The interesting part?  The Thunderchickens led all ten teams in runs scored. 

When the Thunderchickens did win, we had a proclivity to manage some high scoring games which certainly helped.  The league high ERA of 5.17 probably contributed to this anomaly, as well.

Another slight oddity… our last place team has a good chance of having someone win the league MVP award.  Albert Pujols ended the season leading the IAL in batting average, RBIs, slugging percentage, on-base percentage not to mention coming in second in runs. 

He has some stiff competition (Ryan Howard hit 50 dingers this seaosn in the IAL) but we’re hoping.

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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?

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Any league that’s been around long enough to say they have a “history” should pat themselves on the back.  Those who had the forethought to keep their history documented and intact for their benefit (and others) earn a gold star in my book. 

Steve and folks in TBL have done a fine job blending a functional interface with an amazing amount of league stats and figures.  I’m quite impressed.

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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.

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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. 

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Accumulating the Data

Documenting your APBA league’s history of stats, transactions, standings and anything your league deems important and worth remembering can be a tedious task in the short run.  However, I’ve found that once the process is in place, it’s well worth it.  Our league, the Illowa APBA League, has kept lifetime stats for every player and pitcher in our 33 year history.  We keep them in an Excel spreadsheet that updated every year.  

We didn’t always do this though.  Sometime in the 80′s, (The APBA co-Blogger) Tedd spent hours/days inputting years of our data from newsletters into digital format.  At the time, the best format available was Norton Textra, a DOS-based text editor.  But the important thing was that it was being documented.  Each year, the data was updated with new stats.

Taking Stats to a new level:  Sortable Data

Along came the 90′s and Microsoft Excel.  Our commish, Mike Bunch took the existing text files and with a lot of tough love, he converted it to the Excel format.  The difference of having our lifetime league stats in a sortable, filterable format was quite dramatic. 

Oh, the things that we could do!

• Sorting All-time leaders for all stat categories
• All-time single season leaders
• Leaderboards for a particular season
• (my favorite) all time worst "leaders"
• single season leaders by a particular team
• (for those who want to reminisce) filter by team and year and you have the roster and stats of any team for that year

The possibilities are endless.

Sharing the info

Of course, having this data is one thing.  Sharing it is another.  Among our league, we are content to pass around the Excel spreadsheet for managers to play around with.  But what if we wanted to share our wealth of info with other APBA fans and especially other leagues.  Of course, the Web is the obvious answer.  I’m not a database programmer but if you’re not too concerned about how it looks, Microsoft Excel will save a worksheet to web format.

So I cleaned up the database fields a bit (only the stuff everyone would be interested in) and put the Illowa APBA League Register on the web.  Thanks to the team effort of Mike and Tedd, it’s been updated every year and you can see it here. 

There are some side products of our league register that give it more meaning.  For example, our All-Time Leaderboard (both career and single season).  Also, our league Hall of Fame which we vote for annually.  Finally, I put up a manager register which included won-loss records plus all-time records for pretty much every skipper who has rolled dice in our league (caveat:  this hasn’t been updated in a couple years). 

Another project I undertook was something I called Season Spotlight.  Starting with our initial season, 1975, I would do a quick page on that season.  Each page would have the standings, leaderboard, and maybe a short writeup.  Here is the entry point for the IAL Season Spotlights.  A lotta fun for us old guard who like to reminisce about the old times.  The project is still in the works… I’m up to 1986. 

Collaboration

Enter Dom Provisiero, from the O.Z. League.  Now I’ve known Dom via email since the early 90s.  He and I have been seem to correspond with each other say, every three or four years.  The last time I heard from him, he asked about our league database and was asking how we did though he said their league wasn’t QUITE ready to go through with it. 

Well, two weeks ago, I heard from Dom again and it seems his league was ready to document their league stats.  So I emailed him our league spreadsheet in case it might give him some ideas.  We also set up a phone call. 

After all these years talking to Dom via email, it was nice to put a New York voice to the name.  It was indeed a pleasure to talk to him.  He had a chance to peruse the spreadsheet and passed it on to a friend with some Excel and database skills. 

In his research, Dom did find a web site which belongs to the Mid-West Baseball League that does a pretty incredible job of displaying stats, transactions, draft history.  If I knew anything about web programming, I’d want our leagues’ page to look a little like theirs.  Take a look at the MWBL’s page.  It might give your league some ideas. 

Summary

One piece of advice for any league… it’s never too early to begin documenting the stats and data for your league.  Even if you don’t make it look all pretty, at least make sure you collect it into one repository.  Down the road, you’ll be grateful.  While, we at the IAL have been pretty good about it, there are still some holes in our history.  There are years where we don’t know who won our MVP or Cy Young awards.  While we could probably obtain transactions and draft picks via most recent years via newsletters, those during our early years are gone.  There’s a lot of work that goes into it but if you have an APBA league with a rich history, it’s well worth it to document it. 

I’d love to hear how other groups have documented their leagues stats and/or history.  Let us know in the comment section.  If you have it on the web, leave a link… I’ll post it. 

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If you want a better look at it before downloading, just click the image. 

Feel free to customize to your use.  It’s even got a spot in the upper right hand corner to put your team name or logo. 

The file is in Word 2003 format. 

Download Scoresheet

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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.

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