I recently sat down with Christina Kahrl and Kevin Goldstein from Baseball Prospectus to talk about Baseball Prospectus 2009, following a public signing and discussion at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, WA. Click that nice green play button to roll the audio…

To paraphrase Kevin’s lead-in to the event, “books like this don’t really make for great readings…Josh Hamilton…42 doubles this year.” Likewise, books projecting performance in the upcoming season doesn’t really make for great reviews – the review comes after the season when you see how accurate the predictions are.

However, the book isn’t all projections – there are some articles at the back that tackle a range of subjects,  such as David Laurila providing a look at the nature of Latin American ballplayers coming to the US and the language barriers they encounter, Neil deMause providing an update on ballparks around MLB, Gary Huckabay’s analysis of MLB’s marketing efforts, and last but not least, Kevin Goldstein’s list of the Top 100 Prospects.

At what could be seen as an intimidating 628 pages, there is certainly a tremendous amount of information in the book. Each team gets the same treatment – a few pages of overview on all 30 teams, then the world-famous PECOTA projections for over 1600 players, followed by a brief analysis of each team’s manager.

Which brings me to my gripes about the book — using my hometown Mariners as the example, there are a few things that I don’t like about the layout. First – players who are no longer on the team, and who are even identified as being on new teams are still listed under the Mariners section. Case in point: JJ Putz and Jeremy Reed, traded to the Mets back at the Winter Meetings in December. The notes on those players even reflect how they’ll do with their new teams!

Another related note – players who were cut during the season last year are still listed with the Mariners. Thank goodness it’s not Richie Sexson, but Jose Vidro is still listed as a Mariner. Not the name I want to see when looking into the Mariners’ future.

All this ties in to a lack of an index of players, which for me would be as valuable a tool as VORP, WARP, and EqA.

Other than that, the book is fairly solid. The PECOTA leaderboards in the back are a fun and quick way to see who is looking promising next year, and let me just say that if you haven’t heard of Matt Wieters, you will have after reading this book.

The best way for me to describe Baseball Prospectus 2009 is a tool that can be of a lot of help to most baseball fans – although I think its usefulness will vary greatly depending on how much you follow the game. Fantasy players will certainly have lots to benefit from, and while most fans will appreciate learning about metrics used to measure player performance, I have a feeling that they won’t necessarily walk away from the book much smarter about the game. BP2009 isn’t a book on what to look for when watching a game, or how to identify and value high leverage situations, nor will it crystallize the science of winning baseball games.

But as I mention in the interview, I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for the BP folks, particularly the work that comes out on BaseballProspectus.com, and I stand by my statement that it is one of the few sites on the web that I am gladly willing to pay for.

I  definitely recommend at least picking up the book and checking it out — maybe you’ll find something in it that turns out to be of tremendous value and usefulness, and ultimately makes you a better and more informed fan who enjoys baseball more, for that is what it’s all about.