THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I saw this yesterday on another site… I looked up a handful of pitchers that I knew the injury histories of, and several of them were either wrong or incomplete. For example, it was missing the Felix Hernandez’s strained forearm of 2007, and the Phil Hughes’ hamstring/ankle in 2007 (happened in the Texas no-hitter). So it’s a good start, but it’s not perfect yet.

Baseball HQ also has 5 year injury logs in each of their Baseball Forecasters going back to 2007 I think.

I tried searching, but couldn’t find the original schema you set up, can you post the link?  A complete injury database is something I have wanted to do for a while.

This is what I came up with over 5 years ago, using the injuries in the 2003 season to seed my tables.

AILMENT TABLE
Ache
Ailment
Appendicitis
Blister
Blood clot
Broken
Bruise
Bulging
Bursitis
Chips
Circulatory Problem
Concussion
Contusion
Cracked
Cramp
Cut
Dislocated
Dizziness
Fatigue
Fever
Flu
Flu-like symptoms
Food poisoning
Fracture
Herniated
Hyperextended
Illness
Infection
Inflammation
Injured
Irritation
Jammed
Knot
Laceration
Lightheaded
Osteoarthritis
Pain
Personal reasons
Protruding
Pulled
Recovery from surgery
Rupture
Separated
Soreness
Spasms
Split
Sprain
Spur
Stiffness
Strain
Stress Fracture
Subluxated
Swollen
Tear
Tender
Tendinitis
Tightness
Tired
Tonsilitis
Torn
Tweaked
Twisted
Vertigo-like symptoms
Viral meningitis
Virus
Weakness
Whiplash

SIDES TABLE
Left
Right

LOCATION TABLE
Back
Bone
Cartilage
Disc
Fingernail
High
Joint
Labrum
Ligament
Miniscus
Muscle
Nerve
Pointer
Skin
Stones
Tendon
Tip

SUB-BODY PART TABLE
Biceps
Big
Blade
Cap
Flexor
Fore
High side
Index
Intercostal
Lower
Middle
Patella
Pinky
Rib Cage
Ring
Rotator Cuff
Thumb
Triceps
Ulnar collateral
Ulnar neuritis
Upper
Wall

BODY PART TABLE
Abdomen
Abductor
Achilles
ACL
Ankle
Arm
Back
Buttocks
Calf
Cheek
Chest
Chin
Ear
Elbow
Eye
Femur
Finger
Foot
Gastrointestinal
Groin
Hamstring
Hand
Head
Heel
Hip
Jaw
Kidney
Knee
Leg
Lumbar
MCL
Neck
Pectoral
Pelvis
Quadriceps
Ribs
Shin
Shoulder
Sinus
Spinal
Stomach
Thigh
Throat
Toe
Trapezoid
Wrist

DEGREE TABLE
Aggravated
Deep
Evulsed
Grade 2
Hairline
High
Mild
Non-displaced
Oblique
Partially
Reaggravated
Severe
Slight

CORRECTIVE TABLE
Appendectomy
Surgery
Wisdom tooth extraction

INJURY STATUS TABLE
day-to-day
15-day DL
60-day DL

GAME STATUS TABLE
scratched
left game
out x to y weeks/months
out through z

Thanks for the feedback and I’m very happy that people find it useful.  I realize it’s not perfect yet but that’s why I value the feedback I’m getting.  In the rush to get this before the start spring training, I unfortunately missed some.  Some of these are because I was using MLB.com as a source but some were careless mistakes.

Know that I’m trying to correct any mistakes immediately and soon I will be adding a true historical injury database dating back to 2001 which will include all DL transactions for active and non-active players.

Once again, thanks for the feedback and I’d love to hear more of it.

Absolutely fantastic work, Corey.

I will admit that the most interesting thing I can think of to do with such a database is to cross-reference it with other databases I have to see how these sort of things affect performance. Is there any chance of you publishing the back end in a CSV file for those of us who are so inclined? I’m sure a lot of us would be greatly appreciative.

Once I work out all the kinks of it and get the historical aspect of it, I was going to look into publishing it/sharing it.  Ultimately, my goal is to get people to understand the impact injuries has on the game at so many levels and this would be one more step in that direction.

Corey, if you are looking for people to collaborate with you in an open source manner, I’m sure we can set something up.  Let me know…