Review: Baseball Prospectus 2025

Edited by Patrick Dubuque, Bryan Grosnick and Ginny Searle. 

Baseball Prospectus 2025 starts out in an interesting way as it launches a 30th edition. The original founders of the book got together to tell the book's origin story. It explains that after the strike of 1994-95, there seemed to be a hole in the niche of books on baseball statistical analysis. Bill James had moved on to other things from his annual Baseball Abstract, and the Elias annuals had just ended in 1994. So a few guys got together and essentially started to put some ideas down on the paper. 

The result was the Baseball Prospectus 1996, with all of 250 copies printed. I suppose one pops up on eBay every so often, but you probably couldn't afford to buy one now. Yes, it was amateurish in some ways - someone forgot to include the chapter on the St. Louis Cardinals. But there is a quote in that first book that set the tone for the 29 volumes that came next: "Since we like to laugh as much as you do, we've tried to be entertaining as well as informative, but if you think we're just one or the other, we'll take it." James' secret weapon in his Abstracts was that he was such a good writer - and didn't take any prisoners because he didn't need day-to-day access to baseball people because he wasn't a journalist covering the sport. That approach has been a hallmark of Baseball Prospectus over the years - it was often quite funny. 

The book is now the biggest part of something of a baseball empire, including a website and some other publications. But this is clearly the flagship of the enterprise. It plops on the doorstep around the start of spring training, promising plenty of insights within lots and lots of pages.

Where are we in year 30? It's striking just how much more information is out there these days, and a lot of it pops along the way. Someone seems to be counting everything that happens in a baseball game, from what pitch is thrown to how fast it is to where it arrives around home plate to how hard it is hit to where it lands. And there are a lot of games, so that's a lot of data that is kept somewhere. Baseball Prospectus has a lot of smart guys looking at the data as they search for connections and conclusions.

The publication adds some new tools this year in the form of metrics like StuffPro and PitchPro. I'm not going to tell you I read much of it, or that I even understood it. But it's nice to know the brainy types are still poking around in all sorts of different areas. 

In going through this book, it seems as if the player descriptions often lean heavily on the site of data analysis and new statistics to come to conclusions. I found myself a little lost with some of the numbers, and that's speaking as someone who called himself a one-man analytics staff with his slow-pitch softball team in the 1980s and 1990s. (I'm confident we were the only team in the Malone's bar league to keep track of Runs Created.) 

In other words, the book is still informative, but perhaps not quite as entertaining as it used to be. That varies from team to team and writer to writer, but to be fair it's difficult to be funny in print. Maybe I skim the player summaries a little more than I used to do in the old days. On the other hand, the team essays usually offer some original thoughts and different perspectives, and they remain smart and fun. Some other articles on baseball are worthwhile as well.

This book usually finds its biggest audience with fantasy players, which is fine. I'm probably not as enthusiastic about the book as those in that particular group, but I still buy it every year and look forward to its arrival. "Baseball Prospectus 2025" will be in a convenient place for the rest of the baseball season, coming out of there's a trade of interest or if I just want background information when a game pops up on television. There's something comforting about that.

Four stars

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Review: Losing Big (2025)

By Jonathan Cohen

The discussion about sports gambling since it has been legalized a few years ago certainly sounds familiar to many.

Do you remember how we heard about how state lotteries were going to provide valuable dollars for our educational system? Do you recall that Off-Track Betting in horse racing would tap in on money already being spent illegally and end up going to the greater good?

Those two areas have become a permanent part of our lives, of course. The problem is that they have come with a cost. Making it easier to gamble certainly has meant more people are gambling, and that led to more social costs affecting society as a whole. A percentage of gamblers - maybe not a big number, but some - are going to become addicted, and will ruin their own lives and the lives of others. You're probably heard stories about lower-class people whose retirement plan is to buy lottery tickets, where the odds definitely aren't in your favor. And gambling taxes are regressive in nature; they draw more money from the lower brackets than the upper.

The 2018 Supreme Court decision to allow wagering on sports events certainly has broadened the scope of gambling in our society. After all, many fans consider themselves experts on the subject of sports, and figure waging on outcomes should be easy. About one in five adults wagered on such fun games in 2023, and it's tough to go anywhere in the world of sports these days (in-person, television, etc.) without being bombarded with marketing messages from such companies as FanDuel and Draft Kings. 

It's a good time, then, to take a look at what's going on right now. Jonathan Cohen has done just that in "Losing Big."

Cohen is well qualified for the job. He's written acclaimed books on lotteries and gambling. Here he takes a look at the small picture and the big picture, as both are important in telling the story in a sense. We learn about how states slowly embraced the concept of sports gambling in order to increase revenues - even though it's actually a regressive tax on the population, since the money paid into the system is skewed by the lower classes contributing a higher rate than the rest of the population. There are other costs as well, such as a high rate of suicides among problem gamblers.

There are stories here about how the gambling companies played a large part in drawing up the rules for such activities through lobbying. The NFL's attitude gets an examination; it's interesting how the league (and other sports leagues) were strongly anti-gambling before they became part of "the house" and thus profited from it all. One gambler offers something of a case study on what can go wrong here. There's also a chapter on how other countries are dealing with the excesses created by sports gambling. 

Some of the stories along the way are quite interesting. Anyone who has been paying attention has seen how the sportsbooks are offering "refunds" to first-time gamblers if they lost that initial wagers. The benefits were so great, Cohen discovered, that the companies didn't have any profits to share with the states. Hmm. But in the long term, they lured some people in for keeps.   

Cohen also has some idea on how to make the system work better. His list starts with the sportsbooks taking steps to protect the individual players from ruin. He calls for some national standards for the industry. a crackdown on illegal and foreign sports books, and more independent regulation and education programs.

I realize that when it comes to a discussion about the morality of gambling, the train has left the station. Everyone does it, and they are going to keep doing it. The Puritans lost that argument. But I don't particularly like what gambling has done to the games. It certainly feels like the level of cynicism among fans has increased, particularly among officiating. The use of "point spreads" in certain sports means that some people will be watching a game with a different approach than the usual main concept of winning and losing. In other words, my team needs to win by four points to make me happy, and not by one. 

That doesn't include the obvious elephant in the room. There are going to be more and more fixed outcomes and scandals down the road. The pros at least are making enough money in many cases so that it would be hard to tempt them financially. But these days you can bet on such sports as college lacrosse, where temptation might land on more favorable ears. 

Cohen's book is a little dry in spots (it's hard not to be considering some of the material), but it makes its points nicely and quickly. Think of "Losing Big," then, as an introduction to a serious subject that's not going away in the near future. It's going to be a bumpy ride. 

Four stars

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Review: Giannis (2021)

By Mirin Fader

There's one usual rule when it comes to autobiographies and biographies of famous athletes: Don't write them until their athletic career is over. 

That's because a period of time in sports usually has enough drama to carry the story through to the ending. It feels a little incomplete without a "how did it turn out?" section. Besides, the subject often isn't old enough to put things into perspective.

Now ... when it comes to the book "Giannis," take that rule, and deposit it in the nearest wastebasket. 

That's because the story of Giannis Antetokounmpo - I'm still working on how to say and type that smoothly - had enough drama in it by the age of 26 to more than fill a book. That's why it still fascinates. 

Full credit to Mirin Fader for coming up with the complete version of the story. She seems to have talked to everyone involved, and supplemented it with other research. Fader came up with a book in 2021 that was simply jammed with great information and insights. 

If you don't know much about the origin story of the Milwaukee Bucks' standout, he was born in Greece to Nigerian parents. The family all had to do almost anything possible to scrape up enough money to have some place to sleep and something to eat on a daily basis. The kids, all three boys (another one was back in Nigeria), didn't even have Greek citizenship papers even though they were born there. Oh, and Giannis and family were black, and there were plenty of people in Greece who needed to take a look at one of them and decide they hated them. 

Giannis did figure out a way to play some basketball after an early fling with soccer didn't work out. It was a good idea, since he was getting taller by the moment in his youth. The problem was that there wasn't enough food at times, so that "lean and hungry" look was sort of permanent. Giannis needed time to grow into his body, and it's a little difficult to believe that he had a chance to become the proverbial prospect. Antetokoumpo couldn't even play with some national teams, because he didn't have citizenship papers. 

But he blossomed at just the right time. When the NBA Draft came along in 2013, some NBA teams thought he might someday turn into a player. The odds were a bit long. However, the Milwaukee Bucks hadn't been a strong contender since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar left town. There was talk that the team might have to move if it didn't make a strong move up in the standings. The Bucks took a chance and drafted him 15th in the first round, surprising almost everyone. 

It's a "stranger in a strange land" story from there. Giannis moved to Milwaukee, which in hindsight was a great place for him. New York or Los Angeles might have been overwhelmed. Milwaukee was a little cold and small, but it was a good place for someone with such an unusual background to learn the American ways. Antetokounmpo also worked hard, and then worked harder. After some serious negotiating, his whole family came across the pond from Greece to help him out. He became better, with each passing year, and fit in nicely with the style of basketball in vogue today in which all players- even 7-footers - have to be comfortable at any place on the court.

Giannis eventually started making NBA All-Star Games and winning individual awards. His career seemed to reach a climax in 2019, when he was named the league's Most Valuable Player. But then he did it again in 2020. That's where the book's story ends, but you don't need a spoiler alert to know that the best was yet to come. In 2021, the Bucks won their first NBA championship in 50 years, and Antetokounmpo was their leader. It was a heck of way to launch into a new contract that paid him a huge amount of money and in theory would keep him in Milwaukee for several more years. (It's easy to wonder if Fader watched that title and thought to herself, "Couldn't they have done it last year?")

Yes, this is a sports book, but as usual the best sports books don't easily fall into that stifling category. "Friday Nights Lights" was about high school football, and a ton of other things too. You can come up with several more examples. The details about those days in Greece are amazing to read, and the stories from Giannis' NBA days also are quite candid and interesting. 

"Giannis" probably works best for those who have little idea of Antetokounmpo's personal story, but practically everyone ought to learn a lot about this fascinating individual. Makes me wish I had read it sooner, but it's still very, very worthwhile.

Five stars

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Review: Selling Baseball (2025)

By Jeffrey Orens

There was a certain symmetry in the timing of when baseball started to take its present form as a business enterprise. The American League started operations in 1901, right at the beginning of the 20th century. It joined the established National League (founded in 1876) at that point, and eventually came together under one business umbrella - although it took longer than you might think to make it a full integration.

We tend to ignore what happened in the 19th century on some level, partly out of convenience. We're used to having the two leagues in business, and it's easy to head back to when that model began. But obviously, the game, the sport and the business needed time to develop. It's been up to some baseball historians to come up with a variety of books and articles to answer the age-old question, "How did we get here?"

In this case, author Jeffrey Orens has focused in on a couple of the major figures of 19th century base ball (as it was called in the day): George Wright and Al Spalding. Both are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The reason that these two men were picked for biographies of sort in "Selling Baseball" only has some connection to their abilities on the field, which were admittedly considerable. They also had quite an influence on the game off the field - in essence, baseball's first marketing success stories. 

Wright was one of the best players of the 19th century. He was the star of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional team in the sport. When the National Association was formed in 1871 - the first true pro baseball league as we know it - Wright landed in Boston and helped establish a dynasty there. He was accompanied in both spots by older brother Harry, who served as the player/manager of the teams. 

But soon after his arrival in Boston, the light bulb in George Wright's brain went off. If baseball was such a great game, more people should be playing it. They would need equipment to do so, and such items as baseballs, bats, gloves, safety equipment, etc. were becoming standardized. Why not get in on the financial ground floor in the 1870s? Which he did.

Spalding was a teammate of George Wright in Boston in the first half of the 1870s. He moved to Chicago in 1876, played three years there and then retired. Al finished with a career record of 252-65, numbers that were helped by leading his league in pitching wins for six straight years. In 1877, Spalding starting wearing a glove as his appearances on the field started to diminish. Gloves were unusual at that point - you probably could pick out a baseball player by his mangled hands at this point in history - but he liked the concept and convinced some others to use one. And once gloves became universal, the game changed for good and for the better. 

Upon his return to his native Chicago area, Spalding had the same idea as Wright. Why not start a sporting goods business? The idea worked well in the Midwest too. Soon Al had a chain of stores, and started working on other elements of the business. For example, he helped produce an annual guide for baseball that became the top reference source in the country on such matters. 

Orens makes it clear that Wright is more of a good guy in the story. Spalding wasn't above exaggerating or even lying about matters. The best example was when baseball formed a commission on how to figure out how baseball was created. Even though it clearly evolved from other games that came over from Europe, Spalding helped ram through a conclusion on very shaky evidence that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York - even though Doubleday was elsewhere at the time. 

Orens' book has some interesting information between its covers. In hindsight, the concept of a professional sport developed quite quickly. It was something of a regional specialty when the Civil War helped spread it to new areas around the country. Once teams started forming, it was almost inevitable that one city would play a team from its neighbor. It was also inevitable that eligibility and financial rules would get bent along the way ... in other words, teams would figure out a way to lure the best players with under-the-table cash. The cure for that was professionalism. 

The last few chapters aren't quite as gripping. Spalding led an around-the-world tour one offseason in an effort to promote the game. There is a book out there written about that entire experience. But it's still difficult to make a series of exhibition games from long ago dramatic. We hear about Wright's involvement in the eventual growth of golf and lawn tennis as well as something called roller polo (as Orens writes, it's indoor hockey on roller skates). George sold some merchandise in the latter even if the game's 19th-century popularity was short-lived. Some loose ends are tied together in the final main chapter, including the players' attempt at starting their own league in 1890 in order to make negotiations with owners much less one-sided. Spoiler alert: It didn't work. 

"Selling Baseball" accomplishes its goal of illuminating the story about how Wright and Spalding leveraged their on-field success to earn themselves some money and promote baseball and other sports in the process, and does it quickly and professionally. It's hard to say if such a book will find a good-sized audience, but it's nice to have such a publication out there for those interested in the subject.

Three stars

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