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387 pages

English

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The essential guide to the 2015 baseball season is on deck now, and whether you're a fan or fantasy player—or both—you won't be properly informed without it. Baseball Prospectus 2015 brings together an elite group of analysts to provide the definitive look at the upcoming season in critical essays and commentary on the thirty teams, their managers, and more than sixty players and prospects from each team.

Baseball Prospectus 2015contains critical essays on each of the thirty teams and player comments for some sixty players for each of those teams; projects each player's stats for the coming season using the groundbreaking PECOTA projection system, which has been called "perhaps the game's most accurate projection model" (Sports Illustrated). Now in its twentieth edition, this New York Times bestselling insider's guide from Baseball Prospectus, America's leading provider of statistical analysis for baseball, remains hands down the most authoritative and entertaining book of its kind.

Sujets

Sport

Baseball

Sports collectifs

Béisbol

Ligue majeure de baseball

Recreation

Major League Baseball

Grandes Ligas de Béisbol

Sports

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Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	10 février 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781118471487
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Baseball
Prospectus

2015
The Essential Guide to the 2015 Season

Edited by Sam Miller and Jason Wojciechowski
R.J. Anderson, J.P. Breen, Ben Carsley, Patrick Dubuque, Ken Funck, Ryan Ghan, Craig Goldstein, Bryan Grosnick, Andrew Koo, Dustin Nosler, Tommy Rancel, Daniel Rathman, Mauricio Rubio Jr., Bret Sayre, Sahadev Sharma, Adam Sobsey, Paul Sporer, Matt Sussman, Doug Thorburn, Will Woods, Geoff Young
Dave Pease, Publisher
W ILEY

Wiley General Trade, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company 424 Church Street • Suite 2240 • Nashville, Tennessee 37219 445 Park Avenue • 9th Floor • New York, New York 10022 www.turnerpublishing.com
Copyright © 2015 by Prospectus Entertainment Ventures, LLC.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www. copyright.com.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information about our other products and services,
please contact Ingram Publisher Services at (866) 400-5351.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
ISBN 978-1-1184-7145-6 (pbk); 978-1-1184-7148-7 (ebk)
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cuban League statistics courtesy Clay Davenport
Header image by W. Conway, 1951. From http://eephusleague.
com/2011/05/field-schematic/
Design and layout by Bryan Davidson and Jon Franke

Foreword
by Brian Bannister, Boston Red Sox Pro Scouting Department

T here were two things I wanted to be when I grew up: A major-league baseball player or a filmmaker. These might not seem to have a lot in common—beyond extremely long odds—but Baseball Prospectus helped me see what they shared.
Take Shawshank Redemption , one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s a story of wrongful imprisonment and, ultimately, the titular redemption. The protagonist, Andy Dufresne, is a common man who uses extraordinary ingenuity to escape a life sentence. He overcomes a system heavily weighted against him, refusing to accept circumstances that others might have accepted as reality.
Of course, the story is just one part of what makes the movie great. So too do the technical aspects that the casual viewer might enjoy without ever appreciating: the Oscar-nominated camerawork of cinematographer Roger Deakins; the “moss-dark, saturated images” that, one critic wrote, make “you feel as if you could reach out and touch the prison walls;” the shadows and lighting teasing out themes of imprisonment and freedom; the recurrent motifs, slow reveals and perfectly detailed mise-en-scene. The inspiration of the story is important, but there is also a technical side to creating the final product. A cinematographer has to know the equipment and process better than anybody. From the construction of the lenses, to the physics of the lights, to the development of the film stock, there is very little margin for error. It’s the science within the art.
I always found similarities between the movie’s story and themes and my own baseball career. As a high school senior, I was 5-feet-9 and weighed 175 pounds. I distinctly remember running a 7.6-second 60-yard dash at a baseball showcase (despite going to speed camps and training on high- speed treadmills for several years). My best fastball topped out at 84 mph. I was the epitome of a non prospect, seemingly doomed to a life sentence in the low minors because of my paltry physical tools. Like Andy Dufresne, I had to think outside the box and approach my circumstance in a different way to succeed.
This meant that I needed to know the science within my craft—just as a great cinematographer would. I had to understand the math, not just the traditional approaches. As a pitcher in the minor leagues, I didn’t have good velocity or much rise on my fastball, and I recognized that I gave up too many fly balls that would eventually become home runs if I made it to the big leagues. In the Arizona Fall League in 2004, I developed a cutter and made it my main pitch because it had a much better batted-ball profile. While I never had the stuff of a Cy Young winner, methodically making adjustments like this at each progressively more difficult professional level allowed me to keep playing the game I loved. Even if I wouldn’t ever outperform players with twice the natural ability, at least I was getting the most out of my physical ability.
Baseball will always have an element of probability and chance that we can’t control, but putting the odds in your favor on a consistent basis is the responsibility of every professional player and team. Baseball Prospectus has been at the forefront of explaining the math, science and inner workings of the game for two decades now. Whether its authors are writing illuminatingly about scouting, player development or analytics (or all of the above), Baseball Prospectus has consistently furnished the baseball community with much-needed original critical thinking. It has been a major resource for my career and the careers of those around me.
Now that I have the privilege of working with the incredibly talented individuals at the Boston Red Sox, the skills and critical thinking that I developed as a player are put into use every day. No two players are the same, and no two baseball teams or farm systems or free-agent markets are ever the same. Understanding the incredibly complex interconnectedness of the baseball universe, and applying proper evaluation, development, projection and valuation techniques can be overwhelming. Being able to separate the information from the noise makes all the difference in the world, and Baseball Prospectus continues to provide that incredible value in its Annual and on its site daily.
If I’d grown up to be a cinematographer, I’d use science, math and years of experience to produce something that requires none of those to enjoy—a movie. Likewise, a good baseball team uses science, math and years of experience to produce something that requires none of those skills to enjoy—a championship. Whether you tend to enjoy baseball on an intellectual level or an emotional level—or, more likely, both—I promise you will find incredible value in the talented and passionate writers of Baseball Prospectus. They will further your understanding of this great game. Enjoy the show.

Preface
by Peter Gammons

I was somewhere on either side of a line of age 40, and in the words of Jackson Browne thought I knew where I was going after close to 15 years on the baseball beat. Now, my vantage point had already begun to evolve, thanks to Bill James and Steve Hirdt and his Elias books, brilliant writing and analysis that I labeled the tributaries from the main streams of the Mississippi and Hudson.
I traveled with a team. On the road, I worked out every day when the Red Sox took early batting practice, and while the landscape was invaluable in appreciating the skills and athleticism and the work that separated the extraordinary from the ordinary, that landscape was often conventional.
Darned right I loved the way Alfredo Griffin played shortstop. Most everyone did. He was flashy, he was energetic, he was flossy in the field, and when the 1985 Bill James book arrived, James shot down Alfredo Griffin. Four walks in 140 games. Second base partner Damaso Garcia had 16 walks. And that was why the Blue Jays left their tools in a shed too often. I was covering Wade Boggs—who in that ’85 season began an OBP run of .450, .453, .461, .471—and Dwight Evans.
And I never viewed the game the same again. I had Rickey Henderson and Wade Boggs within 200 miles of one another, and Tim Raines less than an hour flight away, and the tools…
From the James and Elias schools Baseball Prospectus was born, and for all of us who always sought different angles and views and opinions, it became each day’s must-read, be it by Will Carroll or Kevin Goldstein, Keith Law or any of what seem like hundreds of minds producing analytical perspectives. This is the 20th edition of the Baseball Prospectus annual, hence the 20th year the book has been part of my spring training traveling circus. I yanked the 2003 book off the shelf. Nate Silver “Introducing PECOTA.” Carroll. Clay Davenport. And on and on.
What has made this annual compilation so fascinating is that its inception came just as the analytics revolution was rising from the Sloane School to Paul DePodesta to Silicon Valley. It was novel, but it has morphed into several intellectual shapes over 20 years. I honestly do not remember what statistics were held as closest to absolutes 20 years ago. Probably not WAR. Probably not OPS+.
The Billy Beane-Paul DePodesta Athleti