This time I came across three more publications:

Fantasy Sports ($5.99)
Beckett/Rotoworld ($6.99)
RotoWire ($7.99)

You’ll remember I found these on my first trip:

The Fantasy Baseball Guide ($6.99)
Fanball ($7.99)
Lindy’s Fantasy Baseball ($7.99)

I’ll spare you the detailed comparison; if you have spent any time flipping through various magazines you will realize that the differences between them are pretty minor.

I will say this though: If I were only buying one magazine, it would probably be the Rotoworld one. It’s got the full set of features (articles, drafts, auctions, projections), and I thought each of those elements was done well. The price is right, too: The $7.99 publications form the rest of my top-tier, so for $6.99 Rotoworld seems like an easy decision. (Yeah, I like saving a buck.)

So how would I summarize the magazines I’ve looked at this year? Well…

Magazines all have the same basic content.
Every fantasy publication that I looked at featured player projections, a list of prospects, and a mock draft. Some went beyond that to include mock auctions, various dollar values, sleepers, etc. If there’s a feature that you consider a deal-breaker to not have (e.g. 5×5 dollar values), then make sure you get a magazine that has that feature.

Magazines have good writers.
In recent years, magazines have wisely begun including some of the internet’s best fantasy writers and thinkers. As some one who respects the work of Matthew Pouliot, Jason Collette, Peter Kreutzer, Andy Behrens, Aaron Gleeman, and others, I think the days of magazine bashing are over. Sure, they’re out of date, but they are still written by smart people. If there’s an online writer that you are particularly impressed with, maybe consider their publication.

Magazines have their limits.
Magazines are pretty good at what they do, but there’s still a lot that can’t be fit into a hundred of so pages. For example, a magazine might list a couple of different dollar values (AL, NL, and mixed), but that can hardly compare to the endless possibilities of customized dollar values that the Price Guide can give you. A magazine might have a couple of useful articles, but that’s nothing compared to the hundreds that are available for free on the internet.

Even so, I still can’t help but buy a magazine each year.

And yet, despite their poor reputation, fantasy magazines seem to be selling quite well: There’s apparently enough of a market for fantasy mags to support a half dozen different publications. I realize that there are plenty of casual fantasy fans out there to profit from, but I suspect that there are quite a few magazines sold to the “magazine-haters” as well.

I’ve heard your excuses:

“Well, I only buy it because there’s nothing else to read in the winter.”

“I only get it to give me something to read ‘away from my computer.’”

Sure you do. The truth is, while magazines are admittedly horribly out of date by April, most of them are actually pretty good at what they do. The depth of coverage is not always the best, but I don’t think that’s their point. Much of the content is contributed by high-quality writers, and is, in my opinion at least, pretty high quality.

So for those of us who can appreciate the magazines for what they offer, let’s take a look at what’s available. When I checked at my local bookstore, I found these three magazines on the rack:

The Fantasy Baseball Guide ($6.99)
The Fantasy Baseball Guide is chiefly the work of Peter “Rotoman” Kreutzer, and that alone has been enough to get me to buy it in the past. It isn’t as flashy as other magazines–don’t expect glossy pages and fancy layouts–but I think the content is top notch.

However, I hadn’t really noticed until I compared it directly to other publications, but the Guide doesn’t have nearly the features of other magazines. Some of those features are just fluff, but some of them can be useful. It is a little cheaper than other mags, so I’d weigh the price in with how interested you are in sleeper/bust list or mock auctions.

Another weakness of the Guide is that it only has 4×4 dollar values. I’m sure a lot of leagues out there are still doing 4×4, but it doesn’t seem to be that common anymore. Maybe their wanting to establish their old-school credentials, but I’d think 5×5 would be pretty easy to add in.

Fanball ($7.99)
Of the three magazines I looked at, Fanball clearly had the best range of features. In addition to the standard player stats and handful of articles, Fanball’s magazine had a mock auction, a mixed-league mock draft, and AL-only and NL-only mock drafts.* There were dollar value cheat sheets for several league configurations. Team-by-team breakdowns, sleepers, busts,

*The latter two didn’t seem that helpful to me… There is just too much that is unknown in November (e.g. free agents) for an NL-only or AL-only draft to make sense: What good is an AL-only draft that doesn’t take Sabathia or Teixeira?

Those familiar with The Bull Pen forums will recognize the work of Jason Collette, whose contributions here are solid. In fact, the writers overall seem like a respectable crew.

Of the magazines I looked at, the Fanball publication would probably get my vote for favorite.

Lindy’s Fantasy Baseball ($7.99)

By the time I got to my third (and final) magazine, I’m starting to see just how similar the magazines are. While I think it can be worthwhile to pick up a magazine, I don’t see much point of getting more than that.

One unique feature of Lindy’s that caught my eye was an article by Yahoo’s Andy Behrens discussing “Roster Churn.” It’s a look at which players were most likely to end up on winning teams last year; definitely worth reading.

Otherwise, Fanball’s fuller feature set (and equal price) would make me lean towards that one instead of Lindy’s.

I’ll keep checking around town in the next couple of months to see if I come across any other magazines. Right now Fanball’s magazine is the best I’ve seen.

With the web, a new (and better) fantasy medium has emerged, and now there are hundreds of sites that do (or try do to) what the books did. Most of the books have disappeared, but Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster still endures, releasing its 23rd edition this year.

With over 270 pages, Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster 2009 looks impressive. However, keep in mind that the player stats/projections make up about 80% of the book. Take away those and some pages of filler (Shandler’s been pushing “Quintinning” for years and still no one cares), and you’re left with about 20 pages of actual content. Seriously.

Those 20 pages are pretty good, though. I think RIMA, Total Control Drafting, and Portfolio3 are interesting and unique ideas, and I don’t know anywhere else that discusses them.

However, reading Baseball Forecaster is a little like playing Madden Football. Whenever you buy the latest edition, it kind of reminds you of the previous edition, except with updated players. As you get into it, you discover that there’s a lot more that’s the same than there is that’s different. If you’ve bought a copy of Baseball Forecaster in the past few years, a lot of the information in the 2009 edition will look very familiar.

My Recommendation: I realize that a lot of people buy the Forecaster purely for the projections. And that’s fine, because I think the projections are pretty good.

However, if you are wanting anything more than a $25 book of projections, I’d only buy Baseball Forecaster if you haven’t bought a copy in the last five years or so. The 2009 content is good, but very similar to previous years.