Albert Pujols had a down year.  My friend Don S likes to tease me about Pujols and his “off” times but this time it’s worth noting.  For the 2011 season, Albert hit .296 with 34 homeruns.  Okay, not bad at all.  But this was the first year in his 10-year career with my team that he had less than 100 rbis.  He had 92.  It’s also just the third year he’s had less than 100 runs scored (95).  It didn’t help when Pujols went three nine-game series with only one homerun and just three rbis.

Time to trade him?  I know one Cardinal fan who would be more than happy to relieve me of him.  I don’t think so, though.  Good hitters are at a premium this coming year.

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Here’s an interesting stat:  After Albert Pujols, who had the most walks on my team?  Would you believe catcher Geovany Soto with 61?  Hard to fathom especially since he only played 103 games.  Soto sported six 14s on his 2011 APBA card and I just seemed to hit them.

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Call it the “Tale of Two CY Starters”.   Exhibit #1 John Lackey had a terrific year for me in 2011.  He led my Thunderchickens in wins (15-10), strikeouts (154), and ERA (3.52).  I could usually count on “Big John” for a good outing.

Now, bring on Exhibit #2, Jeff Niemann also a CY.  Niemann had a hard year with a 5-17 record.  With a 6.02 ERA, it wasn’t a big surprise.  Thank goodness he won his last game or he would have lost more than four times than he won.

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Finally, we get to the franchise pitcher, Stephen Strasburg.  Now, Strasburg (BKZ)didn’t get to pitch a lot in 2011 for us (and we won’t see him at all in 2012).  He got off to a rocky start.  In his second start, he got ejected arguing with the man in blue.  Rookie mistake… let’s not hold it against him, ok?  Two starts later, he gave up 12 runs in two innings.  During my visit to the mound that game, I told him, “You’re finishing this inning, Rook.”  That obviously took a while.

During the rest of year, Strasburg settled down and even ended up with a winning record (5-4).  His 5.72 ERA wasn’t anything to write home about but take away his two inning “lesson” and it would have been 4.24.  He ended up striking out 69 in 67 2/3 innings.

But I guess the most important stat for us is this:  68-94.  That was our won-loss record for the year putting us in last place.  The only silver lining is that it gives us the first pick in the 2012 draft.

For once though, I’ll be happy to take that 10th pick.

“I love your blog and have been reading it for a couple of years now.  I was wondering if you know of any computer software to use for scorekeeping/stat keeping.  I have a MacBook and have been looking for someway to score my APBA games and keep track of the statistics.”

I’ll open this up to everyone to comment.  Let us know what you use to keep stats (I’m assuming baseball here but if you have a good stat-keeping method for any of the other APBA sports, chime in). 

Before we do, I’ll put my two cents in.  I’m a big Excel freak and I use nifty spreadsheet that was compiled by a couple of managers in the Illowa APBA League.  I wrote full description of it a while ago and it seems to be quite popular.  You can download a template from the IAL website, if you want to try it out.

An added bonus for Brad, as long as you have Excel, there won’t be any Mac compatible issues. 

I knew offense was down but not to this extent perhaps not this pervasive.  Runs were down (lowest since 1992), batting averages were down, even walks were down.  Strikeouts, of course, were at all time high.

Second, during our league weekend, Tedd M whispered to me that our Illowa APBA League player register hasn’t been updated for this year.  That’s his way of saying, “Tom, get on it”.  So I did.  While I did, I compiled our all-time leaders.  All that talk about stats being a chore?  That doesn’t hold for doing all-time leaders.  I love doing those.  Sorting and filtering in Excel and finding out who in the history of our league is the BEST ever in every category.  That’s a blast.

I wrote up a summary of the project over at IAL website complete with links to the all-time leaders and registry.

But both of those tasks did raise questions that I’m sure every APBA player probably asks themselves at one point.

1.  Decide beforehand what stats to keep

Whether you’re starting a league or doing an individual replay or project, plan what which statistics you plan to keep (and retain).  In its beginning, the IAL went several years (back in the 70s) without keeping strikeout and walk totals for hitters.  Those numbers are gone forever since even if we cared enough to go back to scoresheets and recount, they are gone.

Take a poll.  Decide what’s important.  Do you want to keep track of fielding errors?  Decree it from the beginning and be done with it.  HBP not important?  Fine, don’t worry about it.

Computer players, of course don’t have to worry because stat programs will aggregate everything for you but for the rest of us, we have to make those decisions.  The IAL for instance, does not keep CS statistics.  The primary reason in my mind, is because we play the basic game and the basic game doesn’t provide a accurate reflection of that stat.  If we played the Master Game, it might be a different story.

2.  Make sure everyone is on the same page

On a similar vein, make sure every manager in your league (or person involved in the project) is standardized to every statistic.  If you’re in a league, make it part of the constitution.  A former manager in our league didn’t keep hitters’ strikeouts back in the day reportedly because it was a “negative statistic”.  He eventually came on board but again, you can’t get those stat numbers back and if a historically accurate archive is important, that kind of thing can bug you.

3.  What is considered a “qualifying” player?

Ok, this probably ranks low on the importance factor but I agonize over it.  Let’s take an example from the IAL:

Who are the all-time ERA champions of the Illowa APBA League?

Is it…

or is it?

The difference?  Just 200 innings.  I made the innings requirement 1000 innings for the first set and 1200 innings for the second.  With a history going back to 1975, the IAL has plenty of big numbers to work with (Carlton and Hershiser are both 3000 inning pitchers) but I didn’t want to leave out a “Sandy Koufax”-type pitcher who did well in perhaps a shorter term… like Hunter.  The drawback is that we get relief pitchers like Reardon thrown into the mix which isn’t traditional for lack of a better description.

I had similar issues with hitting stats when relative IAL newcomer Joe Mauer was showing up in the all-time batting average and on-base percentage lists.

Granted, this is not the make-all break-all worst problem that a league can face but it’s food for thought.

Finally, while we’re on the topic of stats, I just leave this here.  It’s a score sheet I use for my league and replay games.  Some of you might find it handy.  It’s in MS Word format.  It even has a spot in the upper right hand corner to put your team name or logo if you want.

There are most certainly other stat related issues that leagues and replayers can run up against (one I have successfully avoided was what method to use to store and display them).  I’m looking forward to hearing what other have to say about pressing issues with stats especially with leagues and replays.

If you’re interested in the results, I wrote up a little summary for the league with links to the lists. 

Working through the process, it did make me think though.  Why is it that historical stats for an APBA league are so important?  ARE they important?  The managers in our league seem to appreciate it.  What prompts us in long running leagues to search our history and archive it when it seems so trivial in the wide scheme of things?

Some ideas why they might be so important:

Historical Archives

Quite simply, so the stats are there.  If you as a league, have played for years and years, you want a record of it.  What’s the point of playing a full season if you are only going to throw away the data?

Historical Context

Once you have a database of historical league statistics, put it into perspective.  With the right kind of software (we use MS Excel but any good database or spreadsheet software will do), you can manipulate it to your wishes.  Sort by stat categories, filter by teams or seasons (or even better, both).  By doing this, you can give your league a working register and find a team from a certain and play “remember when?”. 

Historical Comparison

Comparison among Major League Baseball player across different eras using the common statistics has been found to be a tad unfair.  That’s probably true with APBA leagues as well especially when your league spans 35 years like ours does.  But it’s human nature to do it anyway.  Questions like, ‘who had the highest batting average in a season?’.  You just want to know.  A bit of interesting IAL trivia:  Roy Oswalt has a career 3.50 ERA and places 4th all-time.  No other pitcher in our top ten comes from this century.  To me, that makes his placing the most unique.

Having a historical archive of stats will uncover stories you never knew were there.  Another IAL example:  For years, Greg Maddux and Roger Clemens were neck and neck in major stat categories most notably wins.  Clemens had the nod in strikeouts of course.  The two were the dominant active pitchers in the league and it almost seemed we would check in to see who had the lead every month.  Clemens retired before Maddux so he was eclipsed in wins but it was a fantastic race to watch that we would not have known existed without a stats archive. 

PS As you can see by the graphic at right, they both ended up with over 300 wins for their IAL career.

Historical “History”

With the stats in the book so to speak, the memories come to life.  When I finished my project and notified the rest of the league, I received a few emails from managers.  Comments about those special seasons when their player broke the league record.  Not all of them good either… “Yeah, I remember when Preston Wilson hit .165”.   For me, it was Mark McGwire and his 70 homeruns to break the record in the last at-bat of the season only for him to break it the next season IN THE LAST AT-BAT. 

The point of this article is, APBA baseball stats should serve their purpose as they do for real life baseball.  They should frame the game you play, memorialize it (I mean that in a literal sense not necessarily in a sentimental way) and preserve it.  I know I receive a lot of enjoyment out of browsing and working with our stat archives however trivial they may be outside our ten person league. 

Comments?

At least the APBA fielding ratings (flawed as it is) did have some bearing on his fielding stats.  The point of this article is to get a sense what stats categories (beyond the very conventional ones) does your league keep.  Also, is it spelled out in your league’s constitution exactly which stats the manager is required keep? 

I realize that in computer leagues, the question is a moot point.  The stats are kept for you.  ALL the stats.  So there isn’t really a decision to be made.  But in basic or master board game leagues it’s quite different.  And quite different from each other. 

The Illowa APBA League has evolved in stat keeping in the first couple of years.  In its first three years (1975-1977), managers didn’t tally hitters’ strikeouts or walks.  Interestingly, a look at our historical stats show that not all managers got on board with record keeping with these stats at the same time.  Indeed, our last holdout didn’t start recording batters’ strikeouts until 1989. 

Following the Major League’s lead, we recorded the Game Winning RBI (GWRBI) which was immensely popular (please sense the sarcasm).  We ditched it as soon as the majors did.  We don’t include the GWRBI in our historical register. 

The only other change we’ve made was to add batters’ HBP starting in 2004.  In hindsight, that was probably a long time coming.

Other than that, we keep the standard categories.  For hitters G, AB, R, H, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, BB, K, SB, HBP, AVG, SLG, OBP.  For pitchers, G, GS, CG, IP, H, R, ER, BB, K, W, L, Sv, ShO, ERA.

As I said, those who play Master Game have a vested interest in recording different stats than those who play basic game.  In the basic game, it has no bearing how many homeruns CC Sabathia gave up  but in the Master Game with his ‘G’ HRA rating it is a little more interesting to see if over a course of a full season if he was able to lower his longball rate. 

The same could be said for balks, wild Pitches, caught stealing, and even pick-offs. 

So just curious… beyond the conventional ones, what stat categories does your league keep?  Which ones, if any, did you ditch?

We’re 15-24 and don’t see much hope of improving.  But the strange thing is this… we lead the lead in homeruns with 62!  That is much thanks to Albert Pujols who already has 13.  Him and a couple others like Geovany Soto and Eric Soto with 8 each and Mike Cameron with 6.  But still, last place and leading the league in homers.  Pretty odd, huh?

Not as odd as this.  We are leading the IAL in RUNS SCORED.  Yes, 39 games is a small sample size but still, that goes beyond weird. 

One reason I can think of is that we had two slug fests where we scored over 18 runs each (one was over 20).  When it comes to a sample size like 39 games like 39 games, that could make a difference. 

Still, I bet you’re thinking “if this guy’s in last place and he’s leading the league in scoring, he probably has some atrocious pitching”.  Well, my pitching grades are nothing to write home about (nothing better than a C in the rotation) but so far the stats are at least mediocre.

Seventh in the league ain’t great but is aint horrible either. 

Some would see this and think this is a downplay on good offense against offense.  I think my team just has had bad timing so far.  When we score runs, we’ll score them 12 at a time then refuse to score for a couple games. 

Still, it’s a fun offense.  At least we score runs.

It’s the 28th today.  That’s a magic day in the Illowa APBA League because that’s when our stats our due from each manager.  My cross town rival Brando loves doing stats.  When we come home from a long tiring weekend where we’ve 30 league games, he tells me he’s going to stay up late that night and tally his team’s stats. 

Not me.  I’m notorious for waiting till 11pm on the 28th to email them to our commish.  It’s not that I don’t like doing stats it’s just that I’m a procrastinator.  Why do now that you can put off till the 28th? 

I have streamlined the process though.  Back in day, my first 10-15 years in the league, I would tabulate stats for each player individually before going on to the next.  That meant a lot of shuffling of papers and quite honestly, losing my place where I was at.

Now, I can thank Brando for a pretty cool Excel spreadsheet he passed on to me.  The spreadsheet has a game log for each player and pitcher.  which links to a worksheet on the same spreadsheet which compiles the totals.  When doing the stats, I just do one game at a time which means if I get interrupted even midstream of a game, I can pick up where I was at without missing a beat. 

Another advantage from the new system is picking up on trends and streaks.  I know now that Mike Cameron struck out 10 times in his first four games (oh, yes he did).  And that in 4 straight appearances, rookie Chris Perez gave up 9 runs in 4 1/3 innings (you bet it’s true).

The spreadsheet doesn’t help my team have better stats or a better record (I’m 12-18 so far this year).  Nor does it help me get my stuff in any earlier though I did send them in on the 27th this month. 

Maybe there’s a trend emerging. 

Thanks again to our fantastic commish at the IAL, we have the MLB stats in Excel format (zipped).

The spreadsheet includes:

• pretty much all hitting and pitching stats
• games played at position
• pitchers’ hitting
• a plus for APBA fans, certain offensive stats/36 PA so you can approximate hitter’s APBA cards.
• plus a lot more!

Plus those with Excel skills can sort and filter to their hearts’ content.

You can download the Excel file here. I hope you all can find it useful.