Rotisserie League Baseball: Official Rulebook and A to Z Scouting Guide (Rotisserie League Baseball: Official Handbook & A to Z Scouting Guide)

Alas, someone must have approached the authors and told them that the book needed to be more serious in light of previously said sources. The result is a bland concoction of stale statistics and rookie projections. Given the fact that a book needs more time to publish than does a magazine, it is rendered irrelevant.

Said to say, I believe I've purchased my last edition of Rotisserie League Baseball.


Book is a good start to the 2003 season   January 5, 2003
 2 out of 4 found this review helpful

If you grab this book expecting to get the latest news on player movement, position battles, and up-to-date player values, you will be disappointed. If you are a person who thinks you know it all about rotisserie baseball strategy, you, too, will be disappointed as this book spends a great deal of time talking strategy for off-season, draft day, and in-season. I personally enjoyed the read on strategy and am constantly reminded of areas I must stay focussed upon. The player profiles are thin and the player dollar values can be debated, but this book is written in the 4th quarter of 2002. We are a long way from Spring Training, so I use this as a starting point in the 2003 season and will use my favorite web-sites and projections for draft preparations. I do recommend this book for the average rotisserie baseball player, as its strategy discussions are valuable, and its player discussions are a good start. For the fanatic, don't buy this book and get disappointed. Instead, look to Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster 2003 Annual or Baseball Prospectus for all the analytical player information you can shake a bat at.


They listened to the critics   December 27, 2002
 0 out of 1 found this review helpful

They listened to the critics. The 2003 version of this Baseball annual dedicates more then half the book to detailed analysis on every players, and more in depth review on prospects then they had in the past 2 years. Much less space is wasted on jokes and theory, and much more space is used to provide in depth reviews of every player. If you are looking for a good place to get started for your 2003 roto season, buy the book.


Don't be deceived   March 8, 2002
 5 out of 6 found this review helpful

Don't be deceived. This is not the Benson's A TO Z GUIDE of years past, which featured thousands of players (including virtually all minor leaguers with a shot at the majors), along with detailed scouting reports and statistics. Instead, this previously indispensable Roto-resource has been restructured and merged with Glen Waggoner's Roto rulebook. To make room, hundreds of players have been cut and the information pared back. Now, it features only major leaguers and high profile prospects with much briefer scouting reports.

If you'd like to see this book published in the old format next year, make sure you complain to John Benson and Diamond Library Publishers as I have .... In the meantime, you can try Ron Shandler's BASEBALL FORECASTER 2002 ANNUAL REVIEW, or John Sickle's STATS MINOR LEAGUE SCOUTING NOTEBOOK 2002 if you want something that focuses on prospects only. Shandler's analytical tools have probably surpassed those used by Benson's people anyway. Benson seems to be treading water while Shandler's projections and strategy recommendations have been growing more sophisticated.


Benson hits rock bottom   January 23, 2002
 10 out of 10 found this review helpful

Hard to believe John Benson is the man who once revolutionized a parlor game into a pseudo-science. But he's been phoning it in for years, not even bothering to make minor improvements (like an index) in his player ratings, or including a list of games played by position. Oh, those ratings. He adds a line each year, and the comments have all the precision of the magic-eight ball "if he stays healthy, could be poised for a break out year" and the like. This latest edition of the once useful A-Z guide, combined with the remnants of the classic Glenn Waggoner book, has fewer player comments, fewer useful sections, than any book Benson's ever put out. (Fans of the waggish Waggoner commentary will find it 100% gone -- there's nothing left, nothing, other than a rehash of the rules.)

I do not come to praise JB, I come to bury him. I bought his books for many years out of loyalty to his original insights and methods, even tried his useless web service one year, but this is utterly the last time I will give him money.