The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at www.retrosheet.org.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

BBSP for the entire MLB 2006

To respond to the comment made to the last post, "is it possible to create the graphs for the entire league for a year? ... ...", I have created a BBSP for the entire MLB 2006 season.

Here's the plot (in pdf format).

Note:
There were 2429 games. (Each game is counted twice; once for "us" and for "opponent")
Home games (2429 of them) are highlighted.
Home teams were 1327 - 1102 (0.546).
The marginal plots on the top and on the left are exactly the same shape as they should.
The blue marginal plot on the top is the score distribution of the Home team, and the blue marginal on the left is of the Away team.
Home teams scored 20 twice (6/20 White Sox vs Cardinals, 9/18 Rockies vs Giants).

Here's the plot (in pdf format) without the details (w/o inside dots).

The MLB games are fairly competitive; one-run-games are very common. If you count the dots you will find that the most frequent scores were:
4-3 (123 times),
5-4 (105 times),
3-2 (101 times),
6-5 (97 times),
2-1 (78 times),
5-3 (77 times),
4-2 (76 times),
6-3 (76 times).

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Bob Gibson in 1968

The example mentioned in a comment to the last post.
http://data.vanderbilt.edu/bbplot/png/SLN-1968-19-1.png

Gibson was great in '68 by Baseball Analysts.

Friday, August 03, 2007

JSM handout available

Last Sunday, the 29th of July, I presented the BBSP at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Salt Lake City as a 15-minute talk in a session run by the Statistics in Sports Section of the American Statistical Association. A copy of the handout that I, um, handed out at the talk is available (in pdf) for your viewing pleasure.

The handout contains description of how to read the plots and the Roger Clemens / Houston Astros example. As high-resolution pdf, it is suitable to be blown up from its normal size (8.5 x 11 inches), and might make a pretty print if printed at 17 x 22. I'm not sure if it is 'suitable for framing', but it might make a unique and inexpensive Christmas (or your favorite gift-giving holiday!) present for your favorite baseball fan.