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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
big and bad are correct, April 23, 2000
By A Customer
As a baseball fan who reads any book of analysis I can find, I eagerly awaited this year's BBBA. I was extremely disappointed that the editors found it necessary to go into childish tirades against their competitionI usually don't wallow thru all the stats that the BBBA folks put out as I enjoy the commentary more. However, since the commentary was more in the line of sophmoric back slapping and finger pointing, I thought I'd study the stats more carefully. The BBBA folks will tell that they are right. I did find much of their analysis to countradict their competitors. While I don't know who is right or wrong, a least let me decide as to which information I find more useful, don't tell me. I especially found the attacks on Bill James to be curious. Bill James started the revolution on baseball anyalsis, in essence giving these insolent writers their start. If you don't agree with him, just write it, don't rip him. I won't spend another penny on the folks from BBBA.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Too little too late, April 21, 2000
By A Customer
I was told this was the best baseball book of the year. I didn't get it until after the season started, and when I did, I got a juvenile treatise with about four bright spots, and a really bad case of envy for everyone else that does analysis. I would be embarrassed to be associated with this incarnation of a tantrum. My five year old can behave with a little decorum, which is more than I can say for whoever edited this. Only a couple of writers are worth even glancing at, Firtado and Walker, and they're clearly too smart to stick with this sinking ship for long. Their work gives this book a second star, but just barely.It's also hard to read, amateurishly put together, and basically a complete waste of money and time. There's no reason to buy this book. The childishness evidence in this book is so bad as to be disrespectful to the game. Don't these authors even LIKE baseball? Hideous.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Deja Vu Review, April 8, 2000
By A Customer
I tried it again this year despite my better instincts. I won't again. These guys are oblivious to their readers, even ones who wish desperately to steer them to their strengths and away from their weaknesses. Do they even read the feedback from their readers? A promising endeavor has just become a sad downhill slide with good baseball analysis in the early years giving way to puffery and pretentiousness and, worst of all, silly putdowns of the competition.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
This ship has sunk, May 25, 2000
By A Customer
There are about four writers worth reading in this enterprise. Unhappily none of them has his name on the masthead. Figure it out, you four guys. Dump the captain and his surly and silly chief officers and form your own crew. You know and care about the game. Your bosses don't have a clue.
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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Offbeat but compelling, April 18, 2000
By A Customer
I've read all the annuals for awhile now, and BBBA is the only one that I come back to--all the others are disposable within weeks after you first read them. They have interesting new stats and methods that add something to the field, as opposed to others who have really just rehashed ideas that are close to twenty years old. They do spend too much time tweaking their competition, and they'd be better served to just make their methods more accessible to the average reader. I especially enjoyed Tom Ruane's work in this year's edition, and the material on young teams was a solid corrective to the often uncritical touting of prospects that passes for analysis. You won't find that kind of material anywhere else, and it's the real future of new ideas in baseball research.
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Take the title literally, August 7, 2005
I found the 2000 edition to be packed with spite and petulance - especially towards baseball, and other statisticians. Additionally, the quality of the writing is woeful.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Dense, informative -- but flawed -- annual, March 31, 2000
By A Customer
Like its predecessors, the Big Bad Baseball Annual 2000 is written for a relatively small subgroup of baseball fans: the hard-core sabermetricians who can practically come to blows over the proper weighting of walks vs. stolen bases in evaluating a hitter's performance. For these readers, the BBBA contains more information than any other annual, including several wonderful historical and methodological essays as well as commentary on current players.Unfortunately, the book suffers from its authors' self-indulgence. There are far too many in-jokes which amuse the co-authors more than the readers; far too many obscure acronyms; and far too many times when the authors take 100 words to make a 25-word point. At times, it feels as though the authors hide behind pretentious language to make their concepts seem more important than they are. A more serious problem is the BBBA's penchant for taking nasty pot shots at the competition -- STATS Inc., Rob Neyer of ESPN, and especially the Baseball Prospectus. The target audience for this book isn't impressed by authors who proclaim "Nyaah, nyaah, I'm smarter than you are." In short, the BBBA is a valuable analytical tool, but would be much better if a professional editor were allowed to cut through the BS and obfuscation.
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