February 14, 2011

Baseball Prospectus Book News

BP 2011 App This Week

by Steven Goldman

Printer-friendly

Contact Author

Over the years, many of you have asked, "When are you going to get the BP annual into e-reader form?" We first heard this in 1998, which came as a terrible shock because the e-reader form had yet to be invented. Thirteen years later, technical issues still prevent publishers from getting all of those tiny, insect-like numbers to behave when squeezed onto a Kindle, Nook, or Batphone screen. Now, thanks to our publishing pals at Wiley, we can offer you something of an alternative: the BP 2011 app for iPhones and iPads (and iDolphins and iCanseco and other i-branded items available at an i-retailer near you). The app will be coming on line this week, at roughly the same moment when your postman should be stuffing the actual tome into your mailbox.

Here is what the app has to offer:

1. It's actually apps, plural. There are two of them, one for NL and one for AL.
2. The apps contains all the team essays, player comments, and stats from the book, albeit in a more portable, take-it-to-the-ballpark form.
3. What it doesn't contain are coaches, team boxes, Joe Posnanski's intro, my intro (the bastards), or Kevin Goldstein's Top 101 Prospects. Nor does it have PECOTA breakouts percentages or comparables.
4. However, it does have a PECOTA line even for the players who are just a "Lineout" in the book, which is to say, we didn't print a projection. 
5. Instead of leader boards, the app has a sort function that lets you set up the projections however you like, say by position, favorite food, or astrological sign. I'm not sure about the last two--I have a Windows phone, so I'm just guessing. Please hold your guffaws until the end and I will promise never to do it again.
6. Those of you with Android phones, they will try to get you next year. When I say "they," I mean the publisher and their Science-Fiction Robotmen programmers. Baseball Prospectus is not discriminating against your phone, and in fairness, neither are the Science-Fiction Robotmen.  iStuff was all they could lick this year given that we gave them the info for the book roughly yesterday, but they have bigger dreams for 2012--not just Android phones, but constantly updating stats--and world domination through mind control. 
7. In the meantime, the app is different from the book in that it can be updated and features added--like tentacles. If you post your suggestions for updates here, Our Man at Wiley will be watching.
8. Finally, the apps will launch at $9.99 each, or $5 less than the book's retail price if you buy both.

I hope you enjoy these and find them useful. You'll have to let me know. I'll be over in the corner with my Windows phone, trying very hard to download email. Email on my phone, sometimes... How cutting edge am I?

Steven Goldman is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
Click here to see Steven's other articles. You can contact Steven by clicking here