Hello--
1. The website was moved to a new server a few weeks ago. It turns out that the new server sucks. If you have trouble with response times from the website--or downloads in general--that's why. I apologize profusely and will be moving things over to a new new server as soon as I can.
In the meantime, I'd recommend never using dreamhost.com for your web hosting needs.
2. I have the stat tabulation scripts all set up for the new season, but won't be posting them to the database until each team has played at least one game. Until then, you can check out the 2008 box scores in the usual place:
2008 Box Scores
3. Progress on the historical game-by-game database is also moving apace; I've got the data calculated from 1956 to 2002, and just need to do the last few years (for which the game log data is in a slightly different format), and then create an interface for the whole thing. As it is, I have teaching duties to attend to for the next week and a half or so, so all of that will have to wait until the middle of April.
Hopefully, you will be able to contain your excitement until then.
4. Go Twins.
-Steve
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
A Quick One (While I'm Away)
Hello.
Just an update to let you all know that, two weekends ago, I was finally able to post the 1999 season stats to the site. I accomplished this by sifting through the game logs I had downloaded from espn.com over eight years ago, since Retrosheet has been "hoping" to add the 1999 event files to their site ever since (at least) December of 2006.
It turned out that those old game logs from ESPN were actually missing a lot of information. Unfortunately, I didn't really know what I was doing back then--and still hadn't settled down into the grind-it-out mode that's necessary to produce these stats on a regular basis--so I neglected to save most of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' games that year. By "most", I mean approximately 125 out of 162 games. I'm still kicking myself over that. That major league gap cuts down on the thoroughness of the stats, but you can still get a good picture of what went down that summer. Pedro easily led the majors--in the thick of the steroids era--with a .363 BP Average. His 2000 season was actually much better, with a .321 average that nearly bested second-place finisher Kevin Brown (.415) by .100 points.
Last weekend, I also got the 1956 stats up and running. Mickey Mantle had a triple crown year that year, but, in bases produced terms, he accomplished nothing more impressive than 774 BP and a .743 BP Average. I've never though of 1956 as a particularly good year for Ted Williams, but he came in second in the majors that year with a .683 BP Average.
The inclusion of those two years finally makes the season stat database as "complete" as it possibly can be, at this stage in the history of the world. I will hopefully be able to add the complete 1999 season, once Retrosheet is able to clear whatever hurdles stand in their way from posting those numbers to their website. In the meantime, I'm trying to develop a database of game-by-game totals, for each player, on each team, in all 52 seasons that I have on hand.
I have a rudimentary version of this up and running for the 1976 season (don't ask), which enables me to come up with fun leader lists like the following:
+---------------+------+-------+-----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Name | Team | Month | Day | BP | BBP | RBP | TBP | BP1 | BP2 | BP3 | BP4 |
+---------------+------+-------+-----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Mike Schmidt | phi | 4 | 17 | 25 | 17 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 8 |
| Dave Kingman | nym | 6 | 4 | 25 | 12 | 0 | 13 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 8 |
| Dan Driessen | cin | 6 | 25 | 21 | 5 | 1 | 15 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 5 |
| Mike Hegan | mil | 9 | 3 | 21 | 11 | 0 | 10 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
| Graig Nettles | nyy | 9 | 29 | 20 | 12 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Dave Parker | pit | 5 | 1 | 20 | 11 | 0 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 5 |
| Hal McRae | kan | 8 | 26 | 20 | 9 | 0 | 11 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 4 |
| Bobby Grich | bal | 7 | 20 | 19 | 8 | 0 | 11 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 5 |
| Bill Plummer | cin | 6 | 6 | 19 | 8 | 0 | 11 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 7 |
| Lyman Bostock | min | 7 | 24 | 19 | 11 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Rick Monday | chc | 5 | 5 | 19 | 9 | 0 | 10 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 6 |
| Mike Cubbage | min | 9 | 5 | 19 | 7 | 0 | 12 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 5 |
| Bill Russell | los | 5 | 7 | 19 | 7 | 0 | 12 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 4 |
| Dan Driessen | cin | 7 | 26 | 19 | 5 | 0 | 14 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 3 |
| Manny Trillo | chc | 7 | 10 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 4 |
| Cito Gaston | atl | 8 | 3 | 18 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| John Mayberry | kan | 6 | 25 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Larry Hisle | min | 6 | 4 | 18 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Boog Powell | cle | 8 | 19 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Lee May | bal | 8 | 17 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| Jose Cardenal | chc | 5 | 2 | 18 | 10 | 1 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 4 |
| Cesar Cedeno | hou | 8 | 9 | 18 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
| Bob Watson | hou | 5 | 22 | 18 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| George Foster | cin | 7 | 4 | 18 | 8 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| Ed Herrmann | hou | 7 | 18 | 18 | 8 | 0 | 10 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
+---------------+------+-------+-----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
Those are the BP game high leaders for the 1976 season. It's possible to include other fun fields like opponent, home team, position in batting order, etc., but they can't all fit nicely into a blogger blog window. :-)
My good friend and web guru-in-residence, Jason Packer, tells me we're starting to run out of room for all this information on the current server, though, so we're going to have to migrate everything over to a new host before the game stat database can be made complete. Hopefully, that will be made a reality today.
In the meantime, I hope you're all looking forward to Spring as much as I am. :-)
-Steve
Just an update to let you all know that, two weekends ago, I was finally able to post the 1999 season stats to the site. I accomplished this by sifting through the game logs I had downloaded from espn.com over eight years ago, since Retrosheet has been "hoping" to add the 1999 event files to their site ever since (at least) December of 2006.
It turned out that those old game logs from ESPN were actually missing a lot of information. Unfortunately, I didn't really know what I was doing back then--and still hadn't settled down into the grind-it-out mode that's necessary to produce these stats on a regular basis--so I neglected to save most of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' games that year. By "most", I mean approximately 125 out of 162 games. I'm still kicking myself over that. That major league gap cuts down on the thoroughness of the stats, but you can still get a good picture of what went down that summer. Pedro easily led the majors--in the thick of the steroids era--with a .363 BP Average. His 2000 season was actually much better, with a .321 average that nearly bested second-place finisher Kevin Brown (.415) by .100 points.
Last weekend, I also got the 1956 stats up and running. Mickey Mantle had a triple crown year that year, but, in bases produced terms, he accomplished nothing more impressive than 774 BP and a .743 BP Average. I've never though of 1956 as a particularly good year for Ted Williams, but he came in second in the majors that year with a .683 BP Average.
The inclusion of those two years finally makes the season stat database as "complete" as it possibly can be, at this stage in the history of the world. I will hopefully be able to add the complete 1999 season, once Retrosheet is able to clear whatever hurdles stand in their way from posting those numbers to their website. In the meantime, I'm trying to develop a database of game-by-game totals, for each player, on each team, in all 52 seasons that I have on hand.
I have a rudimentary version of this up and running for the 1976 season (don't ask), which enables me to come up with fun leader lists like the following:
+---------------+------+-------+-----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Name | Team | Month | Day | BP | BBP | RBP | TBP | BP1 | BP2 | BP3 | BP4 |
+---------------+------+-------+-----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Mike Schmidt | phi | 4 | 17 | 25 | 17 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 8 |
| Dave Kingman | nym | 6 | 4 | 25 | 12 | 0 | 13 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 8 |
| Dan Driessen | cin | 6 | 25 | 21 | 5 | 1 | 15 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 5 |
| Mike Hegan | mil | 9 | 3 | 21 | 11 | 0 | 10 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
| Graig Nettles | nyy | 9 | 29 | 20 | 12 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Dave Parker | pit | 5 | 1 | 20 | 11 | 0 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 5 |
| Hal McRae | kan | 8 | 26 | 20 | 9 | 0 | 11 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 4 |
| Bobby Grich | bal | 7 | 20 | 19 | 8 | 0 | 11 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 5 |
| Bill Plummer | cin | 6 | 6 | 19 | 8 | 0 | 11 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 7 |
| Lyman Bostock | min | 7 | 24 | 19 | 11 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Rick Monday | chc | 5 | 5 | 19 | 9 | 0 | 10 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 6 |
| Mike Cubbage | min | 9 | 5 | 19 | 7 | 0 | 12 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 5 |
| Bill Russell | los | 5 | 7 | 19 | 7 | 0 | 12 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 4 |
| Dan Driessen | cin | 7 | 26 | 19 | 5 | 0 | 14 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 3 |
| Manny Trillo | chc | 7 | 10 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 4 |
| Cito Gaston | atl | 8 | 3 | 18 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| John Mayberry | kan | 6 | 25 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Larry Hisle | min | 6 | 4 | 18 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Boog Powell | cle | 8 | 19 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Lee May | bal | 8 | 17 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| Jose Cardenal | chc | 5 | 2 | 18 | 10 | 1 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 4 |
| Cesar Cedeno | hou | 8 | 9 | 18 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
| Bob Watson | hou | 5 | 22 | 18 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| George Foster | cin | 7 | 4 | 18 | 8 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| Ed Herrmann | hou | 7 | 18 | 18 | 8 | 0 | 10 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
+---------------+------+-------+-----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
Those are the BP game high leaders for the 1976 season. It's possible to include other fun fields like opponent, home team, position in batting order, etc., but they can't all fit nicely into a blogger blog window. :-)
My good friend and web guru-in-residence, Jason Packer, tells me we're starting to run out of room for all this information on the current server, though, so we're going to have to migrate everything over to a new host before the game stat database can be made complete. Hopefully, that will be made a reality today.
In the meantime, I hope you're all looking forward to Spring as much as I am. :-)
-Steve
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Event Horizons
Hello all.
Just a quick update--two major additions have been posted to the main BP page in the past week and a half. One is a link that will show you the all-time season leaders in particular statistical categories. That interface will tell you, for instance, that Alex Rodriguez is now 11th on the "all-time" (i.e., since 1957) list of base producers in a season, with 826. (He's still got a ways to go before he catches up with Todd Helton's record of 913.)
Likewise, Magglio Ordonez is now 12th on the all-time list of Team Base Producers in a season, with 335. The record in that department is--again--held by Todd Helton, from the year 2000, in which he banged out a grand total of 393 TBP.
The other major update to the site is a link to the career leaders in statistical categories. Unfortunately, I only have the stat links working at the moment for major league offensive stats, but the career leaders for particular leagues, teams, and for pitching and defensive stats shouldn't take me too long to get up and running.
In the meantime, you can partake of the joy of looking at the list of players with 10,000 BP in their careers:
It's interesting to think about the fact that all those players kept playing long enough to reach that statistical plateau, without ever knowing that they did.
In other news, Juan Pierre is still two ground outs (211) ahead of Luis Castillo (209) in his quest to lead the major leagues in batted ground outs for a record seventh year in a row.
I've also been noticing that Cleveland's Rafael Betancourt (.315) and Rafael Perez (.344) are consistently in the major league BP Average lead for middle relievers. At the moment, only Carlos Marmol (.331) is pitching at the same level of middle relief dominance.
I have hence been wondering why Joe Borowski (BPAVG = .500) remains the Indians' closer. In fact, that unappreciated fact came back to haunt the Indians tonight, as Borowski let the Mariners back into their game by giving up a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning.
Oh well. At least Betancourt picked up the save in the 12th.
Thoughts? Questions? You know where to find me.
Until next time,
Steve
Just a quick update--two major additions have been posted to the main BP page in the past week and a half. One is a link that will show you the all-time season leaders in particular statistical categories. That interface will tell you, for instance, that Alex Rodriguez is now 11th on the "all-time" (i.e., since 1957) list of base producers in a season, with 826. (He's still got a ways to go before he catches up with Todd Helton's record of 913.)
Likewise, Magglio Ordonez is now 12th on the all-time list of Team Base Producers in a season, with 335. The record in that department is--again--held by Todd Helton, from the year 2000, in which he banged out a grand total of 393 TBP.
The other major update to the site is a link to the career leaders in statistical categories. Unfortunately, I only have the stat links working at the moment for major league offensive stats, but the career leaders for particular leagues, teams, and for pitching and defensive stats shouldn't take me too long to get up and running.
In the meantime, you can partake of the joy of looking at the list of players with 10,000 BP in their careers:
| Rank | Name | BP | BBP | RBP | TBP | BP1 | BP2 | BP3 | BP4 |
| 1 | Barry Bonds | 13403 | 8345 | 539 | 4519 | 5430 | 3622 | 2428 | 1923 |
| 2 | Carl Yastrzemski | 12980 | 7424 | 220 | 5336 | 5304 | 3290 | 2535 | 1851 |
| 3 | Pete Rose | 11911 | 7412 | 273 | 4226 | 5918 | 2812 | 1874 | 1307 |
| 4 | Eddie Murray | 11810 | 6748 | 139 | 4923 | 4606 | 2970 | 2309 | 1925 |
| 5 | Hank Aaron | 11521 | 7000 | 264 | 4257 | 4368 | 3039 | 2172 | 1942 |
| 6 | Dave Winfield | 11124 | 6461 | 262 | 4401 | 4350 | 2874 | 2061 | 1839 |
| 7 | Rickey Henderson | 11080 | 6588 | 1415 | 3077 | 5121 | 3167 | 1720 | 1072 |
| 8 | Frank Robinson | 10817 | 6587 | 248 | 3982 | 4310 | 2813 | 1950 | 1744 |
| 9 | George Brett | 10794 | 6173 | 262 | 4359 | 4283 | 2758 | 2153 | 1600 |
| 10 | Rafael Palmeiro | 10742 | 6371 | 124 | 4247 | 4176 | 2749 | 2126 | 1691 |
| 11 | Reggie Jackson | 10585 | 6306 | 258 | 4021 | 4056 | 2780 | 2048 | 1701 |
| 12 | Cal Ripken | 10419 | 6153 | 46 | 4220 | 4250 | 2604 | 1928 | 1637 |
| 13 | Paul Molitor | 10269 | 5995 | 585 | 3689 | 4460 | 2715 | 1765 | 1329 |
| 14 | Joe Morgan | 10073 | 5822 | 735 | 3516 | 4394 | 2929 | 1630 | 1120 |
| 15 | Robin Yount | 10048 | 5744 | 332 | 3972 | 4156 | 2664 | 1822 | 1406 |
It's interesting to think about the fact that all those players kept playing long enough to reach that statistical plateau, without ever knowing that they did.
In other news, Juan Pierre is still two ground outs (211) ahead of Luis Castillo (209) in his quest to lead the major leagues in batted ground outs for a record seventh year in a row.
I've also been noticing that Cleveland's Rafael Betancourt (.315) and Rafael Perez (.344) are consistently in the major league BP Average lead for middle relievers. At the moment, only Carlos Marmol (.331) is pitching at the same level of middle relief dominance.
I have hence been wondering why Joe Borowski (BPAVG = .500) remains the Indians' closer. In fact, that unappreciated fact came back to haunt the Indians tonight, as Borowski let the Mariners back into their game by giving up a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning.
Oh well. At least Betancourt picked up the save in the 12th.
Thoughts? Questions? You know where to find me.
Until next time,
Steve
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Wild Goose Chases
Hello all.
I haven't blogged in a long time because I've moved to Canada. I got a one-year position at the University of Calgary back in March, and I finally moved up here at the tail end of July. I took a long time making my way up North, stopping to see a lot of old friends along the 1,700+ mile route between here and Champaign/Urbana, Illinois. I finally arrived on August 6th. My stuff--or most of it, at any rate--didn't get here until the 16th of August; my parents came the week after that, and my internet was only hooked up on or about the 1st of September. I put in a good three-day weekend getting the 2007 stats up to speed once that happened, and I've been pre-occupied with working my paying job at the University (i.e., teaching) ever since.
But now I seem to have a spare moment to write again.
There are many reasons why I decided to move up to Calgary, but one of the more interesting (and relevant) ones is that it is relatively close to a town called Kalispell, in Montana. I first became aware of the importance of Kalispell to the history of baseball statistics when I read Alan Schwarz' book, The Numbers Game, about three years ago. In it, he cited a number of Bases Produced precursors in the history of twentieth century statistical thought. The earliest one he found--though he did not recognize it as such--was in a journal called Baseball Magazine, which was first published in 1913. A man by the name of J.H. Hamel, from Kalispell, Montana, had written to that magazine, in one of its earliest issues, and put forth the following proclamation:
"What we need is a system by which the batter will get credit for the number of bases that are gained with his help. My plan is to give the batter credit for all the bases gained with his help plus the number of bases he himself hits for, and to divide by the number of times he goes to bat. For instance...Banks goes to bat four times and gets two singles, one with a man on first and one with a man on second who scores. Thus he gets credit for five bases, or a batting average of 1.250"
One unforeseen problem I had in crossing the border was that I did not realize I would have to export my car in order to officially register it in Canada. I could only grimace and confess my ignorance when when the customs agent at the International Peace Garden asked me where the title to my vehicle was; it turned out that it was in a file cabinet, in the moving truck, somewhere on its way up to Alberta. In true Canadian form, the customs agent courteously told me I could keep driving to Calgary, but that I would have to bring the title back down to the border--once I retrieved it from the file cabinet--to present it to U.S. customs when I exported my car.
Once my stuff finally arrived, I decided that--as long as I had to go down to the border anyway, I might as well take the time out to visit Kalispell, and see if I couldn't figure out exactly who this J.H. Hamel might have been, or what he could have possibly left behind.
I drove down to Montana on the 19th of August and headed into Glacier National Park, almost as soon as I got there. Massive forest fires were burning all across the western United States at that point, shrouding the entire Park--and most of the rest of northwestern Montana--in an eerie haze of sweet-smelling smoke. It left me with little to photograph in Glacier--despite the fact that it was one of the most scenic places I'd ever seen. And I was far from disappointed when I finally got my chance to see Wild Goose Island in person.
My first night back in the U.S., I holed up in a Motel 6 room and watched the Coon Rapids Little League team play--and win--a game against the Maryland team in the Little League World Series. While I watched the game, I pulled out the Flathead County phone book and found three listings under the name of Hamel in the area.
The next morning, I actually called one of them. I had worked out, in my mind, a script about how I was down in Montana from the University of Calgary, doing research on a book I was writing, and I was wondering if maybe you might be related to a J.H. Hamel, who lived some ninety years ago?
No one picked up the phone when I called. Perhaps it was for the best.
Undeterred, I checked out of the hotel and paid a visit to the Flathead County courthouse. I had a laundry list of things to look for in the courthouse records department from a friend of mine who likes to do genealogy; I found out quite quickly that none of them would be of much use, as the courthouse had no record of any J.H. Hamel on file. The friendly lady in charge of the records department--who claimed to go by the name of Jan--sent me off in the direction of the local library, however, and informed me of the existence of an LDS "Family Research Center" on the outside of town.
Encouraged by this good news, I paid a visit to the library first. There I found out that the census records for Kalispell and surrounding areas had all been transferred to an online search system, which certainly seemed a lot more convenient--though much less appealing--than the old microfilm storage system. So I gave their online system a whirl, and found out...
There was no J.H. Hamel in the Kalispell census records, in either 1910, 1920, or 1930. A few Hamels popped up, here and there, in various places in Montana--most of them having been born in Canada, and quite a few of them living in a place called "Frenchtown", but there was no J.H. among their numbers.
I found out that the online census records were only searchable by heads of households, so I thought for a second about sifting through the entire 1920 Montana census, trying to dig up a J.H. Hamel who might be living in some other family's house, but, ultimately, I decided against it in favor of checking with the Mormons, to see what they might know.
But I didn't get very far with them. I found the LDS stake without any problem, but discovered a sign on the front door, claiming that the Family Research Center would be closed for all of August. And it was only open a couple of days a week the rest of the year.
So. The man who first envisioned a world of Bases Produced remains a mystery. Was he born in Canada? Did he ever really live in Montana? Are any of his other writings still in existence? Did he possibly keep track of any Bases Produced stats in his lifetime? Is there anybody still left in Kalispell who can remember who he was?
I may never know. But I think I might head back down to the Mormons in October. Playoff baseball is hard to come by on Canadian TV, and a jar of good peanut butter is even harder to find. With or without the legends of baseball's statistical past, both of those commodities will be in good supply down in Montana in a couple of weeks.
Until next time,
Steve
I haven't blogged in a long time because I've moved to Canada. I got a one-year position at the University of Calgary back in March, and I finally moved up here at the tail end of July. I took a long time making my way up North, stopping to see a lot of old friends along the 1,700+ mile route between here and Champaign/Urbana, Illinois. I finally arrived on August 6th. My stuff--or most of it, at any rate--didn't get here until the 16th of August; my parents came the week after that, and my internet was only hooked up on or about the 1st of September. I put in a good three-day weekend getting the 2007 stats up to speed once that happened, and I've been pre-occupied with working my paying job at the University (i.e., teaching) ever since.
But now I seem to have a spare moment to write again.
There are many reasons why I decided to move up to Calgary, but one of the more interesting (and relevant) ones is that it is relatively close to a town called Kalispell, in Montana. I first became aware of the importance of Kalispell to the history of baseball statistics when I read Alan Schwarz' book, The Numbers Game, about three years ago. In it, he cited a number of Bases Produced precursors in the history of twentieth century statistical thought. The earliest one he found--though he did not recognize it as such--was in a journal called Baseball Magazine, which was first published in 1913. A man by the name of J.H. Hamel, from Kalispell, Montana, had written to that magazine, in one of its earliest issues, and put forth the following proclamation:
"What we need is a system by which the batter will get credit for the number of bases that are gained with his help. My plan is to give the batter credit for all the bases gained with his help plus the number of bases he himself hits for, and to divide by the number of times he goes to bat. For instance...Banks goes to bat four times and gets two singles, one with a man on first and one with a man on second who scores. Thus he gets credit for five bases, or a batting average of 1.250"
One unforeseen problem I had in crossing the border was that I did not realize I would have to export my car in order to officially register it in Canada. I could only grimace and confess my ignorance when when the customs agent at the International Peace Garden asked me where the title to my vehicle was; it turned out that it was in a file cabinet, in the moving truck, somewhere on its way up to Alberta. In true Canadian form, the customs agent courteously told me I could keep driving to Calgary, but that I would have to bring the title back down to the border--once I retrieved it from the file cabinet--to present it to U.S. customs when I exported my car.
Once my stuff finally arrived, I decided that--as long as I had to go down to the border anyway, I might as well take the time out to visit Kalispell, and see if I couldn't figure out exactly who this J.H. Hamel might have been, or what he could have possibly left behind.
I drove down to Montana on the 19th of August and headed into Glacier National Park, almost as soon as I got there. Massive forest fires were burning all across the western United States at that point, shrouding the entire Park--and most of the rest of northwestern Montana--in an eerie haze of sweet-smelling smoke. It left me with little to photograph in Glacier--despite the fact that it was one of the most scenic places I'd ever seen. And I was far from disappointed when I finally got my chance to see Wild Goose Island in person.
My first night back in the U.S., I holed up in a Motel 6 room and watched the Coon Rapids Little League team play--and win--a game against the Maryland team in the Little League World Series. While I watched the game, I pulled out the Flathead County phone book and found three listings under the name of Hamel in the area.
The next morning, I actually called one of them. I had worked out, in my mind, a script about how I was down in Montana from the University of Calgary, doing research on a book I was writing, and I was wondering if maybe you might be related to a J.H. Hamel, who lived some ninety years ago?
No one picked up the phone when I called. Perhaps it was for the best.
Undeterred, I checked out of the hotel and paid a visit to the Flathead County courthouse. I had a laundry list of things to look for in the courthouse records department from a friend of mine who likes to do genealogy; I found out quite quickly that none of them would be of much use, as the courthouse had no record of any J.H. Hamel on file. The friendly lady in charge of the records department--who claimed to go by the name of Jan--sent me off in the direction of the local library, however, and informed me of the existence of an LDS "Family Research Center" on the outside of town.
Encouraged by this good news, I paid a visit to the library first. There I found out that the census records for Kalispell and surrounding areas had all been transferred to an online search system, which certainly seemed a lot more convenient--though much less appealing--than the old microfilm storage system. So I gave their online system a whirl, and found out...
There was no J.H. Hamel in the Kalispell census records, in either 1910, 1920, or 1930. A few Hamels popped up, here and there, in various places in Montana--most of them having been born in Canada, and quite a few of them living in a place called "Frenchtown", but there was no J.H. among their numbers.
I found out that the online census records were only searchable by heads of households, so I thought for a second about sifting through the entire 1920 Montana census, trying to dig up a J.H. Hamel who might be living in some other family's house, but, ultimately, I decided against it in favor of checking with the Mormons, to see what they might know.
But I didn't get very far with them. I found the LDS stake without any problem, but discovered a sign on the front door, claiming that the Family Research Center would be closed for all of August. And it was only open a couple of days a week the rest of the year.
So. The man who first envisioned a world of Bases Produced remains a mystery. Was he born in Canada? Did he ever really live in Montana? Are any of his other writings still in existence? Did he possibly keep track of any Bases Produced stats in his lifetime? Is there anybody still left in Kalispell who can remember who he was?
I may never know. But I think I might head back down to the Mormons in October. Playoff baseball is hard to come by on Canadian TV, and a jar of good peanut butter is even harder to find. With or without the legends of baseball's statistical past, both of those commodities will be in good supply down in Montana in a couple of weeks.
Until next time,
Steve
Saturday, July 14, 2007
The Past is Gone
My two best high school buddies, Steve and Jeff, came to visit me in Champaign last week. It was the first time in my adult life that I'd had two visitors (with wives and children in tow) at my place at the same time. Despite the presence of (rationally indifferent) women and children, Steve and Jeff and I went through our usual routine of playing as many competitive sports as possible, in what little time we had together. In between bouts of whiffle ball, disc golf and mini-golf, we played tennis, which all three of us had played competitively at John Hersey High school, back in the day.
Before we went out to play together in Hessel Park--as out-of-shape 33 year-old men--I pulled an old white tennis ball out of my upstairs closet and asked Jeff and Steve if they remembered it. Neither of them did, so I told them the story of how I had seen that ball one day between the fence of the tennis courts and the stands of the football stadium at Hersey High, circa April, 1992. Back then, it reminded me of the white balls I used to play with in my backyard as a child, and I apparently got excited about it enough to capture their imagination. Unbeknownst to me, they went back out to the courts after practice and retrieved the thing from its ignominious resting place. They then wrapped it up and gave it to me as a present for my 18th birthday.
By the time we started hitting around in the park, it became pretty obvious that the old white ball was as dead as a doornail. It still served its purposes, though, as a changeup in our rotational game of 1-on-2 tennis. After about an forty minutes of play, though, I looked up and discovered that the old white ball was nowhere to be seen. I asked Steve if he knew where it was, and he just shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't know.
And so ended the story of the old white tennis ball in my life.
They used to use white tennis balls at Wimbledon, when I was growing up. I thought about that as I watched the men's final last Sunday morning, a day after Steve and Jeff and their families left Champaign. It was Federer vs. Nadal in a match for the ages-maybe the best men's final since the epic Borg vs. McEnroe tilt, in 1980.
I don't have many memories of that 1980 match, but I've seen replays of it, time and again, in the 27 years that have passed between then and now. One of the remarkable features of it is the glow of the afternoon light that permeates the final points of the later sets between old Bjorg and John--you don't normally see that kind of light when you wake up at 8 am to watch breakfast at Wimbledon. It's too early (2 o'clock, London time) for the shadows to be that long when play begins. I often played in that kind of light when I was a kid, though--hammering white balls with my wooden racket against the back of my family's garage, taking the balls low off the wounded turf of my backyard until darkness put an end to yet another Minnesota's summer day.
It was there that the tennis champions of the past became the scaffolding of sports legend in my mind.
The Federer-Nadal donnybrook that went down on Sunday morning was almost good enough to live up to those childhood fantasies of mine. And it almost lasted long enough to bring the same lighting scheme back to my TV. One final thing it did--which I also hadn't seen in more than 25 years--was give the world a five-time consecutive Wimbledon men's champion, in the form of Roger Federer. And I can distinctly remember a world in which Bjorn Borg was a reigning, five-time world champion at Wimbledon. He played McEnroe again, on a Sunday morning in July, 1981, for a sixth straight title. I got up early to watch it and remember NBC putting on a picture of William Renshaw--the Englishman who had won 6 straight titles from 1881-1886, during the old challenge round system--and asking whether Borg could finally repeat Renshaw's feat. I was able to see the first set of the rematch before my Dad carted us all off to church, despite my protestations. Dad then compounded his sins that morning by boldly stating that he'd be cheering for McEnroe, simply because he was an American. In the name of all that was dignified and good, the rest of us were cheering for Borg. But he lost. And no one's had a chance at a sixth straight title again until now.
They carted Borg, McEnroe and Jimmy Connors out--in their current form--for the final on Sunday at the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet club. I hadn't seen Borg in years, but he had clearly become a middle-aged shadow of his former self. It was an odd thing to see in a man who had cut his career short about five years too early. There was no doubting now that he could never go back to make up to the world what he had taken away from us too soon.
....
Anyhow. The updates to the site keep coming, even though I am no longer working on the database at the same, feverish pace that I was back in June. Most importantly, I now have a working link for stat leader pages posted to the main page. You should check it out some time. It'll give you the leaders from 1957-2007 in any statistical category you like, for any league or team that you might be interested in. Literally hours of idle fun.
I have also been working alternately on the databases for playoff years before 2003, and the 1999 regular season. Retrosheet has not posted event files for either of those sets of data (though they keep claiming that they're going to do so soon), so I have to reconstruct the play-by-play data on my own. Retrosheet *does* have the play-by-play accounts of all playoff (and all-star) games on their site in a modified form, and I'm pretty close to writing a translation script to deal with all that.
The 1999 data is presenting a more formidable challenge, on the other hand. I actually downloaded all the play-by-play game logs (and box scores) for that season from the espn.com website eight years ago. Or so I thought. It turns out that I actually neglected to download any of the Devil Rays' home games for that year. Don't ask me why, but--like the white tennis ball and Bjorn Borg's forehand--those games are now gone. I still have the info for the other 2,349 games played that year, though. However, espn.com's system for posting that data wasn't as good eight years ago as it is now, so a lot of the play-by-play logs are simply missing several innings of information. Remarkably, I've discovered over the past couple of weeks that, given a modern box score and the play-by-play info for the first six innings of a game, it is possible to reconstruct what happened in innings 7 through 9 in almost every game. Each game can actually be turned into a puzzle which is more or less as much fun as a sudoku.
Unfortunately, those puzzles are also really time consuming. I think there are about sixteen days' worth of games that are in that format, and it takes about a day's worth of work to process any one of those days. So. Unless one of you out there might be willing to help fill in the statistical gaps for me, I can pretty much guarantee that the 1999 data won't be posted to this site any time sooner than four months from now.
And I also have aspirations of finally posting some career stat data, once that's done. But in the meantime, you should go check out those leaders pages. They're so much fun.
Until next time,
Steve
Before we went out to play together in Hessel Park--as out-of-shape 33 year-old men--I pulled an old white tennis ball out of my upstairs closet and asked Jeff and Steve if they remembered it. Neither of them did, so I told them the story of how I had seen that ball one day between the fence of the tennis courts and the stands of the football stadium at Hersey High, circa April, 1992. Back then, it reminded me of the white balls I used to play with in my backyard as a child, and I apparently got excited about it enough to capture their imagination. Unbeknownst to me, they went back out to the courts after practice and retrieved the thing from its ignominious resting place. They then wrapped it up and gave it to me as a present for my 18th birthday.
By the time we started hitting around in the park, it became pretty obvious that the old white ball was as dead as a doornail. It still served its purposes, though, as a changeup in our rotational game of 1-on-2 tennis. After about an forty minutes of play, though, I looked up and discovered that the old white ball was nowhere to be seen. I asked Steve if he knew where it was, and he just shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't know.
And so ended the story of the old white tennis ball in my life.
They used to use white tennis balls at Wimbledon, when I was growing up. I thought about that as I watched the men's final last Sunday morning, a day after Steve and Jeff and their families left Champaign. It was Federer vs. Nadal in a match for the ages-maybe the best men's final since the epic Borg vs. McEnroe tilt, in 1980.
I don't have many memories of that 1980 match, but I've seen replays of it, time and again, in the 27 years that have passed between then and now. One of the remarkable features of it is the glow of the afternoon light that permeates the final points of the later sets between old Bjorg and John--you don't normally see that kind of light when you wake up at 8 am to watch breakfast at Wimbledon. It's too early (2 o'clock, London time) for the shadows to be that long when play begins. I often played in that kind of light when I was a kid, though--hammering white balls with my wooden racket against the back of my family's garage, taking the balls low off the wounded turf of my backyard until darkness put an end to yet another Minnesota's summer day.
It was there that the tennis champions of the past became the scaffolding of sports legend in my mind.
The Federer-Nadal donnybrook that went down on Sunday morning was almost good enough to live up to those childhood fantasies of mine. And it almost lasted long enough to bring the same lighting scheme back to my TV. One final thing it did--which I also hadn't seen in more than 25 years--was give the world a five-time consecutive Wimbledon men's champion, in the form of Roger Federer. And I can distinctly remember a world in which Bjorn Borg was a reigning, five-time world champion at Wimbledon. He played McEnroe again, on a Sunday morning in July, 1981, for a sixth straight title. I got up early to watch it and remember NBC putting on a picture of William Renshaw--the Englishman who had won 6 straight titles from 1881-1886, during the old challenge round system--and asking whether Borg could finally repeat Renshaw's feat. I was able to see the first set of the rematch before my Dad carted us all off to church, despite my protestations. Dad then compounded his sins that morning by boldly stating that he'd be cheering for McEnroe, simply because he was an American. In the name of all that was dignified and good, the rest of us were cheering for Borg. But he lost. And no one's had a chance at a sixth straight title again until now.
They carted Borg, McEnroe and Jimmy Connors out--in their current form--for the final on Sunday at the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet club. I hadn't seen Borg in years, but he had clearly become a middle-aged shadow of his former self. It was an odd thing to see in a man who had cut his career short about five years too early. There was no doubting now that he could never go back to make up to the world what he had taken away from us too soon.
....
Anyhow. The updates to the site keep coming, even though I am no longer working on the database at the same, feverish pace that I was back in June. Most importantly, I now have a working link for stat leader pages posted to the main page. You should check it out some time. It'll give you the leaders from 1957-2007 in any statistical category you like, for any league or team that you might be interested in. Literally hours of idle fun.
I have also been working alternately on the databases for playoff years before 2003, and the 1999 regular season. Retrosheet has not posted event files for either of those sets of data (though they keep claiming that they're going to do so soon), so I have to reconstruct the play-by-play data on my own. Retrosheet *does* have the play-by-play accounts of all playoff (and all-star) games on their site in a modified form, and I'm pretty close to writing a translation script to deal with all that.
The 1999 data is presenting a more formidable challenge, on the other hand. I actually downloaded all the play-by-play game logs (and box scores) for that season from the espn.com website eight years ago. Or so I thought. It turns out that I actually neglected to download any of the Devil Rays' home games for that year. Don't ask me why, but--like the white tennis ball and Bjorn Borg's forehand--those games are now gone. I still have the info for the other 2,349 games played that year, though. However, espn.com's system for posting that data wasn't as good eight years ago as it is now, so a lot of the play-by-play logs are simply missing several innings of information. Remarkably, I've discovered over the past couple of weeks that, given a modern box score and the play-by-play info for the first six innings of a game, it is possible to reconstruct what happened in innings 7 through 9 in almost every game. Each game can actually be turned into a puzzle which is more or less as much fun as a sudoku.
Unfortunately, those puzzles are also really time consuming. I think there are about sixteen days' worth of games that are in that format, and it takes about a day's worth of work to process any one of those days. So. Unless one of you out there might be willing to help fill in the statistical gaps for me, I can pretty much guarantee that the 1999 data won't be posted to this site any time sooner than four months from now.
And I also have aspirations of finally posting some career stat data, once that's done. But in the meantime, you should go check out those leaders pages. They're so much fun.
Until next time,
Steve
Friday, June 29, 2007
Exhumed
I've spent the past year working as a Visiting Professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Illinois. I was only hired on a temporary basis--for a year--but the department wanted someone to do what I do (phonetics) permanently, beginning this Fall. So they held a job search in November and December of 2006, to which I dutifully (and hopefully) submitted myself. Even though most everybody here in Champaign/Urbana seemed to like me and what I do when I'm not playing with baseball statistics, I did not get the job. I was informed of this around the 30th of December.
In the midst of the dark and lonely New Year's that followed, I decided to re-visit retrosheet.org, in a half-hearted attempt to amuse myself. There I discovered that the Retrosheet squad had, after many years, finally posted the play-by-play data for the 1993-1998 seasons. Since I first got the idea for Bases Produced--back in October of 1998--I've been collecting play-by-play recaps of all major league games from various websites like espn.com, cbssportsline.com, etc., so that addition to the retrosheet database meant that my bridge into the Bases Produced statistical past was effectively complete.
With surprisingly little to hope for in terms of a future career in linguistics, I dedicated myself at the beginning of January to finally working through the data that retrosheet has provided the world (for free!) and calculating BP stats for as far back into the past as I was able. Back when the I was still teaching classes in the Spring, that meant setting aside one day a week for nothing but baseball stats. At that pace, I was on schedule to finish my historical quest some time in February of next year.
At the end of May, though, the linguistics department here did me another favor by kicking me out of my office for the summer. That unexpected move did in my good intentions of balancing out my summer days between setting up phonetics experiments in the mornings and working on BP stats at night. So I decided to do the next best thing and split my summer in two by finishing up my historical BP project in the first half and working on phonetics research in the second.
I am now happy to say that the first half of that deal with my personal devils is now done. I finished hacking through the last available year of the Retrosheet play-by-play database last Wednesday evening, and have now posted seasonal BP stats for every major league season from 1957 until the present day. Oh--except for the 1999 season, for which I do have the raw data but not yet a means of parsing it into something meaningful. I hope to have something more to say about all that after this weekend.
In the meantime, I would like to share with you one of the primary fruits of my labor. Behold the major league leaders in Bases Produced from 1957 to 2007:
In lieu of a genuine analysis of all this data, I'd like to point out just a couple of things. One--the best BP total in the past 50 years was Todd Helton's 913, in 2000 (which, strangely enough, was the first year I ever put BP stats online). Two--ARod's current total of 426 in 75 games puts him on pace for 920 Bases Produced this year. Will he make it past 913 by the end of September? Stay tuned.
-Steve
In the midst of the dark and lonely New Year's that followed, I decided to re-visit retrosheet.org, in a half-hearted attempt to amuse myself. There I discovered that the Retrosheet squad had, after many years, finally posted the play-by-play data for the 1993-1998 seasons. Since I first got the idea for Bases Produced--back in October of 1998--I've been collecting play-by-play recaps of all major league games from various websites like espn.com, cbssportsline.com, etc., so that addition to the retrosheet database meant that my bridge into the Bases Produced statistical past was effectively complete.
With surprisingly little to hope for in terms of a future career in linguistics, I dedicated myself at the beginning of January to finally working through the data that retrosheet has provided the world (for free!) and calculating BP stats for as far back into the past as I was able. Back when the I was still teaching classes in the Spring, that meant setting aside one day a week for nothing but baseball stats. At that pace, I was on schedule to finish my historical quest some time in February of next year.
At the end of May, though, the linguistics department here did me another favor by kicking me out of my office for the summer. That unexpected move did in my good intentions of balancing out my summer days between setting up phonetics experiments in the mornings and working on BP stats at night. So I decided to do the next best thing and split my summer in two by finishing up my historical BP project in the first half and working on phonetics research in the second.
I am now happy to say that the first half of that deal with my personal devils is now done. I finished hacking through the last available year of the Retrosheet play-by-play database last Wednesday evening, and have now posted seasonal BP stats for every major league season from 1957 until the present day. Oh--except for the 1999 season, for which I do have the raw data but not yet a means of parsing it into something meaningful. I hope to have something more to say about all that after this weekend.
In the meantime, I would like to share with you one of the primary fruits of my labor. Behold the major league leaders in Bases Produced from 1957 to 2007:
| Year | Name | Team | BP | BBP | RBP | TBP | BP1 | BP2 | BP3 | BP4 |
| 1957 | Mickey Mantle | nyy | 743 | 461 | 19 | 263 | 319 | 200 | 130 | 94 |
| 1958 | Willie Mays | sfo | 712 | 426 | 34 | 252 | 284 | 196 | 135 | 97 |
| 1959 | Hank Aaron | mib | 711 | 433 | 10 | 268 | 266 | 199 | 130 | 116 |
| 1960 | Eddie Mathews | mib | 677 | 396 | 7 | 274 | 252 | 177 | 134 | 114 |
| 1961 | Norm Cash | det | 841 | 488 | 11 | 342 | 327 | 202 | 178 | 134 |
| 1962 | Frank Robinson | cin | 796 | 467 | 23 | 306 | 295 | 222 | 141 | 138 |
| 1963 | Hank Aaron | mib | 738 | 436 | 31 | 271 | 274 | 201 | 137 | 126 |
| 1964 | Ron Santo | chc | 681 | 419 | 7 | 255 | 271 | 166 | 131 | 113 |
| 1965 | Billy Williams | chc | 712 | 423 | 13 | 276 | 270 | 190 | 143 | 109 |
| 1966 | Frank Robinson | bal | 713 | 464 | 9 | 240 | 279 | 180 | 132 | 122 |
| 1967 | Carl Yastrzemski | bos | 744 | 455 | 11 | 278 | 284 | 187 | 153 | 120 |
| 1968 | Billy Williams | chc | 656 | 371 | 5 | 280 | 235 | 169 | 152 | 100 |
| 1969 | Harmon Killebrew | min | 777 | 474 | 8 | 295 | 303 | 187 | 148 | 139 |
| 1970 | Billy Williams | chc | 767 | 447 | 10 | 310 | 279 | 200 | 159 | 129 |
| 1971 | Joe Torre | stl | 780 | 419 | 8 | 353 | 297 | 188 | 158 | 137 |
| 1972 | Billy Williams | chc | 717 | 416 | 4 | 297 | 259 | 181 | 156 | 121 |
| 1973 | Joe Morgan | cin | 714 | 395 | 70 | 249 | 279 | 236 | 120 | 79 |
| 1974 | Johnny Bench | cin | 708 | 398 | 7 | 303 | 257 | 181 | 142 | 128 |
| 1975 | Joe Morgan | cin | 747 | 388 | 71 | 288 | 298 | 226 | 130 | 93 |
| 1976 | Joe Morgan | cin | 740 | 387 | 63 | 290 | 266 | 223 | 140 | 111 |
| 1977 | George Foster | cin | 775 | 454 | 8 | 313 | 263 | 198 | 166 | 148 |
| 1978 | Jim Rice | bos | 767 | 469 | 7 | 291 | 276 | 187 | 163 | 141 |
| 1979 | Don Baylor | cal | 744 | 415 | 24 | 305 | 268 | 188 | 148 | 140 |
| 1980 | Ken Singleton | bal | 686 | 376 | 1 | 309 | 270 | 168 | 145 | 103 |
| 1981 | Mike Schmidt | phi | 517 | 305 | 12 | 200 | 189 | 134 | 103 | 91 |
| 1982 | Robin Yount | mil | 714 | 422 | 18 | 274 | 265 | 186 | 146 | 117 |
| 1983 | Dale Murphy | atl | 705 | 410 | 34 | 261 | 270 | 168 | 147 | 120 |
| 1984 | Dwight Evans | bos | 721 | 435 | 3 | 283 | 286 | 200 | 129 | 106 |
| 1985 | Don Mattingly | nyy | 761 | 428 | 5 | 328 | 269 | 191 | 157 | 144 |
| 1986 | Don Mattingly | nyy | 740 | 442 | 2 | 296 | 292 | 189 | 145 | 114 |
| 1987 | Dwight Evans | bos | 733 | 417 | 6 | 310 | 274 | 195 | 141 | 123 |
| 1988 | Mike Greenwell | bos | 757 | 409 | 18 | 330 | 288 | 202 | 148 | 119 |
| 1989 | Kevin Mitchell | sfo | 702 | 435 | 4 | 263 | 248 | 185 | 144 | 125 |
| 1990 | Cecil Fielder | det | 703 | 434 | 2 | 267 | 254 | 174 | 144 | 131 |
| 1991 | Frank Thomas | chw | 725 | 448 | 4 | 273 | 317 | 176 | 123 | 109 |
| 1992 | Frank Thomas | chw | 753 | 434 | 9 | 310 | 312 | 200 | 125 | 116 |
| 1993 | Barry Bonds | sfo | 814 | 493 | 34 | 287 | 309 | 221 | 161 | 123 |
| 1994 | Frank Thomas | chw | 629 | 402 | 2 | 225 | 252 | 164 | 112 | 101 |
| 1995 | Edgar Martinez | sea | 744 | 445 | 7 | 292 | 306 | 187 | 137 | 114 |
| 1996 | Mo Vaughn | bos | 833 | 479 | 3 | 351 | 316 | 202 | 171 | 144 |
| 1997 | Larry Walker | col | 849 | 501 | 36 | 312 | 300 | 250 | 168 | 131 |
| 1998 | Barry Bonds | sfo | 836 | 474 | 31 | 331 | 305 | 242 | 165 | 124 |
| 2000 | Todd Helton | col | 913 | 512 | 8 | 393 | 323 | 245 | 197 | 148 |
| 2001 | Barry Bonds | sfo | 890 | 597 | 14 | 279 | 342 | 239 | 172 | 137 |
| 2002 | Barry Bonds | sfo | 799 | 529 | 11 | 259 | 356 | 201 | 131 | 111 |
| 2003 | Todd Helton | col | 793 | 480 | 4 | 309 | 322 | 212 | 142 | 117 |
| Carlos Delgado | tor | 793 | 465 | 3 | 325 | 300 | 184 | 162 | 147 | |
| 2004 | Barry Bonds | sfo | 829 | 544 | 8 | 277 | 376 | 213 | 140 | 100 |
| 2005 | David Ortiz | bos | 827 | 465 | 4 | 358 | 282 | 210 | 185 | 150 |
| 2006 | Ryan Howard | phi | 814 | 500 | 1 | 313 | 299 | 196 | 170 | 149 |
| 2007 | Alex Rodriguez | nyy | 426 | 246 | 11 | 169 | 144 | 117 | 88 | 77 |
In lieu of a genuine analysis of all this data, I'd like to point out just a couple of things. One--the best BP total in the past 50 years was Todd Helton's 913, in 2000 (which, strangely enough, was the first year I ever put BP stats online). Two--ARod's current total of 426 in 75 games puts him on pace for 920 Bases Produced this year. Will he make it past 913 by the end of September? Stay tuned.
-Steve
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Intentional Inexorability
Hello all--
Here are some quick updates on the progress I've made with the site in the last week or so, before I try to meet my 3 a.m. bedtime:
1. The 2001 stats got added to the site on Saturday night. It turns out that Barry Bonds led the majors that year with a massive 890 Bases Produced.
I'm pretty sure that I knew that, once upon a time, before I deleted the 2001 stats from the web page in the summer of 2003. It only remains to be seen whether or not Todd Helton really did crack the 900 BP barrier in 2000. I'm pretty sure I used to know that, too, before I deleted the 2000 stats from the site in the Spring of 2001, to make room for the 2001 stats. I won't really know for what anyone did, way back then, though, until this weekend. I'll keep you updated.
2. I've made more progress in creating a web interface that can automatically display season leaders in each statistical category. Try out the following link to give the current system a try. It only works for the first few rows of offensive stats right now, but it's still a lot of fun. Check out the league leaders in Hit by Pitch Percentage since 2001:
Year Name Team HBPPCT HBP BBPA
2001 Craig Biggio hou 0.039 28 716
2002 David Eckstein ana 0.039 27 687
2003 Jason Kendall pit 0.038 25 659
2004 Craig Wilson pit 0.047 30 644
2005 Jason Giambi nyy 0.035 19 545
2006 Reed Johnson tor 0.041 21 514
3. I got an interesting e-mail today from a Paul Tagliaferro, in Pittsfield, Mass. It seems that he's independently developed the basic concept of bases produced--with a few minor modifications--and was somehow referred to my site by Gary Hardegree, who did something similar about a year and a half ago. He even wrote to Bill James to tell him about it. :-)
Our numbers are growing. And I mean that in every way possible. :-)
Until next time,
Steve
Here are some quick updates on the progress I've made with the site in the last week or so, before I try to meet my 3 a.m. bedtime:
1. The 2001 stats got added to the site on Saturday night. It turns out that Barry Bonds led the majors that year with a massive 890 Bases Produced.
I'm pretty sure that I knew that, once upon a time, before I deleted the 2001 stats from the web page in the summer of 2003. It only remains to be seen whether or not Todd Helton really did crack the 900 BP barrier in 2000. I'm pretty sure I used to know that, too, before I deleted the 2000 stats from the site in the Spring of 2001, to make room for the 2001 stats. I won't really know for what anyone did, way back then, though, until this weekend. I'll keep you updated.
2. I've made more progress in creating a web interface that can automatically display season leaders in each statistical category. Try out the following link to give the current system a try. It only works for the first few rows of offensive stats right now, but it's still a lot of fun. Check out the league leaders in Hit by Pitch Percentage since 2001:
Year Name Team HBPPCT HBP BBPA
2001 Craig Biggio hou 0.039 28 716
2002 David Eckstein ana 0.039 27 687
2003 Jason Kendall pit 0.038 25 659
2004 Craig Wilson pit 0.047 30 644
2005 Jason Giambi nyy 0.035 19 545
2006 Reed Johnson tor 0.041 21 514
3. I got an interesting e-mail today from a Paul Tagliaferro, in Pittsfield, Mass. It seems that he's independently developed the basic concept of bases produced--with a few minor modifications--and was somehow referred to my site by Gary Hardegree, who did something similar about a year and a half ago. He even wrote to Bill James to tell him about it. :-)
Our numbers are growing. And I mean that in every way possible. :-)
Until next time,
Steve
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