More data on the way!
Late last night, Retrosheet announced that they had finally obtained the rights to publish the 1999 game event data. We're looking to load that data this week, and make use of the complete set of data for the past 50 years to provide additional analytics for those interested.
Retrosheet is an organization of volunteers who collect, codify and publish historical baseball data and it's due to their efforts that we are able to provide some of our analytics and we can't say enough nice things about them.
Thanks Retrosheet!
The difficulties with baseball data
While baseball is certainly not an insanely complicated system like meteorology or the financial markets, it's not as simple a it may first appear. I've been parsing play by play data provided by the good folks over at retrosheet and have run into quite a few weird plays which have only occurred once or twice.
One example is the event noted by the following bit of retrosheet code.
S6/L6D.2-H;BXH(TH)(E2/TH)(8E2)(NR)(UR)
Basically, it says that the batter hit a single to short, the runner on second scored, the BATTER is safe at HOME because he advanced to second on the throw, then advanced to third on a throwing error by the catcher, and then scored when another error was recorded on the catcher on a throw from centerfield. Basically, this is what my code had to be able to parse. And it's stronger for it. It handles weird runner's interference outs, fielders interference, players batting out of turn, pitchers throwing with their alternate hands and a myriad of double and triple play combinations.
To highlight this, the good folks at the Hardball Times have compiled a list of rule quirks in our national past time.
