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