I am going to start off my review by sharing a statement that is made on the back cover of the handbook:

WHY PROSPECTS MATTER: In the 2011 Propsect Handbook, we detailed the depth of the Royal's top-ranked farm system, which we also featured on the cover of the March 2011 issue of Baseball America magazine. No team had placed nine players in Baseball America's Top 100 Propects, and the group -- both as big leaguers and through trades -- helped from the core of the Royals' 2014 American League pennant winners and 2015 World Series champions. --- Turning a losing franchise into a winner -- that's why prospects matter.

As we stand today in early May (2016) when I am writing this review, another team which followed this same strategy, the Chicago Cubs has the best record in all of major league baseball - so this is why any strat manager in any league that will allow you to draft these young players should pay attention. Either you have a chance to get one or more of these young players before they receive their SOM card or to recognize which of these young players who do have a card but only saw a limited action at the end of a baseball season, could be the stars of tomorrow. I use to never pay attention to get young prospects on my league teams, but after 9 years of being a playoff contender, our older players either were getting injured in real life or just not performing so we had no choice but had to rebuild and pay attention to these future stars. So Youth is definitely the key for us now and should be included in any strategy to build a winning team in your league.

Let's take a look at how this handbook is organized and what information it has to offer ....

The key to this handbook is that Baseball America ranks the top 30 prospects for each MLB team.  Not only do they rank them from 1 to 30, but they also give each prospect a Grade from 40 to 75-80, where 75-80 is a franchise player (like Kershaw, Posey, Trout) down to 40 which is a reserve, swingman or a relief specialist.  They also offer a risk factor for each prospect that  speaks to the prospect's ability to make the major or if they are a high risk due to being injury prone or they might not have good enough skills to see the majors. This rating goes from Safe to extreme, where Safe is a player who will most likely will make the team in 2016 and can make a strong contribution and whereas, Extreme is for a prospect who will struggle or have health problems. For the 2016 Prospects the highest grade given was "70" which players like Corey Seager, Buxton, Gallo, Moncada and Urias were such prospects who I saw received this ranking.

At the beginning of the handbook, four Basball American editors give their top 50 Prospect list (including Matt Eddy); next, the 30 MLB baseball teams are ranked from 1 to 30 about which team had the strongest farm systems with the Dodgers (#1), Houston (#2), Atlanta (#3) and Boston (#4) listed as the top four.  Then the remainder of the book is pretty much team by team (alphabetically) an overview of each MLB's franchise situation with a listing of their top 30 prospects shown in order.

Now turning to the pages of information offered for each team. Various writers gave a high level review of the status of each MLB team as related to their farm systems. Then, there is a list from 2006-2015 of the #1 top prospect they had each year.  Baseball America also shared a list of all the minor league franchises each MLB team has. Before you meet the top prospects, there is a summarized listing of who were the top 30 Prospects for 2016 and 2015.

Next, is a summary of which of the current prospects excel at various tools such as batting average, fielding, speed, defense, pitching and throwing arms.  And finally in this section there is a projection what the 2019 lineup will be like for that major league team so you can see which prospects are expected to be starters within 3 years.

The next page is called the Minor League Depth page and besides breaking down the top 30 prospects into their individual playing positions, this page projects three key prospects for 2016 by: a) who will be the top player to make the biggest impact in the majors; b) which prospect could have a breakout season in the minors that would bring him into the majors and c) which prospect might be a sleeper.  This page also shows how many prospects were home grown (brought up via this MLB team's farm system) and how many prospects were acquired via trades.

The following team page is called a "Draft Analysis Page" which discusses the top prospects who appeared in 2015, gives a quick summary of the key prospects from 2012-2014, talks about the Top Draft Picks (college players) selected by this MLB Team from 2006-2015 and which draft picks received the largest bonuses in the club's history.

Above is an example of what information is shared about each prospect of each
major league team. Here we see the Yankees #2 ranked prospect for 2016 as he is
evaluated by Baseball American.  We see the BA Grade and Risk Factor, as well as
the stats of Gary Sanchez for the last three years.  The guide lets you know who
are the top prospects to pay attention to and who you might wish to acquire.

The rest of this section for each Major League Team then introduces who are considered by BA the top 30 prospects. As shown above, each prospect has a very detailed analysis of the prospects capabilities along with their Baseball America Grade and Risk Factor rating. The final information shows their performance (as a hitter or pitcher) for the past 3 seasons including if they played in the Majors as well as the Minors. The #1 prospect of each prospect gets a full page analysis while the rest of the prospects see about 1/3 of a page.  Also the #1 prospect of the team is the only player to receive Scouting Grades as a Pitcher or Batter.

In the back of the book is some extra information as appendixes. The first appendix discusses a few of the international players who might switch to MLB (for example Kenta Maeda was included) which includes their BA Grade and Risk Factor with a player analysis. 

The next appendix is called "Signing Bonuses" and shows the college players drafted in the first 3 rounds from 2013 - 2015 and what their signing bonus was.  The next section shows the top 100 college prospects who are projected to be drafted by the MLB teams in 2016 and a second list has the top 100 high school prospects who are projected to be drafted as well (meaning they would go into professional baseball and not go to college).

So what do I think about this handbook?  Wow, I think it has every detail one could imagine on almost every conceivable young player who could eventually find his (or her?) way into the major leagues. The only area which is weak in my opinion, and this is not really because these are young players, is linked to all the international players who are now coming into Major League Baseball each year. But these players are only being sought out because they are veteran players who have proven themselves in these other leagues.

I think the advantage of having this handbook is that it places into one place, the key information you need to determine which are the best prospects out there that could help your team.  Sometimes it is not about picking the top 5 or 10 ranked prospects, but to get a prospect who will fill a whole on your team and be a solid player for the future. 

For one of the leagues that I recently joined which was built so our minor league players are a key element to building our teams, I went on-line and copied thousands and thousands of young players from various on-line sources. However, you can't really tell how good these young players could be just by seeing their performance in the minors?  As Don August said in his interview for this issue, the majors and the minors are like "Night and Day".  Within the handbook you get a very detailed analysis of THE most significant 900 prospects which certainly should covers enough young prospects to find the right young player (or players) you seek.

Therefore, I definitely recommend this guidebook to anyone who is trying to find new talent to help build their current league teams (based on the latest card sets) and become a playoff bound team.  You just can't go wrong with the many hours that were put in by the Baseball American editors, to make such a handbook for us.