(Don't) Steal This Book

Our good friends at The Hardball Times have released the conveniently named "2008 Hardball Times Season Preview." It is, as you can probably surmise, since you're the smartest blog readers this side of the Potomac, a collection of all sorts of good information about players and teams with an eye to the upcoming season.

Each team, including our beloved and bedeviling Nats, has an essay with a quick overview of the comings and goings, trends, and reasons to be optimistic (and pessimistic!) about the coming season. It has projections for bazillions of players and little nuggets of goodness about your favorite players... and Mike Bacsik.

The good people at THT (despite their better judgment) asked me to contribute this year, and I rambled on for 15,000 words or so about our favorite team and its star and non-star players... and Mike Bacsik. I even came up with some original things to say that you haven't heard me say over and over and over (such as, "Mike Bacsik stinks").

There's more information about the book here, including how to order it, and information about a few of the other essays the book has. THT also has an article on some of the more interesting things gleaned from the book. And finally, there's a link to some excerpts from the chapter on the hated Red Sox. Booooo!

Check it out, and support the work of a site I use regularly, one that gives us all kinds of statsy goodness so that I can fact check mailbag questions or prove Boz wrong!