Scouting Books

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.

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.

There is a voluminous amount of sources for information on fantasy league baseball available to fans, especially with the advent of the Internet. What used to set Rotisserie League Baseball apart from the rest was the irreverent, witty bios on the players. It was the closest thing to laugh-out-loud literature one could find on the National Pastime.

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.

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.

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.

The bottom line on this book is that it's Tom Lemming's story, that is, it isn't as much about college football recruiting as it is about Lemming. Through it he describes who he is and how he came to be in college recruiting.

Lemming felt that he needed to set the record straight about himself, and what he does that's different than [...] - the other big-name recruiting services.

It's interesting in that Lemming has a decent story about himself to tell, but you shouldn't read this book believing that you're going to learn about player evaluations, how to find a good college athlete or any of that.

It might be helpful if you are a recruit, a coach, or the parent of a recruit as Lemming does provides tips about what to do (and what not to do).

I am bit shocked that any serious journalist could be ignorant enough to write a book with Lemming. Lemming has been a joke in the recruiting world for about a decade now. That is when it started becoming apparent that Lemming has no ability to evaluate talent (he gets his evaluations from others for the most part) and he is unethical to say the least. He has no background in college admissions or administration yet he thinks giving advice to high school kids on admissions and academics is right up his alley of expertise. Choosing a college for a high school student is one of the major life decisions. Throw in football etc. and it can get complicated and confusing. Any worthwhile advisor would tell a student to find a good fit and to try and envision if they would feel comfortable away from home for 4 or 5 years. It has come out over and over through the years that Lemming has tried to push kids to one school over another and he uses skewed, fraudulent information to do so. Notre Dame isn't for every kid, Tom.

Oh and I find it comical that anyone would try to convince you that driving across the country every year interviewing players and coaches helps you to evaluate prep talent. If that technique worked I think college coaches may have tried it. Instead they watch film, lots of it for many long hours. Most of the players they offer scholarships to have yet to see the coaches in person and the ones that do usually attended a football camp where they could display their athletic ability.

That's okay Tom, enjoy that cuppa joe with those high school coaches! Amazing evaluation!

In closing, know that I am a college administrator with past experience in scouting high school players for a major BCS school. One national title ring in my safety deposit box.

A neat account of Lemming's life on the road prospecting players... but I was let down with the lack of detail on the evaluation methodologies themselves. Perhaps that's his secret sauce, and I respect that, but I hoped to come away with more of an ability to myself recognize or at least describe, the critical talents of players at each position on the gridiron.

If you believe everything in baseball can be reduced to a statistic, this isn't the book for you. If, however, you're interested in true scouting reports about players' strengths and weaknesses, this book is a must. It's the first source I go to when my team makes a player acquisition, and most of the time the scouting report is quite accurate. I've been reading the annual editions of the Scounting Notebook for years, and it's the first - and often only - major league baseball book I buy each season(there also is a Minor League Scouting Notebook for those of us who follow the minors closely). The only improvement I would make is to increase the number of in-depth scouting reports included.

Does not supply the type of information that any serious fan wants. Almost like reading the back of a baseball card. The
authors do not reach for the type of info the serious seamhead wants. Typical comments such as "has a good glove" abound. Don't
waste your time.

I thought this was going to be up to date and have the kind of detailed scouting insights one does not normally hear or interesting projections. Instead, it was woefully behind the times: the section on the Red Sox had at least seven players who have not been on the team for half a year. And the analysis of each player was very thin: the sort of stuff any serious fan already knows and not even as informative as you can get for free on espn.com.

A to Z Thumbnail Sketches of all MLB players is a more appropriate title. This book falls well short of the other John Benson books and frankly I'm surprised he has his name on it. The comments written regarding each player could have easily come from a casual observer and surely there were no scouts involved in the making of this book. Its great for the beginner fan just getting involved but most of the bios and forecast seem like something right out of the team's annual player guide. A far better guide of all players is Sheehan's annual Baseball Prospectus and sells for less. It's published about a month later than Benson's book and includes comments regarding most of the off season trades and free agent signings. For the advanced fan my advice is wait for Sheehan's book.

This book has promise: bios on a wide variety of players, from the Majors to even a few guys in college or indy ball. But, the assessments occasionally contain inaccuracies or outdated information that makes this book a secondary source, at best. The Baseball Prospectus offers a better (albeit more sabremetrically oriented - which isn't everyone's cup of tea) look at a player's talent level - the STATS books are better at describing their tools. Still, worthwhile if you buy multiple books of this nature per year (as I do).

Not many people can get more complete, concise, and detailed scouting reports than those contained in this book. Every year, this relates (almost) all useable info about every player who's got a chance to play in the big leagues, plus big prospects still in the works. Any baseball fan would like this.

The scouting reports for all the players can be found on ESPN.com for free. Don't waste your money on this.

This still is a good source of information about the skills set of nearly every player who appeared in an ML uniform last season, in articles ranging from a full page to a paragraph in length. (Key players get longer articles, platoon types, middle relievers, and back-of-the-rotation starters get shorter articles, and roster fillers get the paragraphs.) Each team's top five to ten prospects also get a few words.

The formula has changed for the worse this year, however, in that the "Stars, Bums, and Sleepers" and Top 50 Prospects lists are gone. In the former, STATS rated players, by position, as up-and-coming, steady, and due-for-a-fall, which might be of value to someone drafting a rotisserie baseball team. In the latter, Baseball America's Jim Callis put together a nice ranking of farm players that always was a bit contrarian compared to some of the other sources most often used by fantasy baseball players. Without those sections, the scouting material just doesn't offer enough, by itself, to justify its hefty price, as some of the annuals appearing at newsstands each spring cover the same waterfront , if not quite in the same depth.

I wove this book and my parents are so happy that this is the way I found out tat Swanta Cwaus was weal.

What a shock to be listening to my second grader read this book aloud and realize the author is going to have one of her characters inform another character that Santa Claus is not real. Luckily I was able to distract her, get the book away from her and get it returned to the library. I would have much preferred to throw it in the trash to save other families from having their very young children find out from a book that Santa is not real.

If this is how you'd like your child to find out there is no such thing as Santa Claus, if you'd like to teach your child that it is ok to laugh at other kids for what they believe in, if referring to other kids as "dumb" or "stupid" is how you'd like them to treat people, then this book is for you. For me, I was appalled at the escalating references to there not being a Santa Claus. I was hoping as the book progressed that tone would change but it didn't. After reading a couple of chapters with my daughter I fast forworded to the end for the shocking conclusion. Needless to say, the book disappeared from her bookshelf without being finished. Shame on Judy Delton and the publisher. Now I have an eight year old daughter questioning Christmas and Santa Clause. A children's Christmas book should not be the way your child finds out there is no Santa Claus. This book should have been titled a "Pee Wee Christmas Dream Killer." At least we'd have some forwarning.

I am definitly not a fan of the PEE WEE SCOUTS series. I would bet that the author doesn't have children. These books are full of mean thoughts and actions that I certainly don't want my children exposed to. In Pee Wee Scouts Peanut Butter Pilgrims, all a character (Sonny) needs to do to take a live turkey home from the Turkey farm is to throw a temper tantrum until his mother gives in. In this particular book, children are told that there is not Santa Claus and made fun of if they DO believe in Santa Claus. THIS IS A 3rd GRADE READING LEVEL BOOK! What in the world was Judy Delton thinking when she wrote this? What was the publisher thinking when they published it? Horribly, this was a required reading for my 3rd grader. THANKFULLY, I was there reading with her and able to edit out the unveiling of the "truth". I would NEVER EVER reccommend Judy Delton's books to ANYONE, EVER!

This book is HORRIBLE. It very plainly states that "there isn't any real santa claus. Your mom gives you the things on your list". The author also has kids making fun of another child who still believes in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. The children in the book are seven, the same age as my daughter. I just can't believe that a book my first grader can read would flat out say there is no Santa Claus. Stay away from this book if you want your child to still believe in any childhood magic!

I bought this book at the time our son became a Recon Marine. I was thrilled to get it as I was ready to learn about his new job. Well, I had a good laugh - it reminded me of the Little Golden Books I had as a child - the only thing it might be good for was to read to a very small child of a Recon Marine to help them be proud of their Daddy, and to add to their library. For anyone wanting real information - the fact that I laughed when I opened it says it all.

An exellent book for the real military enthusiast. The book shows what the roll of Force Recon is in todays CORPS and what its future missons will be. There are tons of photos of weapons and equipment to use as reference.

This book is possibly the worst I have ever read. It is written at about a fourth grade level and takes a whole 5 minutes to read cover to cover. I got more info on Marine Force Recon surfing the net then I did by reading this book. Do not buy this book unless your 9-year-old child is interested in becoming a Recon Marine.

This book is a rip off with no more then maybe 50 pages it isnt worth 16bucks! The pics are great but still not enought! dONT BUY IT!

This book is really terrible. You'll get less than 50 pages of nothing for your 23 dollars. The writing level is so low that one might ask if it went through any editing process. My advice is to avoid this book at any cost. I gave it a "1" star for the rating only because I didn't have any choice to give it an even lower rating.

This book is not a very good bokk but it is ok. Basically what happens is Ned gets lost and the scout cubs find him when he really wasn't lost at all. He just went to the haunted housse and waited for thre scouts to get there.

This is apparently a photo copy of the original that is bound as a book. The copy is not enhanced so it looks like someone used a library copier and bound the results. It appears the original was in a 5 by 7 format and thus the copy has 2 to 3 inch margins. A good book produced in an inappropriate format.

When I used to go to hockey practices, this was one of my best friends. I used to study it like many other autograph hounds I knew, so as to avoid the embarrassment of not knowing who someone was! It was a great tool to have. Every year, Ross puts a revised edition out. The last two years I didn't buy it, but this year decided I should.

To my utter dismay, she still has pictures from 1995 and even earlier! The stats, etc are alright, but the book is worthless. I could just go by my 1995 book! I really wish Ross would get some new pictures in here. That's what most people I know use it for! Until she does, I really don't see the value of buying another "updated" copy. Very poor.