Since 2005, the Baseball Prospectus annual has been like my third child. I have spent more time with it than I have with my actual children, but it has been time well spent—the annual is the heir to the Bill James books that activated my love for the game as a teenager, and I’ve tried my best to live up to that standard, to make it a book you could read as well as use as a reference, to laugh with and learn from. During my term as editor, mostly in tandem with the great Christina Kahrl, the book grew in depth and complexity and achieved bestseller status. I am so proud to have done right by the legacy that the founders entrusted to me.
Alas, it is time for a change. After six editions as editor or co-editor, I am ready to seek new challenges (among them my continuing role as editor-in-chief of BP.com), and so I am passing the torch. It is hard to let go of something for which you have such deep feelings, but I do so knowing the book is in the best of hands. I am certain that the new crew needs no introduction, but for the few of you who haven’t been watching their careers with admiration as I have:
King Kaufman is the manager of the writer program at Bleacher Report, responsible for helping the site's 7,000-plus writers improve the quality of their work. He spent 14 years at the pioneering website Salon.com, where he wrote the King Kaufman's Sports Daily column for much of that time. Before that he covered boxing, wrote lifestyle features, and pulled shifts on every desk, starting at every hour on the clock, at the old Hearst San Francisco Examiner. Kaufman is the inventor of the very silly stat the Neifi Index. He lives in San Francisco.
Cecilia M. Tan has been writing about baseball since her fourth grade book report on Reggie Jackson's biography. Her writings on the sport have appeared in Yankees Magazine, Gotham Baseball, Slow Trains, and many other places. She is the author of The 50 Greatest Yankee Games, editor of the Maple Street Press Yankees Annual, and is currently serving as Publications Director for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
Please join me in welcoming Mr. Kaufman and Ms. Tan to Baseball Prospectus and elevating the old joint with their presence. I know that with them at the helm, the 17th edition will be the best yet. I can’t wait to see what they do.
Thank you for reading
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With the thinking that two good heads are better than one, even if the one is not part of the two, I believe this will be a new step forward. And I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.
I'll add the disclaimer that I'm not as interested in the prospect side of BP as many of KG's ardent followers, so I'm not sure how in-depth an analysis those who would purchase the book would be expecting...