BP Unfiltered: Baseball Prospectus 2012 Roundtable HERE

I was extremely disappointed with this year's annual. One of the main reasons (and yes, there are multiple reasons) is that many players I was looking for were missing, even if they had been mentioned in the team essay. Some of them did have miniwriteups in KG's Top 101 list, but they weren't listed in the index.

I've elaborated on them, and reiterated on them multiple times in the past. My comment count is high enough anyway and I think people are tired of me beating those dead horses. Yet, I'll still summarize this last time because you asked. Here are the past ones: A) Numerous typos, but this year it was the worst. I couldn't make it two pages without a typo. Even stat lines had obvious errors. Off the top of my head, the misspelling of DiMaggio stuck out. B) Player comments about fielding rarely match what FRAA says, and sometimes don't even match what PECOTA says, as if the commentator isn't looking at the stat line. C) I miss the back-of-book essays. D) Comparable players are getting more and more "broken". I used to find them useful, the last two years, I've completely ignored them since they are so far off base. Speedy centerfielders having slow catchers as comparables, starters having relievers as comparables, etc. I used to see, for example, a young Alfonso Soriano having Andre Dawson as a comparison and I could say "Yes, I understand". Not anymore though. E) PECOTA's still not passing the sniff test. 0% breakouts, starting players with MLB% of 70s. etc. Current ones: A) In the past, BP Annual's "manager" section looked at the performance of managers over last season even if that manager left the team. This year, they didn't. I don't think Quade's name appeared anywhere in the entire Cubs section. B) Many players I was looking for didn't have a stat line, PECOTA projection or index, though they would be mentioned prominently in the team essay. If lucky, they'd have a writeup in the Top 101 section. I think one team (Astros?) had just two or three lineouts for their hitters. C) Dovetailing with B, there was a lot of "blank space" beneath the manager comments and a few blank pages at the back of the book. Usually there is some blank space anyway, but I definitely noticed it this year, probably because I was wondering where players like Venditte were, or why Profar didn't get a writeup. D) I think I was halfway through the book before references to Mike Fast's framing studies came up, then it was referenced constantly for a few teams, then was forgotten about. Jose Molina, who led all the studies done by Fast, didn't have any mention of Fast in his comment. E) One reference comparing a hitter's prowess to a pitcher's hitting prowess is funny. By the time someone (I forget which player) was compared to Wainwright's power, the joke got old, I felt words were wasted (that could have been used to write up other players) and I felt uninformed about the player's potential. F) Team essays were poorly formatted where the tables being discussed were often far from the section of text that was citing the table. G) I don't know when it was sent to the publisher and maybe it's because there were so many late moves in the offseason, but it felt extremely out of date to me. It didn't have the Rizzo trade, much less Fielder (and I don't think it had the Latos trade) which means it was sent to publishers before January. I'm not well-versed on book publishing, but BP might have to focus more on e-publishing. H) Usually, I find BP Annuals funny and informative. I remember comments from years ago such as Todd Helton's "helluva stomache quote" from years ago and Corey Patterson's "the average major leaguer" discussion. I remember the discussion of George Bush using the Rangers as a real estate deal. In other words, I buy a book and I'm entertained for quite awhile, usually rereading a single annual multiple times. I think I've giggled twice in the whole book when, in past annuals, there's at least one thing I like in each team section. Worse, I don't really feel I've learned anything new in this particular Annual. I've bought Annuals since 2004 and this one just didn't entertain me.

Regarding the missing players and managers issue, that is why (along with the time from submission to publication) that I suggest moving to e-publishing. It's not the first time BP has had to distribute a free PDF to "fix" the Annual. Either way, though, I would think that BP would be given a "first copy" to review before the publisher starts up a print run and as I indicated, typos this year were even worse than previous years (which were also distracting). Regarding the back of the book essays, yes it has been a few years, but I do miss them.

I'm not a typo freak, I'm just saying the issues I listed in "added up". If I'm not being distracted by a misprinted stat, I'm being distracted by a mistyped word, or I'm thumbing through the index trying to find a player who isn't there. Offsite, I know I'm not the only one to notice the typos, nor was I the first to bring it up. Even then, I can live with typos and misprints or a poor comment-to-statistic correlation here and there. This year, it all just added up... and these issues weren't really all that "new" either. Those comments, in the past, were "passed on" too. But add the old issues with the new issues then throw in player comments and team essays where I didn't feel all that humorous or insightful, and that's how I ended up feeling disappointed. Anyway, done with the comments, back to the normal programming.