2014 Baseball Forecaster: An Encyclopedia of Fanalytics

The industry's longest-running publication for baseball analysts and fantasy leaguers, the 2014 Baseball Forecaster, published annually since 1986, is the first book to approach prognostication by breaking performance down into its component parts. Rather than predicting batting average, for instance, this resource looks at the elements of skill that make up any given batter’s ability to distinguish between balls and strikes, his propensity to make contact with the ball, and what happens when he makes contact—reverse engineering those skills back into batting average. The result is an unparalleled forecast of baseball abilities and trends for the upcoming season and beyond.

Ron Shandler was the first baseball analyst to develop sabermetric applications for fantasy league play. His website, www.BaseballHQ.com, won the Best Fantasy Baseball Online Content Award from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association in 2000, 2003, and 2004. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association in 2005. He lives in Roanoke, Virginia. Ray Murphy is the managing director of www.BaseballHQ.com. He lives in Boston. Brent Hershey is the managing editor of www.BaseballHQ.com. He was honored in 2009 by the Fantasy Sports Writer Association for the Best Fantasy Baseball Article in a Print Publication. He lives in Philadelphia. Brandon Kruse has contributed to BaseballHQ.com since 2005, is a Twins fan pinning his hopes on the futures of Buxton and Sano, and lives in the Minneapolis area with his wife and two kids.