The Hardball Times

Getcha 2004 Hardball Times Baseball Annual Right Here!

by Dave Studeman
December 13, 2004

Yes, the 2004 Hardball Times Baseball Annual is now on sale. The cost of a printed book is $16.75, plus shipping. Or you can download an e-book for $6.25. Printing and shipping take a week or two, depending on your shipping choice. We're also working on other purchase options for you, and we'll let you know if something develops.

We sell the book through Lulu, an experienced self-publishing website. They accept credit cards and Paypal. But if you'd rather pay by check, send me an email at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and we'll work out the particulars.

Book Updates

We're not too proud to say that several mistakes have been found in the Stats section. Most recently, we found a discrepancy in a number of the Double Play totals in the individual fielding sections. Please download this fielding addendum in an Adobe Acrobat document as a replacement for the individual fielding pages.

Depending on when you bought the book, several other mistakes may have already been corrected. Take a look at the Houston Astros batting section. If it says that Lance Berkman had 110 Runs Created last year, you can download this PDF file with some corrected stats. If it says he created 124 runs last year, congratulations! You've already got the corrected version (though you still need to download the fielding addendum).

In addition, we found that we inexplicably left a couple of pitchers out of the "Plate Appearance Outcome by Pitcher" section, including one really important one. Here they are:

Player     Team  BFP    K   BB   GB   OF   IF   LD  Oth
Johnson R. ARI   964  30%   6%  27%  21%   3%  12%   2%
Riley M.   BAL   292  21%  15%  23%  23%   3%  13%   1%

If any other issues come to light, we'll post them here.

Related Articles

Here's a list of Hardball Times articles related to the stats in the Annual:

• Net Win Shares Value
• Who Gave Up What
• Who Hit What

Table of Contents

And here is a little more detail regarding what is inside the Annual:

• 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

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.

Enjoy!

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.

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