The 2024 Prospect Handbook is your guide to the next wave of MLB stars The 2024 Prospect Handbook is your guide to the next wave of MLB stars. With complete scouting reports on more than 900 prospects, the Prospect Handbook is a must-have for superfans as well as fantasy players. Dominate your dynasty league and be the first to know about the stars of the 2020s and early 2030s.
The 2025 Prospect Handbook is your guide to the next wave of MLB stars The 2025 Prospect Handbook is your guide to the next wave of MLB stars. With complete scouting reports on more than 900 prospects, the Prospect Handbook is a must-have for superfans as well as fantasy players. Dominate your dynasty league and be the first to know about the stars of the 2020s and early 2030s.
The 2023 Prospect Handbook is your guide to the next wave of MLB stars The 2023 Prospect Handbook is your guide to the next wave of MLB stars. With complete scouting reports on more than 900 prospects, the Prospect Handbook is a must-have for superfans as well as fantasy players. Dominate your dynasty league and be the first to know about the stars of the 2020s and early 2030s.
The remarkable story of the 2019 World Series champion Washington Nationals told by the Washington Post writer who followed the team most closely. By May 2019, the Washington Nationals—owners of baseball’s oldest roster—had one of the worst records in the majors and just a 1.5 percent chance of winning the World Series. Yet by blending an old-school brand of baseball with modern analytics, they managed to sneak into the playoffs and put together the most unlikely postseason run in baseball history. Not only did they beat the Houston Astros, the team with the best regular-season record, to claim the franchise’s first championship—they won all four games in Houston, making them the first club to ever win four road games in a World Series. “You have a great year, and you can run into a buzz saw,” Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg told Washington Post beat writer Jesse Dougherty after the team advanced to the World Series. “Maybe this year we’re the buzz saw.” Dougherty followed the Nationals more closely than any other writer in America, and in Buzz Saw he recounts the dramatic year in vivid detail, taking readers inside the dugout, the clubhouse, the front office, and ultimately the championship parade. Yet he does something more than provide a riveting retelling of the season: he makes the case that while there is indisputable value to Moneyball-style metrics, baseball isn’t just a numbers game. Intangibles like team chemistry, veteran experience, and childlike joy are equally essential to winning. Certainly, no team seemed to have more fun than the Nationals, who adopted the kids’ song “Baby Shark” as their anthem and regularly broke into dugout dance parties. Buzz Saw is just as lively and rollicking—a fitting tribute to one of the most exciting, inspiring teams to ever take the field.
Former Major League pitcher and mental skills coach for two of baseball's legendary franchises (the Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants) Bob Tewksbury takes fans inside the psychology of baseball. In Ninety Percent Mental, Bob Tewksbury shows readers a side of the game only he can provide, given his singular background as both a longtime MLB pitcher and a mental skills coach for two of the sport's most fabled franchises, the Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants. Fans watching the game on television or even at the stadium don't have access to the mind games a pitcher must play in order to get through an at-bat, an inning, a game. Tewksbury explores the fascinating psychology behind baseball, such as how players use techniques of imagery, self-awareness, and strategic thinking to maximize performance, and how a pitcher's strategy changes throughout a game. He also offers an in-depth look into some of baseball's most monumental moments and intimate anecdotes from a "who's who" of the game, including legendary players who Tewksbury played with and against (such as Mark McGwire, Craig Biggio, and Greg Maddux), game-changing managers and executives (Joe Torre, Bruce Bochy, Brian Sabean), and current star players (Jon Lester, Anthony Rizzo, Andrew Miller, Rich Hill). With Tewksbury's esoteric knowledge as a thinking-fan's player and his expertise as a "baseball whisperer", this entertaining book is perfect for any fan who wants to see the game in a way he or she has never seen it before. Ninety Percent Mental will deliver an unprecedented look at the mound games and mind games of Major League Baseball.
An unprecedented look inside the world of baseball scouting and evaluation from two of the industry's top prospect analysts For the modern Major League team, player evaluation is a complex, multi-pronged, high-tech pursuit. But far from becoming obsolete in this environment—as Michael Lewis' Moneyball once forecast—the role of the scout in today's game has evolved and even expanded. Rather than being the antithesis of a data-driven approach, scouting now represents an essential analytical component in a team's arsenal. Future Value is a thorough dive into baseball's changing world of talent acquisition and development, a world with its own language, methods, metrics, and madness. From rural high schools to elite amateur showcases, from the back fields of spring training to major league draft rooms, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel break down the key systems and techniques used to assess talent. It's a process that has moved beyond the quintessential stopwatches and radar guns to include statistical models, countless measurable indicators, and a broader international reach. ?Practical and probing, discussing wide-ranging topics from tool grades to front office politics, this is an illuminating exploration of how to watch baseball and see the future.
Colorful, shaggy, and unkempt, misfits and outlaws, the 1993 Phillies played hard and partied hard. Led by Darren Daulton, John Kruk, Lenny Dykstra, and Mitch Williams, it was a team the fans loved and continue to love today. Focusing on six key members of the team, Macho Row follows the remarkable season with an up-close look at the players’ lives, the team’s triumphs and failures, and what made this group so unique and so successful. With a throwback mentality, the team adhered to baseball’s Code. Designed to preserve the moral fabric of the game, the Code’s unwritten rules formed the bedrock of this diehard team whose players paid homage and respect to the game at all times. Trusting one another and avoiding any notions of superstardom, they consistently rubbed the opposition the wrong way and didn’t care. William C. Kashatus pulls back the covers on this old-school band of brothers, depicting the highs and lows and their brash style while also digging into the suspected steroid use of players on the team. Macho Row is a story of winning and losing, success and failure, and the emotional highs and lows that accompany them.
LA TIMES BESTSELLER • From the award-winning screenwriter and director of cult classic Bull Durham, the extremely entertaining behind-the-scenes story of the making of the film, and an insightful primer on the art and business of moviemaking. "This book tells you how to make a movie—the whole nine innings of it—out of nothing but sheer will.” —Tony Gilroy, writer/director of Michael Clayton and The Bourne Legacy "The only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the church of baseball."—Annie in Bull Durham Bull Durham, the breakthrough 1988 film about a minor league baseball team, is widely revered as the best sports movie of all time. But back in 1987, Ron Shelton was a first-time director and no one was willing to finance a movie about baseball—especially a story set in the minors. The jury was still out on Kevin Costner’s leading-man potential, while Susan Sarandon was already a has-been. There were doubts. But something miraculous happened, and The Church of Baseball attempts to capture why. From organizing a baseball camp for the actors and rewriting key scenes while on set, to dealing with a short production schedule and overcoming the challenge of filming the sport, Shelton brings to life the making of this beloved American movie. Shelton explains the rarely revealed ins and outs of moviemaking, from a film’s inception and financing, screenwriting, casting, the nuts and bolts of directing, the postproduction process, and even through its release. But this is also a book about baseball and its singular romance in the world of sports. Shelton spent six years in the minor leagues before making this film, and his experiences resonate throughout this book. Full of wry humor and insight, The Church of Baseball tells the remarkable story behind an iconic film.
In 1980, Durham, N.C., was a downtrodden city without baseball or much identity at all beyond the tobacco industry, which was slowly fading away. Enter the Durham Bulls, who debuted to instant success that year and led to an era of rebirth for the city. This is the story of the 1980 Durham Bulls, told by the beat writer who followed them from spring training through the dog days of August, and how they gave rise to successes that none of them could have envisioned. Just as covering the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s proved to be “The Boys of Summer” for author Roger Kahn, the 1980 Durham Bulls provided Ron Morris with a story to cover that has endured over the next three decades. While many baseball fans think the success of the movie "Bull Durham" led to the rise of the Durham Bulls, in fact the opposite is true. The Bulls were a hit from the first time they opened the gates in 1980, and their sustained success led to the rebirth of Durham, N.C., as a city, to the renaissance of minor league baseball as a viable industry, and even the rise of Baseball America as the recognized leader in baseball media. In "No Bull," Morris follows the 1980 Durham Bulls through their inaugural season, using that narrative thread to explore all the ripples that the team caused in the city and beyond. Morris was the reporter who covered the team for the Durham Herald-Sun that season, and now he has gone back and interviewed the former players and coaches, as well as residents of Durham, to examine the team's impact on the city.
