Baseball America's Ultimate Draft Book


Book Description

Baseball America invented coverage of the baseball draft. So who better than Baseball America to chronicle 50 years of draft history? As the baseball draft grows in prominence and more and more fans connect winning on draft day to winning in the major leagues, the BA draft book takes you through 50 years of great draft stories and the biggest hits and misses in draft history. The Baseball America 50th Anniversary Draft Book combines all the information of a great reference title with all the great stories that make draft history so rich. For every year of the draft, from 1965-2015, you'll get a complete team by team draft list, with who signed and who didn't, who reached the big leagues and who washed out. And the draft lists are more than just lists; they also feature interesting tidbits on people who became prominent baseball or in other sports or other careers altogether. You'll get the story of the most prominent storylines and people for every year of the draft, as well as plenty of charts and photos to take you in-depth on every year. This book will feature lots of information that has never been publicly available before, especially with signing bonuses from the early days of the draft. It goes without saying that anyone who has an interest in the baseball draft will have to have this book, but anyone who loves good stories (longshots that became major league stars, touted phenoms who washed out) will find fun on every page of this book.




Baseball America 2012 Prospect Handbook


Book Description

Updated for 2012, this leading annual provides in-depth analysis and statistics of 900 players, offers a detailed amateur draft report card, a list of the top 100 prospects, and a ranking of the Major League Baseball player development programs.




Buzz Saw


Book Description

The remarkable story of the 2019 World Series champion Washington Nationals told by the Washington Post writer who followed the team most closely. By May 2019, the Washington Nationals—owners of baseball’s oldest roster—had one of the worst records in the majors and just a 1.5 percent chance of winning the World Series. Yet by blending an old-school brand of baseball with modern analytics, they managed to sneak into the playoffs and put together the most unlikely postseason run in baseball history. Not only did they beat the Houston Astros, the team with the best regular-season record, to claim the franchise’s first championship—they won all four games in Houston, making them the first club to ever win four road games in a World Series. “You have a great year, and you can run into a buzz saw,” Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg told Washington Post beat writer Jesse Dougherty after the team advanced to the World Series. “Maybe this year we’re the buzz saw.” Dougherty followed the Nationals more closely than any other writer in America, and in Buzz Saw he recounts the dramatic year in vivid detail, taking readers inside the dugout, the clubhouse, the front office, and ultimately the championship parade. Yet he does something more than provide a riveting retelling of the season: he makes the case that while there is indisputable value to Moneyball-style metrics, baseball isn’t just a numbers game. Intangibles like team chemistry, veteran experience, and childlike joy are equally essential to winning. Certainly, no team seemed to have more fun than the Nationals, who adopted the kids’ song “Baby Shark” as their anthem and regularly broke into dugout dance parties. Buzz Saw is just as lively and rollicking—a fitting tribute to one of the most exciting, inspiring teams to ever take the field.




Ninety Percent Mental


Book Description

Former Major League pitcher and mental skills coach for two of baseball's legendary franchises (the Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants) Bob Tewksbury takes fans inside the psychology of baseball. In Ninety Percent Mental, Bob Tewksbury shows readers a side of the game only he can provide, given his singular background as both a longtime MLB pitcher and a mental skills coach for two of the sport's most fabled franchises, the Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants. Fans watching the game on television or even at the stadium don't have access to the mind games a pitcher must play in order to get through an at-bat, an inning, a game. Tewksbury explores the fascinating psychology behind baseball, such as how players use techniques of imagery, self-awareness, and strategic thinking to maximize performance, and how a pitcher's strategy changes throughout a game. He also offers an in-depth look into some of baseball's most monumental moments and intimate anecdotes from a "who's who" of the game, including legendary players who Tewksbury played with and against (such as Mark McGwire, Craig Biggio, and Greg Maddux), game-changing managers and executives (Joe Torre, Bruce Bochy, Brian Sabean), and current star players (Jon Lester, Anthony Rizzo, Andrew Miller, Rich Hill). With Tewksbury's esoteric knowledge as a thinking-fan's player and his expertise as a "baseball whisperer", this entertaining book is perfect for any fan who wants to see the game in a way he or she has never seen it before. Ninety Percent Mental will deliver an unprecedented look at the mound games and mind games of Major League Baseball.




Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game


Book Description

Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?




Baseball America 2021 Almanac


Book Description

The only definitive baseball annual on the market. It has all the major league statistics, an overview of each organization's season, the minor league year in review, comprehensive college coverage, a full recap of the 2020 draft and foreign and winter league coverage.




Gold Glove Baseball


Book Description

Solid defense begins before the first pitch is thrown. From player placement to situational awareness, the nuances of superior fielding are vast and varied. That's why the American Baseball Coaches Association's top defensive minds have compiled Gold Glove Baseball--to give you an all-encompassing resource to help turn your team into a stellar defensive unit. The all-star lineup of coaches provide in-depth instruction, special insights, and practice drills on every aspect of defensive play. The book's scope ranges from fundamentals to advanced tactics for those who have mastered the basics. Coaches at all levels and serious players will find great tips and new techniques for executing specific fielding maneuvers and complex plays involving several players. A sample defensive signals system will explain how to coordinate the positioning and movements of all nine fielders on every pitch. Winning baseball requires smart and steady defensive play every bit as much as solid hitting and strong pitching. In fact, many top baseball coaches say that the foundation of championship teams is defense because it makes pitchers' jobs easier and takes pressure off the offense. Gold Glove Baseball provides a complete plan for playing championship-caliber defense.




Baseball America 2004 Almanac


Book Description

Published annually for the past 20 years, this is the one guide every true baseball fan needs. This new edition offers a complete recap of the exciting 2003 baseball season.




Future Value


Book Description

An unprecedented look inside the world of baseball scouting and evaluation from two of the industry's top prospect analysts For the modern Major League team, player evaluation is a complex, multi-pronged, high-tech pursuit. But far from becoming obsolete in this environment—as Michael Lewis' Moneyball once forecast—the role of the scout in today's game has evolved and even expanded. Rather than being the antithesis of a data-driven approach, scouting now represents an essential analytical component in a team's arsenal. Future Value is a thorough dive into baseball's changing world of talent acquisition and development, a world with its own language, methods, metrics, and madness. From rural high schools to elite amateur showcases, from the back fields of spring training to major league draft rooms, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel break down the key systems and techniques used to assess talent. It's a process that has moved beyond the quintessential stopwatches and radar guns to include statistical models, countless measurable indicators, and a broader international reach. ?Practical and probing, discussing wide-ranging topics from tool grades to front office politics, this is an illuminating exploration of how to watch baseball and see the future.




License to Deal


Book Description

The movie Jerry Maguire and HBO series Arli$$ barely skimmed the surface. Now the true inside story of the sports agent business is exposed as never before. During baseball's evolution from national pastime to a $3.6 billion business, the game's agents have played a pivotal role in driving and (some might say) ruining the sport. In a world of unchecked egos and minimal regulation, client-stealing and financial inducements have become commonplace, leading many to label the field a cesspool, devoid of loyalties and filled with predators. Matt Sosnick entered these shark-infested waters in 1997, leaving a job as CEO of a San Francisco high-tech company to represent ballplayers--and hoping to do so while keeping his romantic love of baseball and his integrity intact. License to Deal follows Sosnick as he deals with his up-and-coming clients (his most famous is the 2003 rookie-of-the-year pitching sensation Dontrelle Willis). We become privy to never-before-disclosed stories behind the rise of baseball's most powerful agent, Scott Boras. And we get a novel perspective on the art of the deal and the economics of baseball. By one of baseball's most respected sportswriters, who is now ESPN.com's lead Insider baseball reporter, License to Deal, like Michael Lewis's bestselling Moneyball, will provide fuel for many a heated baseball discussion.