SubscribeOnce upon a time, when rotisserie baseball involved adding up stats from newspapers, books were the main source of fantasy advice. John Benson, Alex Patton, Ron Shandler, and others produced annual works that disseminated their strategies, projections, and opinions to the world.
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.
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I will always be grateful for the Baseball Forecaster as it completely changed the way I evaluated and projected players when I picked up my first copy about 10 years ago. However, I have begun to feel the same way as you. Each year it has less worth to me, especially with the proliferation of sites such as Fan Graphs that has almost every stat that the Forecaster has, with the exception of the PX/SX and xERA metrics.
I have still continued to buy it every year as the only thing I spend my money on for fantasy baseball draft prep, but it’s unfortunately rapidly losing its value. However, for those who have never purchased it and have typically bought the $7-$10 magazines each year instead, then it’s a must.