Statistical Data

From BR Bullpen

Baseball's history has been relatively well-recorded, thanks to extensive statistical data. There are at least three main levels of detail for statistical data about players.

Seasonal data[edit]

Seasonal data is usually stored in a database such that one record in a table is a unique combination of year, team, and player (and occasionally stint). For example, in 1997 Mark McGwire hit 34 home runs for the Oakland A's and 24 home runs for the St. Louis Cardinals. This information would be stored as two lines in the batting table. Baseball-Reference.com is an open-source data provider that contains complete historical seasonal data for major league baseball from 1871-2004.

Play-by-Play data[edit]

Play-by-Play data is usually stored in a database such that one record in a table represents one event. For example, each plate appearance or stolen base attempt would be given its own record. Retrosheet is an open-source data provider that offers play-by-play data from major league baseball from 1963-1992 and 2000-2004. MLBAM is the arm of MLB that stores this data in a proprietary format.

Pitch-by-Pitch data[edit]

Pitch-by-Pitch data is usually stored in a database such that one record in a table represents one pitch. In most cases, this data contains "TVL" information, which includes the categorization of pitch type, velocity and location. STATS, Inc. and Baseball Info Solutions are two companies that record data at this level of detail and offer it for a fee.

External Links[edit]