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December 23, 2010 Baseball Prospectus Book NewsBaseball Prospectus 2011 is an Elf-Free Product!I don't want to detract from anyone's faith in Santa Claus, but I know of one item that is not manufactured by elves. The Baseball Prospectus annual is elf-free, and I know that for a fact because I'm the guy who gets to watch it being built, stat by stat, metaphor by metaphor, and page by page. Then again, Kevin Goldstein might be an elf. I mean, he says he's not, but what proof has he really offered? As for Marc Normandin, I have a hard time believing he's not an elf myself--he's always hanging out in a tree, offering cookies to passersby. But enough wacky conspiracy theories. While the elves have been making toys, Kevin, Marc, Stephani Bee, Tommy Bennett, Ken Funck, Christina Kahrl, Jay Jaffe, Ben Lindbergh, Jason Parks, John Perrotto, Eric Seidman, Matt Swartz, Colin Wyers, and myself have been making a baseball book. The 16th edition of the BP annual is now available for preorder. We've got a cover and everything: You will note that no elves are pictured on the cover. For more info on the book, including links to your favorite bookseller, links to our upcoming posts, and a place for your questions and comments on our latest opus, check out the Baseball Prospectus 2011 home page. As I write these words, that cover is only about 60 percent filled--we just passed Oakland and are flying through Philadelphia and into Pittsburgh, dusting each with PECOTAs. We're working in Joe Posnanski's intro, Kevin's traffic-stopping top 101 prospects, Jay's update on JAWS, and more player comments than ever before. No elf comments, I'm afraid. Maybe next year. It's actually a good thing that elves don't work on this product--it's too heavy for them to lift and Santa couldn't afford the insurance. That's not to say that they won't happily act as middle men if you pre-order one as a Christmas gift--y'know, with a card: "Dear Eddie Wade: The BP guys are still working this up for you, but it will be here when pitchers and catchers report. Try not to mess up too much before then. Love, Aunt Ernie." (Click here for our gift note generator if you want some help with your own pre-order gifting presentation.)
Steven Goldman is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 16 comments have been left for this article.
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"There's a good chance [Aubrey Huff will] return to being a .260-.270 EqA guy, but when you're limited to DH, that's worth essentially nothing. The Giants signed him to play first base, continuing a recent tradition of sub-par offense at the position."
Thank you for your prescient prediction of a "major comeback"
This raises a good point as to what a "successful" projection is.
Huff's 2009 stats: .241/.310/.384 (~.237 TAv @ age 32)
Here are BP and some other fairly well-known free projections for Aubrey Huff entering 2010:
BP: .278/.341/.461 [weighted means from site] (.278 TAv)
baseballprojection.com: .267/.332/.437
ZiPS: .260/.323/.431
Bill James Handbook: .267/.334/.445
Great essay on the value of and evaluation of projections: http://www.baseballhq.com/books/myths.shtml
Keep in mind, we do not write the cover copy. We look at it, but very briefly, because we're too busy trying to actually get the contents of this year's book right. If the publisher came to me and said, "Last year you predicted that Albert Pujols would be revealed as a giant bag of sentient peanut butter," I would probably say, a little sleepily, "We did? Cool" and move on to the next thing that I'm editing.
You will find that with most books, the author is responsible for what goes between the covers and the publisher has final say as to what the dress looks like. This is why MIND GAME went from a cool sabermetric take-off on a phrenologist's model to a picture of Rodin's "Thinker" on an avocado-green background, along with a title font that was lifted from MAD magazine. It wasn't what I approved, but someone with the publisher had a last-minute brainstorm that that was what the book should look like.