Good baseball books

[Big Mikey]

I just bought Baseball Prospectus 2009 and Baseball America Prospect Handbook. I want to try and be more of anexpert about players. Something that I am also interested in though is a book about why players are good. Like sure I know having a good fastball will help you be good but I'd like to be able to watch some baseball and be like "yeah he is a great baseball player" and then proceed to tell the person exactly why I know that. Not that I am teaching a class or anything but I'm just intersted in that sort of thing. I hope you get what I mean. Any books suggested I will take a look at buying even if it doenst have to do with what I'm particulary asking for. I saw a baseball enciclipedia while I was at Chapters and I wasn't sure if that would be much use or not since you can always get stats off the net, could you help explain the usefulness of that as well.

Well thats all for this long whinded post, any help is greatly apreciated.

[HoustonGM]

The Hardball Times Annual is another good one.

I think you'd get more of what you want online, actually. FanGraphs and The Hardball Times are two fantastic, free sites. Baseball Prospectus's site is another good one, but mostly subscriber-only. It's 35 bucks for a year, which, in my opinion, is well worth it. You get the 3+ daily articles, access to fantasy baseball tools like the Player Forecast Manager, access to all the PECOTA cards (which have every blurb for each player that's been written in the yearly books), and more.

[KowboyKoop]

Baseball Prospectus is by far the best site there is, IMO. The subscription is well worth it, I'd pay more.