Today's Fantasy Rx

Spring Baseball Magazine Reviews

We picked up Lindy's Scouting Reports and Street & Smith's Baseball Preview yesterday; the latter also came bagged with a fantasy guide. I'll try to review both of them tomorrow with Athlon as I want to get through the TSN preview today. I'm not sure that we'll find much useful information in here as TSN has its own fantasy issue, but since TSN and Athlon are spring baseball magazines, they get reviews.

Click here to take another look at our criteria.

We continue our Spring Magazine reviews with:

The Sporting News Baseball Preview 2002

9/10 points for Presentation.
TSN has been the top team preview book for several seasons, edging Bill Mazeroski and Athlon due to their overall superiority in reporting, an extension of the weekly magazine's connections and reporters. Every page is full color and glossy, each team gets four full pages to themselves with no picture taking up more than two-thirds of each page, and their 40-man rosters are very detailed as always.

They shifted the team reports into alphabetical order by league instead of by division, and since this makes it slightly harder to compare teams by division, I'm docking them one point for this layout decision. Other than that minor miscue, they've again presented a very readable magazine.

6/10 points for Table of Contents and included content.
The TOC is right there on the first page after the cover, listed on the right-middle of the page with a page number for every team and a few feature sections.

While they can't nearly gain a perfect score for providing no specific fantasy information, they again do a great job of team reviews and features, including likely controversial articles (how could they leave Tim Raines out of current Hall-of-Famers) and their comprehensive 2002 predictions (6/7 experts pick the Yankees over the Cardinals(3), Braves(2), or Mets(1), with a lone senior editor picking the Cardinals over the Athletics).

0/10 points for describing the league for their main rankings.
No rankings and no descriptions means no points.

20/50 points for specific player analysis, 5 points for each player as follows.
(As long as a magazine discusses part of each detail, we give them a full point.)

11/25 points for Position Players:

1. Jeremy Giambi, Outfielder, Oakland Athletics:
  1. Only now entering his peak years.
  2. Most of his averages have been trending upwards for the past few seasons.
  3. He's better at his age than his brother Jason.
  4. Injury questions: He's never had more than 2001's 371 AB in a season.
  5. Playing time question: The Athletics have several other quality 1B/LF/DH.

3/5 points for Giambi. Decent hits on #1, #4, and #5.

2. Shawn Green, Outfielder, Los Angeles:
  1. He should stay above the 40/110 level regardless of a Sheffield trade.
  2. He's capable of a 45/35 season if given the opportunity.
  3. He just entered his peak power years.
  4. He almost never misses a game, so you can count on high counting number totals across the board.
  5. Los Angeles expects him to anchor their offense despite a career .353 OBP.

1/5 points for Green. A hit on #5, but I really didn't learn much from their brief mention of him. Most of these magazines seem focused on "Green learned to hit NL pitching in his second year in the league" or some variation thereof, and I just don't find this to be relevant analysis.

3. Todd Hundley, Catcher, Chicago Cubs:
  1. Expect 30+ HR if he can find 400+ AB.
  2. Don't expect him to find 400+ AB unless he starts off strong.
  3. He should reach at least 80 RBI hitting behind Sosa, McGriff, and Alou.
  4. Don't expect him to exceed a .260 BA.
  5. He's young enough to rebound into a typical catcher's late-career power spike.

2/5 points for Hundley. Acceptable hits on #3 and #4.

4. Doug Mientkiewicz, First Baseman, Minnesota Twins:
  1. He's 27 and entering his third full season; expect a more impressive breakout than 2001.
  2. His RBIs will increase as Rivas and Guzman's OBPs increase.
  3. His runs will increase with probable improvements by Ortiz, Jones, and whomever earns the RF job.
  4. He'll be lucky to hit .300, but .290 is quite reasonable.
  5. With Tom Kelly gone, he's the unquestioned starter for the next couple of years.

1/5 points for Mientkiewicz. They discuss his defense several times, earning a point for #5, but again this magazine omits any real mention of his offensive talents other than a "Mark Grace" clone, and he simply doesn't have Grace's plate discipline while also possessing more power potential.

5. Jose Ortiz, Second Baseman, Colorado Rockies:
  1. He's receiving his first uncontested full-time job going into Spring Training.
  2. His 2000 MLEs were outstanding, even for the Pacific Coast League.
  3. He's only turning 25 this year, so he's likely to post great 5x5 numbers in the future.
  4. Colorado wants to bat him 2nd, decreasing his RBI opportunities, but potentially increasing his runs scored ahead of Helton and Larry Walker.
  5. If he struggles, they might give Brent Butler a shot at the job.

4/5 points for Ortiz. They at least suggest everything but #2, so I'll give them credit for four points.

9/25 points for Pitchers:

1. Paul Abbott, Starting Pitcher, Seattle Mariners:
  1. He had 17 wins because he received the most run support in the majors in 2001.
  2. He's allowed over 20 HR in each of the last two seasons in under 180 IP both years.
  3. Since he's already 34, he's now on the downside of his career.
  4. His K:BB has been quite bad at a combined 218:167 over the last two years.
  5. Seattle has a cadre of young pitching soon to replace him.

0/5 points for Abbott. They don't really discuss Abbott in detail at all.

2. Matt Anderson, Closer, Detroit Tigers:
  1. Aside from one bad April outing, his ERA would have been well below 4.00.
  2. He pitched quite well as a full-time closer last year.
  3. There's little competition in the Tigers' bullpen.
  4. He doesn't appear to be an injury risk.
  5. The Tigers have a weak offense and weak starting pitching, decreasing his potential save opportunities.

2/5 points for Anderson. They nicely cover #2 and then #3 by example.

3. Curt Schilling, Starting Pitcher, Arizona Diamondbacks:
  1. He's unlikely to reach 20 wins again in 2002 because of a probable downturn in Arizona's offense.
  2. He led the league in HR, so his ERA could rise if his OOBP ever slips.
  3. He's 35, but appears to be aging nicely like his fellow ace and World Series MVP.
  4. While he's only broken 190 strikeouts three times in his career, he struck out over 290 batters in those other three years. Expect another season of close to 300.
  5. While he appears recovered from past injuries, he could hit the DL quickly, so monitor his pitch counts for overuse.

2/5 points for Schilling. They touch on #1 and #3.

4. Jason Schmidt, Starting Pitcher, San Francisco Giants:
  1. He has $20+ potential when healthy.
  2. He appears to be both healthy and secure after signing a long-term deal with the Giants.
  3. He struck out almost a batter per inning last season.
  4. He's never finished the year with an ERA under 4.07, which he's reached twice.
  5. The Giants have a deep and talented bullpen, so he won't need to pitch deep into games.

1/5 points for Schmidt. A small reference to his re-signing is all that earns them any credit.

5. Ugueth Urbina, Closer, Boston Red Sox:
  1. He appears fully recovered from his arm troubles.
  2. Posted a 2.25 ERA and a 32:3 K:BB after his trade to Boston.
  3. The Red Sox want Lowe to start, eliminating his primary competition.
  4. He'll be a free agent after this season, so the Red Sox are open to trading him under the right circumstances.
  5. He can dominate when healthy, and the Red Sox have a good team surrounding him.

4/5 points for Urbina. They cover everything but #4.

3/5 points for editing.
I'm really starting to get irritated with not listing the teams by division. They also don't provide any kind of printed tabs on the edge of pages to quickly find teams, so I'm taking off another point for making me work too hard.

Comprehensive editing is a not a strong point of the magazine, so I'm not really surprised at errors like acquiring someone from a specific team instead of the correct signing him as a free agent, and "It signed minor league free agent…" when "it" didn't sign anybody.

7/10 points for the accompanying website.
The TSN site has undergone the most extensive improvements of any major media website over the last year or two, and they even have the frequently-updated daily player notes that even ESPN fails to deliver in comparison to Rotoworld, Rotowire, or Rototimes. However, I'm going to knock them another two points for running their articles on Yahoo or in the magazine first, and the lose one more point for running the two Hall-of-Fame articles both in the magazine and on-line over a month and a half ago.

0/5 points for creativity and innovation.
There's nothing particularly special or interesting about this magazine; its just a well-presented publication for easy team-by-team reference.

Overall ranking: 46/100 points.
We all know this isn't a fantasy preview in any way, but its still a very useful team preview yearbook. They easily secure third place in our rankings so far behind the companion fantasy guide and Rotowire. For $6.99, you receive a useful magazine, although we find better value in maintaining our TSN weekly subscription. We lose the handy team-by-team reference, but since we normally buy Athlon anyway, that's not a major concern.

Speaking of Athlon, we'll begin tomorrow with that review before hopefully heading on to the other two magazines we picked up yesterday.

Today's Fantasy Rx: Don't be too upset if you own someone with an early Spring Training injury. There's still six weeks left until the season begins, and you should only worry if your player is still in trouble when freeze lists are due. Most leagues won't require your list for at least another three weeks, so relax and enjoy all the position battle reports.