Comments on: Me, the Highway, and Life

By: Rich Campbell

Rich Campbell — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 08:12:26 +0000

Good luck, brother... I understand and will most likely have to do the same long term.

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By: Bruce

Bruce — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:59:34 +0000

Good luck Geoff on your next endeavor!

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By: malcolm

malcolm — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:40:55 +0000

Geoff, your time was certainly not wasted. You've made a name for yourself as a terrific analyst, fair-minded writer, and blog celebrity. You never know when these real-life credentials and contacts will pay unexpected dividends.

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By: Turbine Dude

Turbine Dude — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:30:13 +0000

Good Luck Geoff. I remember us discussing your very situation last year in an Applebees parking lot. You got a lot of moxy!

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By: LynchMob

LynchMob — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:35:14 +0000

#15@LynchMob: Hmmm, it feels like this is what I’m looking for … http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2002.....ndlwp.html … anyone have any experience with this?

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By: LynchMob

LynchMob — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:25:10 +0000

#14@LynchMob: Here’s some of the info I need … here’s an example of the data that’s available in XML format …

http://gd2.mlb.com/components/.....452104.xml

I can write code which can parse this … I can probably write code which can create the URLs (ie. do the navigation) … the major missing is code which will “be a browser” (ie. given a URL, return its content) … I guess if I had to figure out how to do that, I’d try to find some open-source browser and try to figure how it works … has anyone here done something like that? I’m pretty rusty at that … I’d guess my language of choice would be perl … or is there something comparable that you recommend? I can envision someone’s got a perl package that does XML decoding … in fact, there’s probably a perl package that does the web surfing too … OK, the wheels are turning … but, as with GY, there’s a highway and there’s life …

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By: LynchMob

LynchMob — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:03:33 +0000

#12@malcolm: I’m getting the data from “Full Play-by-Play” web pages at cbs.sportsline.com … such as …

http://cbs.sportsline.com/mlb/.....629_SEA@SD

… so it’s pretty “brute force” … so I’m unlikely to get motivated to do McAnulty …

I wish I knew how to write code which extracts the raw data from the new PitchFx database … I’m pretty sure it’s do-able … but I’m yet to have the info I need handed to me on a silver platter I’ve done some similar scripting / programming in the past … and I know my way around data and databases … there just seems like a lot of details I’m missing on how to get started with pulling that data. If any of you have ideas on where to find help, please point me to it.

If / when I do figure out how to easily tap in to the PitchFx data, then what I’ll want to do is look for how often Padres batter “take strike one down the middle of the plate” … which will first require me to define “down the middle of the plate”. It just seems like too many Padre hitters take a good pitch for strike one, then chase a bad pitch for strike 2 … and then AB is really in the control the pitcher.

I’m pretty sure that the Padres coaches are aware of what’s really doing on and doing what they can to improve it … it’s just fun for me to try to think of ways to keep up.

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By: malcolm

malcolm — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:46:12 +0000

Tom W. I’m back from SD, (how does anyone get any work done there?) See http://www.Pankin.com/baseball.com (SABR 36) for a 2006 analysis of OBPvs.SLG. I wrote Mark about a year ago. He said no one, including Paul DePodesta, wrote to him to refute his calculations.

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By: malcolm

malcolm — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:27:22 +0000

LM. I think, maybe even know, you are on to something with your first pitch analysis. It would be interesting to see the same data for PMAC, who seems to be hoping for a walk each AB and not showing the power he previously demonstrated. There's at least one more slumping Padre I'd like to chart. Where are you getting the pitch data?

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By: Didi

Didi — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:16:11 +0000

Have a fun trip, Geoff.

Anybody remember this player?
http://tinyurl.com/5xslu8

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