Baseball Prospectus

If you're a baseball fan, you have to buy this book. About 15 statheads, you know, the types you might not have known in college or, if you knew who they were, you might not have hung out with them because, well, they were a whole lot smarter than you, combine to write a great analysis of Major League Baseball and tons of players. Their stats are great, and they pull no punches with their commentary. I read some pieces aloud during my Fantasy Draft (the 19th year of the league and the 19th year in a row where everyone has sat in the same place in the same room), and we all howled.

If you're from the Joe Morgan school of "manufacturing runs", boning bats and sleeping with your glove under your pillow, you might not buy into their way of thinking. But their way of thinking is pretty much "spot on" as those across the pound in the U.K. might say in their dialect of English. So check out what PECOTA, VORP and WXRL mean and then enjoy it.