While the book owes much to James, it does manage to craft out a unique identity. Baseball Prospectus is structured differently, there are a greater variety of voices, and although the essays are not as absorbing as James , BP is definitely worth a read. The skeleton of BP is Clay Davenport s complex, yet excellent statistical analysis. The Q and A allows BP s extremely statistical methods to be explained without intimidating the large portion of their audience that isn t interested in the science behind sabermetrics, but is interested only the results of the analysis. The greatest strength of BP lies in the ability of the Davenport Translations to compare every single player in organized.
Pitchers also have their statistics translated, with a focus on peripheral statistics.
The almost 2000 players covered in the book are presented with these Davenport Translations and brief, information-packed comments. Each player capsule also includes a projection line, created by Propsectus s Wilton projection tool. Exactly what Wilton is or how it works is not answered in the book, but to the best of my knowledge it uses historical comparisons and a neural net system to derive projections. BP hasn t tried to project pitchers, for good reason, especially given the number of minor league pitchers covered. Wilton is an interesting tool, but far from revolutionary.