It’s a fairly well-kept secret that the author more or less in charge of the best baseball annual in the nation works here in Chicago.
“We had put in the investment in time,” Kahrl says, “and we said, ‘Why don’t we go ahead and do a book?’” They published it themselves, “basically done at Kinko’s, and we sold 500 copies.” From that start, however, they found a publisher (now it’s Brassey’s) and developed a solid reputation. After clearing “a little bit of money, but not more than enough to buy a pizza per guy” last spring, they expect to make a reasonable if still unspectacular profit this year.
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“It was fun because we’d never actually met,” Kahrl says. “None of us knew each other. We only knew each other from the content of our ideas. It was the only criterion in determining who got in and who was going to be a Baseball Prospectus writer. So we started out with 5 guys and now it’s grown into 11 guys and it’s probably going to keep going from there.”
What’s refreshing about this year’s BP is the way the writers gladly eat crow when wrong. Last year BP forecast a major decline for Andres Galarraga as he went from hitter-friendly Coors Field and the Colorado Rockies to more pitcher-friendly Turner Field and the Atlanta Braves. Instead he had one of his best seasons. “OK, we blew it,” begins the new Galarraga entry, which goes on to philosophize, “That’s why baseball is such a great game: even the greatest truths can be wrong from time to time.” Last year Kahrl decried both Sosa and the Milwaukee Brewers’ Fernando Vina as overrated because of their inability to draw walks. But both came to spring training determined to work on that shortcoming, and both became all-stars.
“Again, it’s a relative thing in terms of workload. You go back to ’71 or ’72 and Vida Blue is a 21-year-old throwing 312 innings–and he’s screwed up for a good time after that. Riggleman did not screw up. By the standards within baseball, Jim Riggleman was exceptionally cautious and did an extremely good job.” What’s an acceptable workload for a young pitcher? That’s a subject BP is still working on.
