February 9, 2010

Fangraphs Player Search:

Order Now


Get "The world champ of baseball annuals." The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 features articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright and contains much, much more. Please support THT and use this link to purchase the Annual.


Get the fantasy book that everyone's raving about! Edited by THT Fantasy's Rob McQuown and Michael Street, and featuring our own Matt Hagen on prospects. Shipping now from ACTA!


And here's the full roster.



Or you can search by:

Sports Tickets

Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets.
Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com.
Chicago Cubs Tickets
Chicago Tickets
Championship Tickets



Creative Commons License
All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

The 2004 Hardball Times Baseball Annual Sneak Preview

by Dave Studeman
November 05, 2004

Yes, the 2004 Hardball Times Baseball Annual will be on sale early next week. Be sure to watch this space for the announcement and link. It's going to be 300 pages of pure baseball -- 130 pages of articles and the like, and 170 pages of stats and graphs. Just about the right mix, I think. Here's a little more detail of what will be inside:
  • New articles reviewing the 2004 season:

    • A look back at the 2004 season from 50 years in the future, by Steve Treder
    • Full graphical and written reviews of each division, by various THT authors
    • Coverage of the playoffs and World Series, by Larry Mahnken
    • Minor League coverage, by Bryan Smith
    • A review of the best and worst fantasy players, by Ben Jacobs
    • Craig Burley reviews the college baseball season, and includes THT's official college team, batter and pitcher rankings.
    • Craig also reviews the Japanese baseball season.
    • And Robert Dudek investigates how fly ball hang time impacts the evaluation of pitching and defense.

  • In addition, we will include a number of the best articles we published during the season, such as:

    • Alex Belth's reminiscence of his trip to the Winter Meetings.
    • Aaron Gleeman's coverage of some of the key stars of 2004, such as Carlos Beltran, Adam Dunn, Adrian Beltre and, of course, Johan Santana.
    • Larry Mahnken's classic (can I say that?) "Fiction is Dead."
    • Guest columns by Brian Gunn and Bill James.
    • Some of Steve Treder's historical articles, including "A Tale of Two Leagues" and "A Virtual History of MLB Growth."
    • Several other cutting-edge reviews and analyses, such as Vinay Kumar's analysis of what actually works, or doesn't work, in the playoffs.

  • And we'll have lots of stats and graphs. Over forty graphs in all, plus stats for:

    • Each League and team in total
    • Lee Sinins' League Leaderboards
    • Four pages of stats for each team, with detailed batting pitching and fielding stats that are not just recreations of the tables we have on our website.
    • Special stat tables, including:
      • Lee Sinins' RCAA and RSAA by team
      • Fielding Win Shares per 1,000 innings played by position
      • Net Win Shares Value by player, assessing the value of his contract
      • Plate Appearance outcomes (strikeout, walk, groundball, flyball, line drive) for each batter and pitcher with at least 100 plate appearances
You will be able to order the book online. We will have both a printed book and e-book available for you to purchase. The printed book will cost around $16, plus shipping, and the e-book will cost around $6. Printing and shipping will take about a week, but the e-book will be immediately available for download.

It's true that we're not really publishing professionals, but we're not really web designers, either. We're just baseball nuts who have a passion for what we do. We think you'll find plenty of that passion in the book, and we hope you'll support our site by purchasing it. And, if all goes well, we've got some plans for next year's publications too.

In the meantime, to paraphrase Aaron, Happy Hot Stove League!

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.




Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer.



The best online source for major league baseball tickets is Ticket City.

     Next Article:  Around the Majors: Backman's fired>> <<Previous Article:  The Meat Market: Shortstops