Baseball Prospectus vs. Baseball America vs. ESPN Insider

[Cody Christie]

I was wondering if anyone had subscriptions to any of the following:

• Baseball Prospectus
• Baseball America
• ESPN Insider

Looking for the benefits of having subscriptions to these sites or other sites that might be good investments.

[Seth Stohs]

Nah, I don't pay for anything... although I did get a copy of Baseball America in the mail last week. I don't know why. I was very happy!

[twinsarmchairgm]

I have subsribtions to both ESPN Insider and Baseball America. Great Benefits to both. Keith Law and all his analysis is worth the cost of Insider in my opinion, provided you can handle his snark. You also get their MLB draft blog info which is nice. Baseball America the prospect info is great as well as the college baseball. In terms of cost I think ESPN Insider is the better buy, because its a lot cheaper but I really like having both.

[TRex]

I had ESPN Insider for the last two years and enjoyed it. Jim Caple and Buster Olney (and even Kevin Goldbergare closet Twins fans, so you get some pretty good information. My subscription expired in January and I haven't renewed it yet... waiting for the season to start to see how much I really miss it.

[Thrylos]

I used to have all 3 and haven't renewed my BP or BA subscription. Still have the ESPN insider one. They actually come with special deals once in a while (like $15 a year, including their magazine, which is a pretty good bargain in my book) The others are just getting kind of expensive these days.

[Jeremy Nygaard]

I have BA and Insider. As a fan of all sports, I couldn't imagine not having Insider. This is my first year with BA and is at least twice the cost of ESPN.

 

The content of the subscriber-only BA and the magazines is pretty similar, so if you can handle seeing the headline and knowing you might have to wait a couple of weeks to read the story, you may be able to get away with only having the mag subscription which is cheaper (not sure how much). There is some stuff that you can only find on the website (advanced draft database and state-by-state draft previews).

[TwinsTakes-RD]

I have Insider. I like it. There's a lot of good blogs on there including Keith Law, Jimmy Bowden and an MLB Draft blog. The nice thing is that Insider is free when you subscribe to the magazine. If that wasn't the case, I probably wouldn't have it.

[Eric R Pleiss]

I have ESPN Insider, and while getting The Mag is nice, I hardly ever read it. But having access to Buster Olney and Keith Law is nice. Also have subscription to Baseball-Reference.com, mostly for Play Index searchability.

[Fire Dan Gladden]

I have been an ESPN Insider for 4 years now, I will continue to keep renewing it. For baseball, Law and Olney are worth the price alone. But you also have access to the rumors page and the ability to go back and read chat transcripts (if you are into that sort of thing). Of course you also get tons of premium content for the other major sports as well. Definitely worth the price of a magazine subscription.

[Shane Wahl]

I refuse to pay ESPN.

 

Baseball Prospectus is great and worth it.