The Amazin' Avenue Annual goes to the printer on Friday and drops into booksellers just about three weeks hence, and we've already covered the contributor list and the big announcement that the book will be distributed by ACTA Sports. We also mentioned that you can already pre-order it from ACTA, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, and that it'll be available on the Kindle, iPad, and Nook e-readers. There's also a newsletter which we'll use to send out exclusive updates as well as to give away free copies of the book. Sign up here. (If you've already signed up and haven't received anything yet, that's because we haven't started sending out updates! We will soon!)
Well, here's a special bonus. The book will contain around 35 player profiles (plus another 30 minor league profiles), and 29 of those players have sweet custom charts designed by Justin Bopp from Beyond the Boxscore.
It was barely three weeks ago that we decided something was missing from our profile section, a visual element that would really pull things together. That turned out to be player-specific charts, and despite our dwindling time to press and Justin's hectic jet-set lifestyle, he agreed to undertake the creation of nearly two-and-a-half-dozen custom charts and graphs.
The tricky part was that the graphs needed to pop in black-and-white, and I think the results speak for themselves. We couldn't cram a whole lot of information into them, but Justin managed to take the data we provided (based on suggestions and collection by Chris McShane) and turned them into stunningly simple graphs. Check out the whole collection after the jump.
(click to embiggen)