Baseball Prospectus 2008 is now shipping, so it’s time to order your copy in plenty of time for the beginning of the MLB season. In terms of improving your understanding of baseball, it’s the best $14 you can spend.

Given the direction of the Stros over the past two seasons, I was prepared for the BP experts to trash the local club’s chances for this season. But it’s really not all that bad. BP even kind of likes new Stros General Manager Ed Wade’s "win-now strategy," which they characterize as "so crazy that it just might work" in the chronically mediocre National League Central Division.

But even though BP doesn’t trash the Stros too badly, the same can’t be said BP’s treatment of Stros owner, Drayton McLane. Most of BP’s overview of the Stros is critical of McLane, such as the following on McLane’s revolving door policy with regard to General Managers and Managers:

This front-office turnover has contributed to a fundamental disconnect between the aspiration to contend and what appears to be the preferred means of doing so. Rather than focus on how to contend through improving the personnel in the lineup, the Astros have instead operated for years on the assumption that certain players were building blocks because they liked them, not because of what they actually contributed on the field. When the players in question are Biggio and Jeff Bagwell in their primes, that’s fine; when they are Ausmus, Everett, or a completely cooked Biggio, the term "building block" is robbed of its meaning.

Given this mentality, it was really no surprise that the Astros turned 2007 into a supersized Viking funeral for legitimate franchise great Biggio, complete with a team-level self-immolation, and with little but the ashes left to show for it at the end.  .   .

I really can’t recommend Baseball Prospectus 2008 too highly. For serious students of baseball, it’s 600 pages of pure reading pleasure.