Baseball-DataBank.org has statistics similar (identical?) to those from baseball1.com but has conveniently placed them in the form of a 33 megabyte file that you can import directly into MySQL. With it, you can formulate pretty simple queries in SQL and learn, for instance, the top 10 players of all time in ABs..

mysql> select sum(Batting.AB), concat(Master.nameFirst, ' ', Master.nameLast) 
from Batting, Master where Master.playerID = Batting.playerID 
group by Master.playerID order by 1 desc limit 10 ;
+-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
| sum(Batting.AB) | concat(Master.nameFirst, ' ', Master.nameLast) |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
|           14053 | Pete Rose                                      |
|           12364 | Hank Aaron                                     |
|           11988 | Carl Yastrzemski                               |
|           11551 | Cal Ripken Jr.                                 |
|           11434 | Ty Cobb                                        |
|           11336 | Eddie Murray                                   |
|           11008 | Robin Yount                                    |
|           11003 | Dave Winfield                                  |
|           10972 | Stan Musial                                    |
|           10961 | Rickey Henderson                               |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
10 rows in set (3.73 sec)

I just finished reading Moneyball, and as I woke up this morning I was wondering what good online information was available on the mathematics and statistics of baseball. Such are the questions that Google was invented for.

Little Professor Baseball: Mathematics and Statistics of Baseball Simulation is the first link a search on “baseball” and “mathematics” produced. It’s a nice page that talks about the basic principles of baseball simulation, and gives you the rules for a simple (or advanced) game to simulate baseball games using whatever lineups you desire. In briefly glancing over the ideas, it’s a little simplistic, but it could be kind of fun.

In chasing down links from the above page, I found that baseball1.com has a downloadable database consisting of batting and pitching statistics for 1871-2003. It is even free for research use. I downloaded it as a CSV list, but other database formats are also possible. I like CSV’s because Python has a nice module for reading and writing them.

Further poking in Google output yields a book entitled Curve Ball — Baseball, Statistics and the Role of Chance in the Game. I may have to dig around and see whether it has good reviews.

Moneyball mentions sabermetrics: an attempt to bring some actual rationality to baseball statistics. I found this brief introduction and those terrific guys at baseball1.com have a veritable goldmine of links and tools.

This morning I was catching up on Baseball tonight to see what went on with baseball yesterday. I mostly wanted to see what happened yesterday when Reggie Jackson’s number 9 was retired over in Oakland before the Athletics-Royals matchup, but in skipping through it, I caught an editorial by Rob Dibble on the state of umpiring. Rob seems to think that if you’ve got a Roger Clemens on the mound, the umpire should defer to the pitcher and “not change the course of the game” by calling the strike zone as he sees it.

Pardon me, but why have umpires at all if that’s the case?

I think that umpires should be ruthless in their strike zone: establish it early, try to hold it, and don’t let who is on the mound or at the plate dictate whether you are going to call something a ball or a strike. Clemens doesn’t need your charity: he should not get the benefit of the doubt anymore than a first year rookie. What you’ve done before is all history. If you are a great pitcher, you have to prove it each and every time you come to the mound.

As a fairly recently evolved fan of baseball, I had never heard of Dibble, but after this diatribe it seemed rather obvious to me that he probably was a pitcher. Sure enough, he pitched for the Reds from 1988 to 1993, and had a reputation for a wicked fastball and pitching at people with little provocation. He was also reprimanded for throwing a ball into the stand and hitting a first grade teacher. Nice. I don’t think I’m a fan.

Today, Alex Rodriguez was traded to the Yankees for Alfonso Soriano. Apparently A-Rod will play third base for the Yankees.

I bet the Red Sox are wishing they’d have ponied up a bit more cash and done the deal now.

While the Yankees will field quite possibly the greatest offensive team of my lifetime, it remains to be seen whether that will net them a championship. They may average six runs a game or so, but I suspect that their pitching will be rocked with some degree of frequency. Kevin Brown is
old and hasn’t been all that durable, and If they get on a losing skid anytime during the season I think that Joe Torre will find himself looking for a new job.

But still, I know I’ll have my ticket when they come to town. It should be quite a show.

Addendum: The rumor mill is that Greg Maddux will be signed to pitch for the Yankees.
This is undoubtably part of a
clever strategy for winning another World Series.

What can I say, Boston over Oakland, 4-3 in game 5.

I love baseball, and this is the time of year that baseball is the most
fun (except of course for the impending end fo the season). Once again I find the A’s embroiled in the playoffs. My beautiful wife decided that I needed one more game before
the end of the season, and the promise of a matchup between Tim Hudson and Pedro Martinez was too much to resist. Two upper level seats were purchased and we were off.

While I love the A’s, my experience with playoff baseball and the A’s is not good. I’ve attended six playoff games of the A’s in recent years, and have seen no wins. So this time I left my “lucky” jersey at home, and merely wore my Athletics windbreaker.

It seemed to be a good move. The resulting game ended in an A’s victory, and was one of the best games of all time.
Yahoo! Sports has the complete recap, but let me mention a few quick highlights.

• There were four lead changes. No team was ever really out of it.
• Great defensive plays, like Chavez’s diving play to third base in the top of the 12th to prevent the go ahead run from scoring, or Chris Singleton’s retrieval of five consecutive fly balls in the outfield, including one which very nearly doubled
  off the wall.

• Mysterious calls of balls and strikes. Nobody ever seeme dto find the strike zone reliably. Plenty of base runners, lots of big outs.
• A double play called on an interference call by Terrence Long.
• Two different submarining pitchers (Kim and Bratford).
• An awesome duel between Durazo and Martinez in the seventh, where Durazo eventually walked.
• Durazo singling in Byrnes in the bottom of the ninth off Kim to force extra innings.
• The end all to beat all: a bases loaded bunt by Ramon Hernandez in the bottom of the twelfth inning, scoring Chavez on the suicide squeeze.

Baseball simply doesn’t get any better than this.

After the Giants came from behind to beat the Cardinals on Sunday in a brilliant and exciting game, my wife decided that we needed to go to Game 5. Carmen and I have been to quite a few playoff games in the last three years with the Athletics, and have yet to see a victory in a game where the other team was facing elimination. With some trepidation, I laid down my Platinum card and got two bleacher seat tickets in section 144.

The game was incredible

Reuter was flirting with disaster all through the game. He’d get two out, and then let two on. He walked batters on 3-2. It seemed like the Cardinals were getting hits off him at will.

But looks can be deceiving. He worked six scoreless innings. The Cardinals left ten men on base for the game. They couldn’t get the big hit to bust the game open.

Matt Morris was incredible. He was perfect through three, and seemed to have brought his best game. In the 4th he hit Lofton with a pitch, and the Cardinals wouldn’t get a chance to get
him out again.

Felix Rodriguez came in as a reliever in the 7th inning for Reuter, who was getting pretty high in the pitch count. He gave up the only Cardinals run, a sac fly by Vina that scored Matheny.

The Giants were down 1-0 in the bottom of the eighth, but the top of the lineup was coming around.
Dunston struck out looking, but then Lofton and Aurilia both singled. Kent steps in and is hit by a pitch to load the bases for Barry Bonds.

The place went nuts.

Bonds flies to deep left to score Lofton. The game is tied The chants of “Barry! Barry!” change to “Benny! Benny!” as Santiago steps in. Unfortunately Santiago grounds out to second, leaving the score tied at 1-1 going into the 9th.

Worrell pitches a good top of the 9th, as Vina makes it to first on a bunt only to be stranded. Suprisingly the Cards could have put a pinch hitter in for Morris, but they decide to allow him to
bat. The bottom of the ninth…

Morris is still pitching. Martinez pinch hits for Worrell, and fouls out. Snow then flies out to left center. Things are looking grim with two outs. Carmen is leaning up against me, afraid to look. David Bell then singles to left center. Dunston comes to the plate, and singles to left center.
Lofton comes to the plate, and Cards pull Morris and switch to Kline.

Lofton singles. David Bell takes a belly first Superman slide into home. The throw in from Drew is 15 feet wide, and he goes in untouched.

The place really goes nuts. Much celebration. Much cheering.

It was the most amazing game I’ve seen. A come from behind victory in a decisive game of the NLCS for the home crowd. Awesome. I guess we’ll be seeing Bonds in the big show…