THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Cot’s Contracts has service time for most players.

The best, most consistent source that I’ve found is individual team media guides, but I only have the Red Sox.

I tired to get a BTF communal thread to have everyone buy one for thier team and share the data, but it didn’t pan out.

I’ve said it before, but with all of the incredible baseball data freely available on the web the biggest missing piece is accurate service time data. 

I’ve never asked where the person who runs Cot’s gets his.  He might be someone to ask although note that his figures are current through the beginning of this year.

Thanks Philly.

http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2004/12/new-york-mets.html

I hadn’t noticed that he had ML service time.  I sent him an email, and we’ll see what he says.

Someone sent me a 50$ gift card to MLB.com.  If the media guides are available from there, I can buy a few.  Just checked, and they are (9.99$):
http://shop.mlb.com/sm-chicago-white-sox-2007-media-guide--pi-2737446.html

By the way, if you google this:

bank of america mlb “credit card”

You’ll get a link to a credit card application, with a 50$ gift card to MLB.com.  All we need is at least 6 of us, and we’re set.

Lookee here… the media guide ONLINE for free:

http://pressbox.mlb.com/pressbox/media_guides/index.jsp

It’s still the 2007 media guides, not 2008.  I’m downloading the AL ones.  Philly, if you download the NL, we can then swap.

I applied. If I’m approved, I’d like to get the AL West teams and maybe Cleveland. Quick question though: should we get the 2007 guides or wait until next years come out?

Ah, looks like I can use the gift card for something better (I needed a new hat, anyway).

Also, http://www.mlb4u.com has service time and a listing of free agents (by year) for the next few years.

mlb4u.com also has service time info. Like Cot’s, it doesn’t seem to be updated for 2007 yet.

What I haven’t been able to find is any site that has info about how many minor league option years players have left.

Well, Cot, and an “insider”, have both offered me extensive data, so we’ll see what comes of it.  Another insider offered me limited access.

Thanks to all who are trying to help.  I’m sure that studes would have loved this information for his great Net Win Shares series.

Wow, great find on the Media Guide pdfs. 

I may end up putting together my own data set from those pdfs because it’s a big help with some of the draft studies I’ve down in the past.  I won’t get to that for awhile, but if your connection falls through let me know.

Let me know if you will download all the NL files or not, and then we can trade.  If not, I’ll download the NL myself on Monday.  It probably took about 1 minute per team to download.  Zipped, it’s 300 MB for the AL teams.

What are the rules for service time?  Can’t we figure it out from the retrosheet files?

According to the latest CBA: (you can find it from page below)

http://mlbplayers.mlb.com/pa/info/cba.jsp

ARTICLE XXI—Credited Major League Service

A. Definitions

Those Player rights expressly set forth in the Basic Agreement for which a Player’s eligibility is dependent upon credited Major League service will be determined as follows:

(1) One full day of Major League service will be credited for each day of the championship season a Player is on a Major League Club’s Active List. A total of 172 days of Major League credited service will constitute one full year of credited service.

A Player may not be credited with more than one year of credited service, 172 days, in one championship season. Major League service will be
computed commencing with the date of the first regularly scheduled championship season game, through and including the date of the last regularly scheduled championship season game. This rule shall apply uniformly to all Players and all Clubs notwithstanding differences in a particular Club’s schedule.

(2) For purposes of calculating credited service, a Player will be considered to be on a Club’s Active List if:

(a) placed on a disciplinary suspension by a Club, the Vice President, On-Field Operations or the Commissioner, or on the Disabled List; or (b) called to active military duty for up to two years or if called to emergency duty by the National Guard for a period of up to thirty days.

I guess it’s possible to figure the service time by raw data, but to me it seems to be a taxing work.

Does retrosheet list players who are on a roster if they don’t play in a game?

If you use the data from Cot’s I figured out something that was confusing me.  As I looked through, some of the players service time estimates seemed lower than they should be.

What’s going on is that its not a decimal.  If a player shows 3.131 years, that’s not a decimal, it should be read “3 years, 131 days”.

Tango

Sorry no, or at least not that soon.  I’m heading out on a weeklong business trip.

No, active rosters on any given day are not in the retrosheet files.  My bad.

Two different people sent me the files.  I’ll keep you guys posted.

Ok, Cot sent me his list, and an insider sent me his.

I spent some time doing the comparisons, and there was a discrepancy on only 28 players, which is g-dd-mn great news.

This is what I’ll do.  Since Cot granted me permission to distribute his file, I will do so (though I will reask him, just to be sure). 

The insider hasn’t given me permission yet.  Presuming he does not, what I’ll do is put a note on Cot’s file on the 28 players that are “unverified”.  YOU guys (or maybe Cot) will be charged to go through these 28 players, and correct their counts.

On the other hand, if he does give me permission, I will post both Cot’s totals, and the insider’s.

I think studes will be the first one that is immediately affected here.

Great news!  Now we can test to see if the 20/40/60/80 arbitration value numbers are close to being correct.

Tango, are you still planning to distribute the service time file from Cot’s?  (Or maybe you have already and I just can’t find it on your site.)

Thanks, Mike.

I was hoping to map it to the Lahman or Retro ID.

If someone wants to do that for me, send me an email at tom~tangotiger~net, changing the “~” to the appropriate character.

Big thanks to Mike for doing the mapping and a super thanks to the anonymous donor:
http://www.tangotiger.net/files/servicetime.csv

Data is of the form years dot days.

By the way, cot’s contracts differs from the above for these players:
Name
Santos, Victor
Percival, Troy
Miller, Justin
Rakers, Aaron
Seay, Bobby
Olsen, Scott
Laird, Gerald
Duffy, Chris
Fontenot, Mike
Komine, Shane
Moehler, Brian
Pena, Tony
Reyes, Anthony
Bulger, Jason
Brazell, Craig
Garcia, Anderson
Young, Dmitri
Davis, Kane
Williams, Dave
Miller, Andrew
Harikkala, Tim
Mahay, Ron
Kielty, Bobby
Peralta, Joel
Thompson, Rich
Hill, Koyie

Otherwise, it’s a match.

a few of the Cubs ones are off a few days...I believe just these three, but could be a few more.

Ascanio
Guzman
Pignatiello

Our service time is gathered from info that is sent to season ticket holders. I can forward along the scans if you wish.

My source provided those three players with these:
0.048
1.088
0.042

Your site is showing:
0.049
1.095
0.048

I will find out which is correct.  The Cubs media guide for 2008 is still not up:
http://pressbox.mlb.com/pressbox/clubs/index.jsp?content=chc#cubsguide

Tom

I’ve emailed you the scans of the info sent from the Cubs to season ticket holders. I would imagine it’s the same info that will be in their media guide.

Rob G is correct:

Ascanio 0.049
Guzman 1.095
Pignatiello 0.048

A second person has come forward to apply corrections to the original donor’s data:
http://www.tangotiger.net/files/servicetime2.csv

This data corresponds to Rob G’s data above, and therefore, should be considered more authoritative.

Retrosheet doesn’t include full 25 man rosters. They do, however, have a full transactions dataset, in CSV format:

http://retrosheet.org/transactions/index.html

There’s more info on the RetroSQL group - hopefully from this it should be possible to calculate major league service time for every player back to the start of free agency, although it might be a bit difficult.

Yowza.  I’d be really afraid to do that.  But, it would be quite the challenge.

I would like someone from MLB to come forward, anonymously if they wish, and donate his year-by-year service time data.

I’ll even donate one hour of my consulting time for free!

Won’t work after all. There’s codes for things like disabled list visits, but they don’t actually get used. Sigh.