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It was also disappointing that there were no essays presented this year after the team section.
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 back of the book essays, yes it has been a few years, but I do miss them.
Anyway, done with the comments, back to the normal programming.
I'm sympathetic to the typos; there's no way to get a book like this out without them. Misspelling Gary Huckabay's name in the acknowledgements.... I found it amusing. The actual copy editors probably shouldn't.
I'm unsympathetic to the PECOTA comps, which are broken, and known to be broken. Oddly, they're less broken in the book than they are here; Bryce Harper comps to Travis Snider rather than Wayne Causey. (The change in comps causes almost no change in projection.)
Hope this is helpful.
Anyway, seriously, nobody likes typos or errors of any sort, and I can tell you both our editors and writers take those mistakes to heart. I wish I could publish some of the behind-the-scenes discussions about these things. We will continue to strive to get better. I demand it, and our staff knows that.
As for the comps, that's a bit more complicated. We plan to put out an in-depth article shortly explaining what comps are, how we arrive at comps, and what they affect (and how much so). Our biggest flaw with comps, at least from my vantage point, has been not educating people enough about them. So when people see comps like the one you mentioned, they immediately think broken. I'm not saying it's wrong to think that way, but there's more to the process.