Ubiquitous...anyone who knows...little help?

[SABR Matt]

I've been told that 2005 play-by-play event fiels are available for the 2005 season...

Where? Retrosheet doesn't have it....specific URLs requested.

[Ubiquitous]

have you done a search for it yet? Something as simple as 2005 pbp will reveal it.

[SABR Matt]

Google showed nothing of the kind.

I tried the following variations.

"2005 Baseball PBP Files"
"2005 Event Files"
"MLB Play By Play Data"
"PBP Event Files"
"2005 MLB Play by Play"

got a whole bunch of nonsense.

Will attempt 2005 pbp but that's not the way I was taught to search the web...that isn't specific enough...pbp could mean practically anything.

[SABR Matt]

Found something but it's in reference to A.S.S. which no longer exists and is not being updated (the PBP might be there, but it wouldn't be in retro format and would therefore be useless to me)

[Ubiquitous]

Check out the A.S.S. site you'll be surprised by what you find.

[SABR Matt]

I'll take a look around...obviously...the more data I find, the better off I'll be.

I'm also trying to contact Gary Gillette...the guy who works with Pete Palmer on gathering and maintaining an accurate PBP record and statistical database and who apparently has the 1993-1998 PBP seasons...his 247baseball.com site doesn't seem to be recently updated but I tried his e-mail address from that site to see if I could find him in the hopes of working out some kind of licensing agreement to get access to the missing years. It's frustrating as hell not being able to plug that hole.

[SABR Matt]

LOL...I notice they have a spam problem...beyond that it appears they do have retro-formats for the last few years...so that's somewhat of a relief...why did they publish before retrosheet did though...?

[wrgptfan]

Join the stats_software group at groups.yahoo.com . Mike Emeigh has had the PBP available since early January. There MAY be a couple of mistakes but I have found errors in retrosheet that were correct in his.

[SABR Matt]

Hey Dave...yeah I joined this community...I need to figure out how to merge 2005's data with my existing PBP database from 1959-2004...

And I need to find some way to plyg the damned mid-90s hole. :(

[Mr. Red]

Join the stats_software group at groups.yahoo.com . Mike Emeigh has had the PBP available since early January. There MAY be a couple of mistakes but I have found errors in retrosheet that were correct in his.
Thanks for this site, I just joined, its great.

Hey Dave...yeah I joined this community...I need to figure out how to merge 2005's data with my existing PBP database from 1959-2004...

Where did you get the other years data from? Thanks...

[SABR Matt]

1959-1992 and 2000-2004 I got from www.retrosheet.org but 1993-1998 I'm still missing because only one group maintained that data and that company went out of business.

[Mr. Red]

Another quick ?, how do you use the a.s.s. stat program?

[SABR Matt]

sadly, I don't know...perhaps one of the other PBP users here can tell you...I am making use of PBP data by loading it into a database and accessing it with MySQL or R (two different programming languages with native environmens designed to process and analyze large amounts of data)

[Tango Tiger]

In the stats_software Yahoo eGroup (i.e., A.S.S.), there is an MsAccess PBP Loader file that works directly with Retrosheet data.

PBP files have been collected and posted by Mike and someone else (seaver78 I think it was) at that group for a couple of years now.

In addition, at ftp.baseballgraphs.com, the A.S.S. files and executable can be found there. Only works with PBP data through 2002.

Retrosheet will, shortly or whenever, have the 2005 data, and likely even pre-1960.

Tom

[Ubiquitous]

Taking a break from BTF?

Just to let you know I bought your book last month (was it that long ago?). Enjoyed it tremendously. I don't know which one of you guys came up with the layout of the book but extra kudos to them as well. "The Book says:" blurbs allow for quick and easy search and finds while skimming through the book, definitely a time saver. The PbP data use was definitely what I like to see in statistical analysis, since Win Shares first came out most stat talk has devolved into uber-metrics. It good to see what else can be done with the data.

In other words thanks for the memorable book.

[Tango Tiger]

Thank you very much!

The book says blurb was my idea, which I borrowed from Earl Weaver's book, with "Weaver's Laws". I agree with your assessment, and that was the reason we did it. The book requires a certain level of reader commitment, which I don't think might always be there. So, a reader can skip things he's not interested in, and go to the "executive summary" to catch up, and continue reading. Each chapter was written solo, so that form forced us a bit to conform to some common style.

Thanks again!

[Ubiquitous]

The other day we were talking about something in the "Left, Right, Left, Right" section. In it you guys talk about the possibility of keeping two pitchers in that game at the same time to always have the platoon advantage. The other day it came up in another thread here and it turns out that a pitcher may only swap a position once an inning.

[Tango Tiger]

Wow, you guys are absolutely right. Rule 3.03 states:

"A pitcher may change to another position only once during the same inning; e.g. the pitcher will not be allowed to assume a position other than a pitcher more than once in the same inning. "

When was this added to the rule?

[SABR Matt]

Not entirely sure when it was added, but I believe it was added specifically to prevent the situation you mentioned (keeping a pitcher in the field to get a platoon advantage)...I could of course be wrong.

[Ubiquitous]

I don't know how long it has been on the books but I bet it has been on the books for awhile. The 3.** go all the way up to 3.18. Of course it could simply be an attachment.

[Tango Tiger]

Definitely it would be an attachment. I'm sure I've seen this back-and-forth done by the Mets or Yanks or Larussa in the 80s or early 90s. I've got John Franco in my head for some reason. If SABRMatt has his Retrosheet data handy, he can look for it. Otherwise, I'll check it at home tonight.

[Tango Tiger]

I was close. It was Jesse Orosco.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B07220CIN1986.htm

Start from the 10th inning on. From the description, it looks like they did the flipping just once each inning, for 4 innings.

[Tango Tiger]

Jeff Nelson did a P, LF, P move, but there is no PBP available for this game:

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B07150BOS1993.htm

[Tango Tiger]

Now, there's this game here:

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B06180DET1967.htm

Catfish Hunter, with a 4-run lead, in the 9th inning and 2 outs, was removed and put on 1B. If that part of the rule was still in effect, this would mean that Catfish would only be able to pitch in the 10th. But, how likely is this to happen? His team would have to squander a 4-run lead with 1 out to go. Wouldn't the team leave the 1B (Webster), in there, as he certainly has alot more value than having Catfish around to maybe pitch in the 10th? Seems to me that Catfish would have been brought back to pitch if things got bad in the 9th.

[Tango Tiger]

Finally, I got one!

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B06060TOR1989.htm

BLUE JAYS 9TH: CRIM REPLACED ALDRICH (PITCHING); ... CRIM REPLACED BROCK (PLAYING 1B); ...CRIM CHANGED POSITIONS (PITCHING);

And he got the save.

So, the earliest possible date for this new rule was 1990.

[SABR Matt]

Really interesting...

Strikes me as odd that they would bother tacking on the rule as an attachment unless someone did something that would make an issue of it...

It'd have to be something like fielding 3 pitchers atthe same time so he you could use each of the three to get specific hitters out or something...LOL If there was a new-rule addition after 1990, I'd think I'd remember the reason why...

Any ideas?

[Tango Tiger]

My guess is when they introduced the "speed-up" rules, that they identified this as a concern. Maybe it is in high school, but I don't see why they'd consider this in MLB.

[SABR Matt]

Good theory Tango...

That could possibly be where it came into play. It does strike me as a bit silly to be preoccupied with that though.

[Tango Tiger]

By the way, we've been reading this rule wrong:

"A pitcher may change to another position only once during the same inning; e.g. the pitcher will not be allowed to assume a position other than a pitcher more than once in the same inning. "

While the first half looks ambiguous, the second half is not. The player is in fact allowed to be a pitcher more than once in the same inning. A P, LF, P scenario is permitted, based on the e.g. wording.

Whether P, LF, RF, P is permitted based on the wording is not clear to me, since the LF to RF switch did not involve "the pitcher".

[Ubiquitous]

Actually that was how I was viewing it. I viewed it as a pitcher could go P, then LF and then pitcher again but after that he could not move to another position.

So if you have two pitchers a righty and a lefty and the batting order is R, L, R, L, R, L and the righty faces the right hander walks him moves to left and the lefty comes into face the lefty strikes him out the righty can come in face the right handed batter but then cannot move out to left field to let the lefty back on the mound. He would have to leave the game and then the lefty could pitch but now the lefty after that could not move positions in that inning.