Double-Play Stats

> Hi -
> First of all, I know I'm the crazy guy who asks about
> statistics. However, this site has been very helpful
> in my paper (Mr. Westbay, I will send you a copy when
> I am done in a few weeks, as requested per the FAQ)
> and I am wondering about grounded into double plays
> statistics for the year 2000. Anyone know where I
> might be able to obtain such data?

Japanbaseballdaily.com has it available online

I like providing stats as best I can. Been too busy with other things lately, though, so I've fallen a bit behind all the requests. (I'll get to you, Eng-san, right after this.)

Stats made available are not for grounded into double plays, but for all double plays (with triple plays included) lumped together. Below are the team hit into double plays for 2000. If you want them for each player, that'll take quite a bit longer.

HiDB Team
  70 Giants
  79 Hiroshima
  81 Yakult
  98 Hanshin
 107 Chunichi
 117 Yokohama
==== ==============
 552 Central League
 585 (1999 CL)

  91 Nippon Ham
  97 Daiei
  90 Kintetsu
  86 Orix
  98 Lotte
  97 Seibu
==== ==============
 559 Pacific League
 585 (1999 PL)

Hope this helps.

Source: Baseball Record Book 2001, Baseball Magazine Sha.

Yeah - unfortunately, I would need them for all the players, please don't worry about it Mr. Westbay. I don't want you to waste your time - it's simply not worth it. I was hoping that they would be located in a database somewhere.

Sorry to add more on the pile, but I have another question. I realized today that spreadsheets that I have do not have positional categories in them for 2000-2005, any idea where I could obtain that information?

Thanks again,
Ben

My whole database is at your disposal here (as CSV files). I have full fielding stats from 2002 to 2005 broken down by position (outfield is lumped together as one). The "PlayerInfo" table has registered positions (infield is all lumped together, as is the outfield) by year for over 90% of the players from 1996 to present.

You may need to load the CSV files into a database for them to be useful. If you like, I can post the latest MySQL dump of the database for ease of loading. Or if you have an idea of the particular data set you want, I can create such a query and post the results. Just let me know what fields you want and how you want the data summarized (i.e. number of games played at a given position for each player by year - or registered position for each player by year).

Mr. Westbay -
Awesome - again, many thanks. I found your database at first a little intimidating (I had no idea what UTF-8 was) and I had a little trouble with the link you had up there (I don't speak/read japanese, my own drawback). But I did a little research and found this:

You can open UTF-8 files in excel:
1. change file extension to .txt
2. in excel: Open/File -> point to your file
3. excel opens file convert dialog, in "file origin" field choose: "65001:Unicode (UTF-8)"
4. proceed with other setting - You got it!
This procedure works in Excel 2003.

I was able to get it to CSV files and into Stata (my statistical software). Rock on!

Hopefully, I will not be bugging you with anymore questions.

Thanks,
Ben

Regarding UTF-8, my database is bilingual, and I would like to expand to cover Korean and Taiwanese baseball in the future, so using UTF-8 (a Unicode character encoding) to manage the data works best.

While I may not be able to answer questions about Excel (haven't touched MS Office since 1997) or Stata, please feel free to bug me about the meanings of fields, etc. For example, as noted on any of the player pages, the pitchers' starts field does not include complete games. And if you find any inconsistencies, please let me know.

When I opened the DB, I saw the Japanese. I think that is very cool that you can do that. I have cleaned the data at this point and it is corresponding very well with my MLB dataset.

I wanted to alert you to two small inconsistencies in the fielding dataset: playerid 253 (Oto Shigeki) has a goofy position "2150" and playerid, 1420 (jason turman) has a position of 9.

Question: Is there a place where I can see the number of games a player has played at DH perhaps?

Those two records have been removed. Thanks for catching them.

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I'm a little confused. From the team-level stats, the number of fielding double plays league-wide are routinely greater than batting double plays by 150+.

For instance, the 2000 CL had 683 fielding double plays and the PL had 701 versus 552 and 559 batting double plays, respectively.

What causes this discrepancy? Is there something with how the totals are tabulated that would cause this, similar to the complete games numbers.

The stats are from Oda-san who got them from the 1998 Encyclopedia.

Thanks.
Michael Eng

Good question. I'll investigate this when I get home.

Regarding the two inconsistencies above, looks like I got fields in the wrong place. Will correct that tonight. Thanks.

Late night at work. I'll have to postpone until the morning.

Question: Did Oda-san include pitchers' batting data in his data set?

Setting aside the likelihood that Oda-san got the 2000 fielding and batting data from the 1998 Encyclopedia, I come up with the same numbers using the "2001 Baseball Record Book."

2000 Hit into Double Plays vs. Fielding Double Plays

Team         HiDP  FDP
Daiei          97   96
Seibu          97  112
Nippon Ham     91  130
Orix           86  115
Lotte          98  136
Kintetsu       90  112
======================
PL Total      559  701

Team         HiDP  FDP
Giants         70   93
Chunichi      107   96
Yokohama      117  121
Yakult         81  112
Hiroshima      79  144
Hanshin        98  119
======================
CL Total      552  685

I can only guess as to why there's such a large discrepency. Perhaps the batting does only count "Grounded into Double Plays" leaving fly-balls/line drives that get two and/or strike out double plays out? I'm afraid I'd need RetroSheet level data to figure this one out.

In searching for an explanation, I did come across a note that says that what I have for "Holds" in the pitching data should be labeled something more like "Extra Innings."

Westbay-san,

I think that you may be right about the stat only including grounded into DP and it is not confined to NPB stats. For instance, see the 1960 NL, which had 1128 Fielding DP but only 875 Batting DP (which would support the GiDP theory). The data set does include pitchers' batting data.

Thanks.
Michael Eng