I got antsy waiting for the digital version of the Annual to come out and picked up a paper version, also thinking that the statlines would be easier to read in a hard copy than digital. In retrospect that may have been a poor choice.
(note: I may update this when I get home and have the book in front of me, but right now was a convenient time to write.)
Pluses:
The writing is very good and surprisingly funny in a lot of the player capsules. I think my favorite throwaway line so far was something like "Will Startup is the definition of a replacement-level lefty reliever and also the definition of a replacement-level office computer." The capsules are also very good for giving insights that don't come through well in the standard stat lines.
Most of the team essays have been interesting.
Minuses:
The team essay for the Angels was long and incomprehensible. That happened to be the most recent one I've read, so it sticks in my mind, but it was also the first one I just skimmed.
PECOTA is surprisingly divergent from a lot of other projection systems in a lot of cases and also from the capsules. It looks like the people writing the capsules didn't have access to the projections when writing, because there are a lot of cases where I would have appreciated a bit of explanation about why PECOTA was so positive or negative on someone, but instead the capsule basically agreed with my instincts and the numbers didn't. The examples I can remember offhand were that it projected Lincecum for a 3.80 or so ERA, which I realize matches up reasonably well with his xFIP but it would have been nice to see something in the capsule about why he's underperformed his xFIP so badly the last three years instead of a writeup along the lines of "he doesn't have his fastball any more and he's going to have to learn to pitch with limited tools", and the writeup for Kluber talked about what a breakthrough he made and how great he is, and PECOTA projects him for a worse-than-league-average 3.98 ERA.
(note: I may update this when I get home and have the book in front of me, but right now was a convenient time to write.)
Pluses:
The writing is very good and surprisingly funny in a lot of the player capsules. I think my favorite throwaway line so far was something like "Will Startup is the definition of a replacement-level lefty reliever and also the definition of a replacement-level office computer." The capsules are also very good for giving insights that don't come through well in the standard stat lines.
Most of the team essays have been interesting.
Minuses:
The team essay for the Angels was long and incomprehensible. That happened to be the most recent one I've read, so it sticks in my mind, but it was also the first one I just skimmed.
PECOTA is surprisingly divergent from a lot of other projection systems in a lot of cases and also from the capsules. It looks like the people writing the capsules didn't have access to the projections when writing, because there are a lot of cases where I would have appreciated a bit of explanation about why PECOTA was so positive or negative on someone, but instead the capsule basically agreed with my instincts and the numbers didn't. The examples I can remember offhand were that it projected Lincecum for a 3.80 or so ERA, which I realize matches up reasonably well with his xFIP but it would have been nice to see something in the capsule about why he's underperformed his xFIP so badly the last three years instead of a writeup along the lines of "he doesn't have his fastball any more and he's going to have to learn to pitch with limited tools", and the writeup for Kluber talked about what a breakthrough he made and how great he is, and PECOTA projects him for a worse-than-league-average 3.98 ERA.
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