THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Retrosheet Announcement

By Tangotiger, 09:17 AM

Details:

Retrosheet web site updated with new release

June 25, 2008

I am pleased to announce that the semiannual update of the Retrosheet site has been completed. As usual we have released some new league-seasons:

1921 NL

1953 NL

1954 AL (NL was released earlier)

1955 both leagues

I presume everyone is pleased with our continued retro-progress as I am. However, there are two other special new features that are more unusual and that have been on the wish list of many people for a long time. These are:

The 1999 play by play data files are now available on our site!

The site no longer uses frames, but has a menubar at the top of each page instead.

We concluded a licensing agreement with Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette for the 1999 data a few weeks ago. Having the data for this season is tremendous in so many ways and with our other new seasons (listed above) we now have the past 54 seasons covered (1954-2007) with the exception of the “box score only” games for the pre-1974 years. These files include full pitch by pitch data as well, giving us 20 straight seasons with that detail, again with a few exceptions in the earlier years.

The change from frames to menubar is a significant change. The most immediate benefits are: 1)each page now has more width to display since the frame is no longer occupying the left hand side, and 2) the URL for each page now shows in the address bar so that it is easier to copy the link for use elsewhere. This should also increase our visibility to indexing services such as Google. Thanks to Marc Drumm for creating the necessary code to make the menubar a reality. Of course there is always the potential for glitches with this large an effort (our site now has over 491,000 html files) and I would be grateful to learn of any problems that are discovered so that we can fix them as promptly as possible.

Once again the lion’s share of the work was done by Tom Ruane who generated all those pages and integrated all the updates. However, many others continue their priceless contributions. Many people deserve praise and they are noted on the website. However I would like to give special recognition to the following: Clem Comly (most of the proofing of the new seasons), David Vincent (Umpire data, biographical data, ballpark pages), Dick Cramer (proofing 1953 NL), Jim Herdman (ballpark data) and webmaster Mark Pankin who maintains the site and keeps it up to date on a nearly daily basis.

Dave Smith

Retrosheet

• Sabermetrics • Data

#1 (see all posts) 2008/06/25 (Wed) @ 10:03

Wow. Awesome. I don’t know how these guys do it.

That’s gotta be tens of thousands of dollars worth of volunteer work, just for these updates.

#2 Tangotiger (see all posts) 2008/06/25 (Wed) @ 11:08

The licencing of Palmer’s data has got to be indirectly tied back in to MGL too I think. A portion of The Book proceeds went to Retrosheet (MGL’s share actually). A few months ago, Dave Smith said he made his annual plea for donations, but that it was not required because they had enough cash. I’m sure MGL doesn’t want to take any credit, but I figure he probably has something to do with this…

This reminds me of that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, where Larry David made a donation in his own name, and everyone was ho-hum about it. But, some anonymous benefactor made a donation as well, and people were applauding like crazy (and it turns out it was Ted Danson, who told a couple of people who spread the word). It left Ted’s legacy intact, while it tarnished Larry David’s somewhat. Enough that Larry David insisted that his contribution be renamed to “Anonymous”.

So, Dave Smith is like that museum curator, and MGL is like Ted Danson, and only a select few people know about it. That’s you guys.

#3 Rally (see all posts) 2008/06/25 (Wed) @ 11:32

Awesome. I’m getting pretty close to being able to compare the peak defensive years of Richie Ashburn and Willie Mays with Totalzone.

It’s quite an amazing public service these guys have done. I met Dave, Clem, and Mark at last winter’s Maryland chapter SABR meeting. Very nice guys, and very humble too.

#4 dan (see all posts) 2008/06/25 (Wed) @ 12:22

Is there any explanation for why the 1999 data was missing from Retrosheet?

#5 Tangotiger (see all posts) 2008/06/25 (Wed) @ 12:28

They weren’t able to get (or afford?) a licence for it… until now.

#6 dan (see all posts) 2008/06/25 (Wed) @ 12:45

Wow, it’s that simple? I’ve posed that question in like 10 different places over the past few months when the topic comes up, and no one ever has an answer. thanks.

#7 Tangotiger (see all posts) 2008/06/25 (Wed) @ 12:55

That’s just my guess anyway…

#8 fifth of (see all posts) 2008/06/25 (Wed) @ 15:50

Dan/6: Retrosheet didn’t attempt to use volunteer labor on creating PBP files for 1993 on since this information was being compiled by other entities. The data from 2000 on I think comes straight from MLB, and the 93-98 was licensed (donated?) more recently. Why 99 specifically wasn’t licensed at that time I am not sure, but it was probably a cost feasibility type of issue.

#9 KJOK (see all posts) 2008/07/01 (Tue) @ 21:19

Dan:

You asked previously, and I think I answered you. The 1999 data play by play rights were with Total Baseball IIRC, and when Total Baseball went bankrupt, Pete Palmer bought some of the assets, including the 1999 PBP. The 1993-1998 data was already available thru some incarnation of Project Scoresheet, so Retrosheet had those years.

To get 1999, Retrosheet had to license the data from Palmer, or do that year from scratch.

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