Baseball Prospectus 2016

Book excerpt: The 2016 edition of the New York Times Bestselling Guide Welcome to The Show! After 20 All-Star seasons, the creators of this, the 21st edition of the industry-leading Baseball Prospectus annual, could have been content to rest on their laurels. Instead, Baseball Prospectus 2016 contains significant improvements along with the usual key stat categories, player predictions and insider-level commentary that readers expect from Baseball Prospectus’ annual guide. Baseball Prospectus 2016 once again provides fantasy players and insiders alike with prescient PECOTA projections, which Sports Illustrated has called “perhaps the game’s most accurate projection model.” Still, stats are just numbers if you don’t see the larger context, and Baseball Prospectus brings together an elite team of analysts to provide the definitive look at all thirty teams—their players, their prospects and their managers—to explain away flukes, hot streaks, injury-tainted numbers and park effects. Nearly every major-league team has sought the advice of current or former Prospectus analysts, and readers of Baseball Prospectus 2016 will understand what all those insiders have been raving about. In a book that sports personality Ken Tremendous calls “The tip of the nerd spear,” the team at Baseball Prospectus is proud to bring the following improvements to the 2016 Annual: Two full years of projections—PECOTA lines for 2016 and 2017 Historical Peak MPH added for major-league pitchers Deserved Run Average (DRA) added for major-league pitchers cFIP added for major-league and minor-league pitchers Pitcher WARP redesigned, utilizing DRA and cFIP for all pitchers Revised cFIP-driven PECOTA pitching projections Catcher-specific defensive stats for all catchers Double-A and above Outfield assists and catcher defense integrated in FRAA and WARP Ballpark schematic and wall height study for every stadium Hit List, finance, and farm system ranking graphs for each team Every organization’s key front office personnel and Baseball Prospectus alumni identified