Can’t Win ‘Em All
Baseball Prospectus 2006, on Joey Votto:
Another marginal prospect who gets more attention than he deserves because he`s among the best of the sorry lot in the Reds organization. Votto has ball-crushing power, but, it`s of the classic long swing/slow bat variety that will get nullified by pitching in the high minors if he can`t adjust. At 22, he`s spent two and a half years in A-ball and needs to make his move in 2006. If you want an ominous sign, he failed to impress the AFL last year.
Looking forward to baseball…
I REMEMBERED that the other day, since the mid-90′s were a tough time to be a Reds fan and I thought BP knew what they were talking about.
In the end, I decided there is no better place to go to see smart analysis of what is going on right now and why and what happened last year and why, but their predictive power is no more impressive than the SI preview you could buy in 1992 which said Storm Davis’s acquisition would make KC unbeatbale
I typed mid-90′s? My gastritis must have broken my keyboard, since I obviously met the mid-00′s. Man, typos make you look even dumber than you are
I love Baseball Prospectus, but the narrative about each player in the book has always been a little suspect. Sometimes the words don’t really match the numbers in terms of general tone and without knowing who wrote each comment it is hard to understand the context for them.
If you have access to their website, you can see that the 2005 and 2007 comments are very positive while the 2006 is inexplicably negative. Note sure why.
I love BP (though I gave up my subscription), but, as you’ll notice, this is a classic example of what they write about many players: sarcastic and with a couple of caveats (i.e. “if he can’t adjust”) that give ‘em an out if Guy X doesn’t fit their mold.
BP is OK, but they have a lot of problems in their book — like, similar to what Ben said, they will say player A is a terrible fielder, but you look at his stats and the player is like +5 fielding runs above average. According to this year’s book many starting pitchers started more games than they pitched in total.
A couple of years ago, I checked one of their old books (I think it was like the 1998 BP and checked in 2008) to see how the prospects on their list had done and they had done not very well, although that was one of their early efforts so they may have improved.
There was an article in the Baseball Research Journal that compared various prediction methods for players stats in the coming season, BP did quite well for hitters (I think they were second best and not by very much), but were poor (compared to other methods) for pitchers.
I find them interesting reading, and a nice way to get ready for the season. The kids can really dance to it, I give it an 83
Speaking of baseball, is there going to be a LGM fantasy baseball extravaganza again this year? Given the season starts Thursday, getting a bit nervous here.