Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster 2009

Let the record show that I am not a fantasy baseball participant: I have only participated in one such league, and it was a season long home run derby. I think I finished third or fourth, if it’s of any consequence to you. I’ve only participated in one other fantasy venture – a hockey league that I drafted my players and promptly forgot about it. I don’t even know where I stand in that league.

While I don’t participate in fantasy sports, I certainly appreciate the analysis and insight that those who do have brought to the table for discussion. When you are serious about the league you are playing in, and by serious I mean willing to put money out on your predictions, you want the best information as possible.

That is what Ron Shandler and his crew are trying to deliver, and is what they once again succeed at doing, of course with the all important disclaimers.

When I spoke with Mr. Shandler last year about his 22nd edition, he was careful to remind all of us that right now, the best projection systems are only able to achieve about 70% accuracy. That number is still in effect with the 23rd edition, so bear in mind that there is still a fairly large amount of space that can’t be nailed down.

Along with that, it’s tough to be critical of the projections that the book puts forth because we won’t know their accuracy until after the season, which isn’t the best time to put out a review of a book such as this. So I’m leaving the projection side alone, and focusing on the commentary and analysis portions of the book, which I find to be the real juicy parts and the ones that almost any fan can get into, regardless of whether or not they participate in fantasy baseball.

Ron Shandler

For me, the first 50 pages of the 271 in the book are where the goodies lie – Shandler and his contributors do a remarkable job explaining their thoughts and strategies in a way that makes it easy to understand and gives the reader an understanding of the trends that shape player performance and valuation.

If anything, the book is brutally honest – case in point, The Gravity Principles, mentioned on page 23, which basically state that it is incredibly hard to be good, and that all levels of success are susceptible to disappearing at any time. Likewise, it’s much harder to get yourself out of a slump than it is to maintain a level of success.

The Baseball Forecaster also establishes age and performance markers that help you really see if a prospect or player is worth picking up or not. Having crunched the data on thousands of players over many, many years, they have developed a fairly accurate way to look at a player and see what he might be capable of. Again, by no means a definitive set of criteria, but something that does provide a guide tempered by historical research.

As I read the book, I began feeling that I could make the argument that this is as much a life philosophy title as it is a baseball book focusing on fantasy projections. It strips down the task of trying to predict player performance to looking at “component skills analysis,” a much easier thing to wrap your head around.

Which is why I enjoy the book so much – while it deals in statistics and projections, it maintains a level of approachability that other books don’t. It also manages to throw in a good amount of humor – some laugh out loud funny, some not – but it manages to keep the book from getting too heavy. Instead of just being page after page of numbers, it helps you look at the traits a player exhibits, both good and bad, and how that fits into his makeup and thus affects his performance.

Using a good amount of well-known players as examples, they clarify the concepts even further, something that will be appreciated by those both familiar with fantasy baseball and those just wanting a better understanding of how players get valued for what they bring to the park everyday.

The Baseball Forecaster 2009 presents the opportunity for any fan who wants to better understand the performance side of baseball to do just that, and in a format that should keep you engaged while not bogging you down with too many numbers. Not to say that there aren’t a good amount of stats and terms put forth – but think of it like this: remember when you had to take a class in college that was taught by several professors? You’d ask your friends which professor made the material more enjoyable, and you tried to get his or her class. The same goes with this – Professor Shandler and his book make player valuation an approachable subject for those who might otherwise be intimidated by it, while keeping his credibility with his upper-level students who want more information and knowledge.

Shandler asks you to leave antiquated statistics like ERA and batting average behind in favor of looking at performance rates – but he doesn’t expect you to make the jump on your own. The explanation for his requests are always present, and his rationale is clear. If you’re still looking at the scoreboard to see what a guy is hitting or how many wins the starting pitcher has, this will be a bit of a departure for you, but the net is never taken away; you’re just reminded why you won’t need it.

The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2009

Here we are mired in the middle of the off-season, constantly checking our team’s pots and pans on the Hot Stove to see if anything is cooking, done, or in some cases, smells fishy.

While players are only a few weeks away from reporting to Spring Training and are undoubtedly hard at work in the weight room, baseball fans who think that there is more to baseball than what h-appens in between $8 beers and wiping your kid’s nose will want to check out The Hardball Times’ Baseball Annual 2009.

It’s not fair to compare this to say, the Bill James Handbook, but it is crafted in the same vain – trying to provide analysis of the game that will give everyone from MLB executives to fans new and improved metrics by which to evaluate players and their performance.

What is different about this from James’ book is simply the sheer volume of text. I like to consider myself a fairly quick reader, and this seemed to take me quite a while to get through – and don’t even think of jumping into it without having had a stiff cup of coffee prior and eliminating any and all distractions and interruptions. This is some serious heavy lifting.

But that’s not all bad provided you’re up for the task of taking it on. There are articles that will have more relevance to you than others – depending on how much you want to read about your favorite team versus other teams, or take on topics such as Mike Piazza’s career numbers and his Hall of Fame credentials, or an in-depth look at Pat Gillick, former GM of the Phillies, Blue Jays and Mariners.

The bottom line here is that if you read the book – or even just parts of it, you will learn something, which is something I require of almost every book that crosses my path in order to get a recommendation. There is a wealth of information and insight in its 380 pages – some might even say there is too much, or at least too much for one sitting. This is closer to the equivalent of a college course than a day read, if you ask me. Just be glad they don’t require quizzes and a final exam at the end of it.

Asian Pacific Americans and Baseball: A History – by Joel S. Franks

Ichiro, Dice-K, Matsui, Okajima, Nomo – all names that most baseball fans are well aware of, and all names that come from Japan.

But the history of players with Asian ancestry goes much farther and deeper than just those who we see on the big league diamond today, which is the jumping off point for Joel S. Franks’ new work, Asian Pacific Americans and Baseball: A History from McFarland Publishing.

Franks takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of baseball in the Pacific Islands, pre-statehood Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, the Phillipines, as well as China, Japan and other Asian countries. Baseball found roots in numerous places throughout the Pacific Rim, and the book does a thorough job finding different footholds that baseball took root in. Whether it was internment camps, military bases, high schools, or other situations, the spread of baseball across the Pacific Ocean is a pretty remarkable story, and certainly a tough one to chronicle.

Franks takes on the task admirably – he uses a solid mix of newspaper and magazine articles, interviews, and other historical records to piece together a history of baseball in the Pacific Rim.

However, it is this area that sparks my one gripe about the book – it was hard for me not to get buried under the mountain of information that Franks offers. At times I felt like keeping track of all the names, places and accomplishments got to be a bit much. You might have the same experience – or if you’re more adept at keeping track of those kinds of things, you might have a much better experience.

Certainly to bring together over 100 years of baseball history in a region to which is was not native and which only resulted in select players assimilating into American organized baseball is a tough task to undertake. Franks has compiled a tremendous amount of information – some of which has already come in handy in recent discussions – his book will certainly be a tremendous resource for those who will further research in this area. However I think that the majority of readers would get a tremendous amount more from this book if it were to be slightly reorganized to help the readers see the connection to modern the modern day game.

Asian Pacific Americans and Baseball is a remarkable resource for those readers who want to get a much deeper look into the people that played baseball and the various places that the game developed.

The book is available for purchase via www.mcfarlandpub.com or by calling 800-253-2187.

The Portland Sea Dogs by Wendy Sotos

As part of their ‘Images of Baseball” series, Arcadia Publishing presents The Portland Sea Dogs, authored by Wendy Sotos.

This 127-page look at the history of the team that returned baseball to the state of Maine in 1994 is a photographic tour of the people, players, and ballpark that has become one of Minor League Baseball’s most successful franchises. Unfortunately the pictures are all black-and-white, which does leave some of the vividness of the story out.

Sotos took this compilation of phots and added text to highlight some of the many players that have come through this double-A affiliate of the Florida Marlins from its inception until 2002, and the Boston Red Sox from 2003 until the present.

An interesting read for those seeking an analysis of this particular club, or for those from the Portland area.

Red Sox Rule by Michael Holley

(I’m catching up on some books that came out in 2008 that I wasn’t able to get to during the regular season…a bit shorter review than normal, but hopefully enough to give you some insight to the book.)

Without question, the Red Sox have been one of the most dominant teams in the past five years, which is coincidentally when Terry Francona took over as manager. Brought to Beantown following the Grady Little incident in the 2003 ALCS, he has managed to step into the fire of Red Sox Nation without burning his feet.

Michael Holley is quick to recognize the apparent connection of Francona’s arrival and the success of the Red Sox, and offers 202 pages on the man who has been at the healm of the club since 2004.

This is a good read for Red Sox fans looking to learn a bit more about Francona, both on and off the field. Like many, he’s taken an interesting route to get where he is, and like most, it hasn’t been a straight or easy path to the manager’s chair. Having met Francona on several occasions, I wouldn’t say he’s the most dynamic fellow I’ve ever come across, and the book didn’t do anything to change my opinion of him. It provides quite a bit of information on him that I didn’t know before, but given that he’s 3,000 miles away from me, its immediate relevance is a bit tougher to discern.

For non-Red Sox fans, such as myself, the insight into Francona may be a bit more than most folks would like to spend 200 pages on. He’s a darn good manager, but it’s more of a biopic as opposed to a strategy book, although there are some nuggets scattered throughout about how he approaches the game from a strategic sense. You might read this and end up really liking Francona…or you might get to the end and say to yourself, “ok, nice story – now what?”

By no means is Red Sox Rule a bad read – I’d just want to know your interest in the subject matter before giving it a whole-hearted recommendation. If you cheer for the Red Sox, read it – you’ll enjoy it. If you’re not a Red Sox fan, proceed at your own risk — I can’t guarantee you’ll get that into it.

Fans of the World Unite! A (Capitalist) Manifesto for Sports Consumers – by Stephen F. Ross and Stefan Szymanski

What better day than Election Day to talk about a book calling for an uprising of sports fans and a major reform of the four major sports leagues in the United States?

Thus we have Fans of the World Unite! by Stephen F. Ross and Stefan Szymanski, and published by Stanford University Press.

Now while this isn’t a baseball book per se, I thought I’d take a look at it for two reasons — it’s the off-season and I have a bit more time on my hands, and it does provide a pretty engaging critique of the setup of Major League Baseball and how fans are adversely affected by its structure and policies, which are ultimately intended to protect and profit the owners.

The premise of the book is fairly simple – the major professional sports (MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL) are setup in such a way that encourages and rewards monopolistic behavior while ultimately hanging fans out to dry by limiting their choice while exploiting the relationship that fans have with their favorite sports teams.

To remedy this problem, Ross and Szymanski propose a two-pronged approach that would more or less turn the current American leagues upside down.

Using NASCAR and the international soccer leagues as examples, the authors propose that the leagues be reworked with a clear separation between league orgazniers and ownership while instilling a promotion and relegation system that rewards accomplishment and punishes failure.

The first piece would require each league to have a governing body that is completely separate from the teams and owners, similar to how NASCAR is structured. It would be their responsibility to maintain the health of the league, through marketing, broadcasting, competitive balance and opportunity, scheduling and playoff management, and so forth. There would be a person ultimately accountable for the well-being of the organization who would have both ultimate responsibility and ultimate jurisdiction.

The second piece would bring merit based participation into the fold – in other words, if you want to be a Major League team, you had better play like it, otherwise you’ll be demoted to a minor league. This system is already in place in international soccer leagues, and the authors argue that it would work well in the United States as well, by providing the ultimate motivation for a team to succeed and invest in their players and coaches.

Certainly approaches to sport that, while not new in practice, would represent a major change in the way the major sports operate in the United States.

The authors argue that such a change would result would in a reduction in the power that owners have when it comes to corporate welfare. With an increase in teams and a reduction in the exclusivity of having a team that could compete at the Major League level, owners would be forced to shoulder more of the load themselves. No longer would be cries of “I’m moving this team to (fill in the blank) unless I get a new stadium paid for with tax dollars!” be tolerated because odds are that city would already have a team.

Ross and Szymanski reveal and highlight the leverage that professional sports teams have been allowed to have under the current setup, and that is where they find fans over the proverbial barrel. If you want to be a sports fan you have to play by their rules – and that means watching the teams the league has decided to put on TV, accepting blackouts of your favorite team’s games unless certain conditions are met, tolerating and even encouraging teams not to get better by rewarding poor performance, and so on.

Before I started reading Fans of the World, Unite!, I was sincerely thinking this was going to be a rallying cry along the lines of “no new taxes!” or “bring the troops home!” — something that would be able to be distilled down so much that it would fit on a button, or a 3’x5′ picket sign and would be something that would be marched in front of stadia and arenas around the country.

Would it be a chronicle on injustices brought on fans by professional sports teams? Price-gouging, baiting and switching, hoodwinking? Would I be fired up after reading it and march down to my local teams’ offices and demand change?

No.

Rather, the authors bring a much more academic approach; Ross is a Professor of Law at Penn State and Szymanski is the MBA Dean and Professor of Economics at London’s City University. Both readily admit to writing the book from the ivory tower of academia – and while it’s not written at a level unreadable to most folks, you will definitely be invited to think and analyze the problem at hand as the authors see it. Processing the book left me feeling like I had been involved in a trial, listening to the prosecution make its case. Given that it’s Election Day and I’ve been listening to countless ads and reading propositions and ballot measures, this does fall in line with that in a certain way.

And while those ballot measures are interesting in their own way and I care about them on behalf of my civic duties, this was something that appealed to my recreational side.

At 184 pages of text, the authors keep their argument succinct, which keeps the book moving along and the reader engaged in the work. An interested reader could easily finish this in a day, while a more casual pace should allow this to be completed in a week or so.

The question that remains though, is: what now?

Assuming you read the book and agree with the changes the authors are calling for, how do we make that happen? Ross and Szymanski provide several scenarios in the final chapter, including one for fan revolt. While I could see them happening under the right conditions, I just don’t see those right conditions among us. The NFL continues to basically print money and MLB is on an upward trend, even though attendance was flat from 2007 to 2008.

The old saying of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” certainly comes to mind when thinking about the situation. It doesn’t mean it wouldn’t or couldn’t happen…I’m just thinking something will have to fall apart before it can be put back together in the way that the authors suggest. While we do live in a fast-paced society where things can happen fairly quickly, there are a lot of things that are too firmly rooted in place to make these changes feasible.

But that doesn’t mean their ideas are bad. If anything, their ideas are very good and should be read by more and more fans across all sports. The authors readily admit that the fan-driven scenario is the most hopeful, with fans demanding a political course of action and involving their elected officials. So how do we make that happen?

Maybe the authors need to launch this campaign with the tools of change – buttons,  bumper stickers, signs you can put in your window, t-shirts, and celebrity endorsements. Put someone in the spotlight – develop a website and make it easy to take fans from indecision to action. They’ve already explained the why, I wonder if Ross and Szymanski will follow up with the how?

Fans of the World, Unite might just be slightly ahead of its time, but it’s a book that merits reading and consideration, and as I’m sure the authors would hope, action on the part of the reader.

All you need to know today.

The Bill James Handbook 2009

Time to get back on the horse and talk about some new baseball books…and what better to end the playoff hiatus than the world famous Bill James Handbook 2009.

So assuming you haven’t been hiding under a rock for the past 30 years or so, and you have even the slightest interest in statistical analysis and/or fantasy baseball, you know who Bill James is. Hopefully you’ve picked prior versions of this book so it isn’t a completely new topic to you.

But If it is your first encounter with Mr. James’ work – don’t do yourself the disservice of just picking TBJH2009 up and flipping through it. The majority of pages contain statistics and you’ll probably just dismiss it as being an encyclopedia of players’ performance. Not that this isn’t entirely true…but the real key is to understand why the book contains all this data.

James has been at work for 30 years trying to figure out the correlation of numbers to winning. He knew that it wasn’t all about the “traditional” statistics – batting average, win-loss record, and ERA to name a few…he sensed that there was something more out there that could be used as a gauge of a player’s ability to contribute to his team’s ability to win ballgames.

It’s James’ thinking about the relation of statistics to winning that is what deliver the punch of the book. Even though it only occupies a dozen or so pages, his analysis and introduction to certain statistical categories give the numbers context and meaning, and turn them into things that should be thought about as opposed to just looked at.

The first thing that really captured my attention – and this is on page 321, mind you  – is his article on bullpens, specifically his assigning of positions to the pitchers who comprise a bullpen. It’s not fair to compare a utility reliever to a closer – yet the current mainstream thinking does just that. Each pitcher in the bullpen comes into the game in different situations, and James argues that we need to look at their performance on an individual basis while in the context of their role. The Bill James Handbook 2009 provides the tools and instructions for doing just that, and the result is a smarter and more educated fan.

In the same vain of understanding what affects success, James and the crew at Baseaball Info Solutions have provided a tremendous amount of data on managers – how many lineups they use, how quick they are to pull their starting pitchers, and one of my favorites – how successful they are when they call for an intentional walk. Managers tend to be either overlooked or somewhat unfairly criticized, and James reminds the reader that he is there “trying to pollute the discussion of managers with actual facts.”

To James, it’s one thing to suppose something, it’s quite another to actually have numbers and facts that can be used to support tendencies.

What James and his collaborators ultimately are trying to do with The Bill James Handbook 2009 – besides sell books, of course – is to challenge your way of thinking and to take the shackles off your brain and allow you to look at statistics and numbers in a whole new light and not only learn what they think, but possibly discover your own correlations.

For instance – James suggests the possibility of MLB teams “employ(ing) platoon players like Las Vegas employs comedy acts.” He takes two players at the same position who have such polar opposite lefty/righty splits that combining them would be a dream come true – and he subsequently renames the tandem to elicit a decent chuckle from the reader.

The book concludes with two sections that ultimately challenge the reader the most – league leaders and 2009 projections. The former encourages you to look at the top 10 leaders in an array of statistical categories and see which tend to have the most influence on winning; while the latter gives you a glimpse into the future through the eyes of James and his team. You can’t argue with the leaders, yet you can debate the projections until everyone is blue in the face – that is a big part of the appeal.

Not to be left out are the Fielding Bible 2008 awards and a realtively new project that Mr. James has shared with his readers – his Young Talent Inventory, where he attempts to rate the best young players in baseball as well as which team has the best young players in their system. Depending on how your team came out, it could either be a bright spot for the future, or signs of conern if you believe in developing talent and bringing up the future from within your organization.

The Bill James Handbook 2009 is another heavy hitter, particularly when it comes to off-season reading both to recap the 2008 season and look ahead to the 2009 campaign. I’m glad to have my copy ready to go, knowing that it’s assuming it’s rightful position on my desk’s reference shelf.

New reviews coming soon

A quick note to those who stop by the site regularly – stay tuned for some new reviews in the coming days. After the regular season, I try and take a few weeks off to catch up with some other reading, notably something other than baseball books.

If you’re interested, I just finished Dick Meyer’s Why We Hate Us which was insanely enjoyable and will be a book I’m going to actually go out and buy; and am currently walking on The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow, which I’m too early in to form an opinion…the first two chapters left me unsure of whether I should continue, the third was a bit more favorable.

I also breezed through Paul Arden’s It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be. Not what I thought it was going to be; although this is one of those books that needs a re-read and more thought on my part. It could be gold or it could be a turd in a bag…I’ll have to get back to you.

In the meantime, I hope you’re enjoying the postseason, even if your teams aren’t in it. Mine isn’t – hell, they haven’t been in anything other than a deep pile of doo-doo since May.

Stay tuned.

The End of Baseball – by Peter Schilling, Jr.

The choices we don’t make in life sometimes plague us more than those that we do; how would my life be different (read: better) if I had taken that job, made that phone call, married that other person? Where would I be? What would I be doing?

Well take that way of thinking, and apply it to Bill Veeck, Jr. and the 1944 Philadelphia A’s. The 1943 edition of the club was coming off a 49-105 finish and had just been sold by Connie Mack. Infighting amongst his children kept them from ownership, and a creative deal with the junior Veeck gave him the reins to the White Elephants.

The ever inventive Veeck, who also owned the Negro League Philadelphia Stars, decides to cut every one of the A’s just before Opening Day and replace them with the Stars, who had become a collection of Negro League All-Stars with Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson, just to name a few. It would be the forced integration of Major League Baseball, two years before Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

But that plan never came to fruition, and while baseball’s integration was delayed and some of the greatest names in Negro League history never got to put on a big league uniform, it did give Peter Schilling, Jr. the opportunity to write his first novel, The End of Baseball.

Schilling hits a home run with his debut novel – while not only doing a solid job transporting the reader back to the mid 1940s, he takes on the enviable task of developing multiple characters that have tremendous amonuts of complexity: starting with Veeck, the maverick owner and promoter charged with turning a profit on the A’s else he have to return them to the Mack family, and his business partner, Sam Dailey, the more intellectual, business-minded investor who gets tugged around to scout for players before inheriting much more responsibility than he bargained for once the Commissioner suspends Veeck.

The cast of players and managers is no small task to turn into dynamic characters – Josn Gibson is in the tail end of his glory days but feels compelled to live up to his Ruthian comparisons while battling the demons of addiction; to former great Oscar Charleston battingling manager Mickey Cochrane for respect, to a young Roy Campanella trying to learn from the veteran Gibson while watching him crumble.

Throw in a vindictive Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis and his mouthpiece, Sporting News writer J.G. Taylor Spink, and you have a roster full of people to develop and get the reader familiar with, which Schilling does succesfully.

By using real people in a fictional work, Schilling takes on the challenge of bringing somewhat new characteristics to light. How would Landis respond to a team of Negro Leaguers playing in the Majors? How would a team of Negro Leaguers, all in their rookie season in the bigs, take to the abuse that Schilling has the fans and press rain down on them?

Schilling gets to answer that question as he sees fit, and while it might not vibe with every reader, it definitely makes for an interesting read.

While not a fan of fiction, I did find myself liking The End of Baseball more and more as it went along. If anything, I liked it to the point where I will probably misquote something that happened in the book as actual fact at some point, and I will have Mr. Schilling to blame. That’s the downside of using real people to craft a fictional story.