This chapter explains where to get information about baseball games and baseball players and tells you how to store this information for easy lookup. These hacks explain how to find or make box scores, player statistics, and even play-by-play data. You can get data about games from 1871 through last season. Several different groups of baseball fans have worked hard to compile and digitize this information, making it easy for any baseball fan to look up scores and stats, plan their fantasy team, or research baseball.
We use three primary types of data in this book. Here’s a short explanation of each one, and how they all fit together:
- Play-by-play
The most detailed data we have is “play-by-play” or “event” data. The event files include information about every play in a game: every at bat, every stolen base, and sometimes every pitch.
- Game logs
Game logs include a summary of each game: playing conditions, scores, and starting players.
- Player and team statistics
Player statistics include statistics for each player on each team in each season. These files include offensive statistics like hits, home runs, and stolen bases; pitching statistics like batters faced, strikeouts, and earned runs; and fielding statistics like putouts, assists, and errors. Team statistics summarize this information for each team.
When you have detailed play-by-play descriptions for each game, you can derive game logs from those descriptions. (See “Make Box Scores or Database Tables from Play-by-Play Data with Retrosheet Tools” [Hack #15] for information on a tool that does this.)
Similarly, you can derive player and team statistics from play-by-play data. “Make a Box Score from a Score Sheet” [Hack #2] explains how to calculate player statistics for each game. Over the course of a season, you can just add up a player’s hits, at bats, home runs, and other statistics to find his player statistics for a season.
If you want to research how teams fare in close games, compare ballparks, or study starting lineups, you will find game logs most convenient. If you want to compare individual players over seasons or careers, player and team statistics will be your best choice. If you want to research baseball strategy or look at how players fare in specific situations, play-by-play data is your best bet.