I've been browsing amazon.com for stuff I can blow a gift certificate on, and I decided to check out Baseball Prospectus 2006, which comes quite lauded by many prominent baseball people, which most us would recognize. Most say that the knowledge in the book should be common knowledge for people who want to be able to understand the game fully, and others, well, others betray their lack of competence with what they have to say.

Here are the quotes that amazon.com has for Baseball Prospectus 2006:

“Baseball Prospectus is one of the first things I read every day.”—Theo Epstein, Boston Red Sox General Manager

I.e., I rely on this information to do my job, and do it well.

“Baseball Prospectus has become the standard by which all scouting guides should be measured.”—Billy Beane, Oakland Athletics General Manager

Read this: I have judged a few scouting guides and informational articles, and this is the best one I've seen.

And the outsiders who know:
“If a general manager hasn’t read Baseball Prospectus, he should be fired for incompetence.”—Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball

Paraphrased, If you don't know how to use this information, then you aren't fit for your baseball job.

“The best book of its kind.”—Rob Neyer, ESPN.com

Generic quote.

“I never cease to be blown away by the geniuses at Baseball Prospectus.” — Jayson Stark, ESPN

Holler at your boy. Nice one Jayson. Basically, he says, I don't know if I understand much if it, but they seem smart. Go team!!

I don't think that this is too surprising, and I might be going too hard on the guy, but he hasn't much of a track record of illustrating interesting baseball information, at least, not in the moneyball vein to which we are accustomed. Anyway, take that for what it's worth... probably nothing. Here's a poll that won't tell us anything about anything.