lot of use out of the Baseball Field Guide.

You can pick up a copy for about $11 at Amazon.

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.