Here's the next installment of DiamondView Lite's efforts.  I've got the pitchers coded in and Sean Forman from Baseball Reference said it's fine as long as I cite them.  Again, please let me know if you think I should add or remove anyone's name.

 

Age	Lvl	G	GS	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	HBP	WP	BFP	ERA	WHIP
19	A	18	18	0	76.2	50	37	31	2	63	68	8	13	344	3.64	1.47	Christopher Archer
20	A	17	17	0	89.2	68	22	18	2	33	88	3	6	363	1.81	1.13	Kelvin De La Cruz
19	A+	17	17	0	84.2	99	59	54	10	36	72	10	1	389	5.74	1.59	Jeanmar Gomez
23	AAA	8	8	0	43	38	19	16	4	5	48	2	1	172	3.35	1.00	David Huff
24	AAA	11	0	1	20	16	11	8	2	8	18	1	1	87	3.60	1.20	Jensen Lewis
24	AA	8	8	0	41	41	18	17	0	5	27	1	1	167	3.73	1.12	Scott Lewis
22	AA	15	14	0	61.2	68	43	41	7	43	55	5	3	297	5.98	1.80	Chuck Lofgren
20	A+	18	18	0	93	88	40	36	6	32	101	5	3	393	3.48	1.29	Hector Rondon
24	A+	5	0	0	8	4	2	1	0	3	10	0	0	31	1.12	0.88	Tony Sipp
24	AAA	14	0	5	20.2	14	10	9	3	10	28	1	0	85	3.92	1.16	Jeffrey Stevens

 

Here are the first fruits of DiamondView Lite's labors.  They are the midseason lines for the hitters on Jay's Prospects that Matter list (plus a few of others).  If in the future you want me add more names, make your case.  Drennen and Rivero appear to be the biggest disappointments.  Weglarz!, though.  I chose to use LaPorta's Akron line going forward and anyway we're probably all familiar with the Huntsville line (I have a framed copy of it).  I also omitted the PtMs who are playing for Cleveland now.

 

  Age      Tm      Lv      G      AB      R      H      2b      3b      HR      RBI      BB      SO      BA      OBP      SLG      OPS

   23    AKR     AA          4       16         2        6       0       0       1        4        0        4        .375      .375      .563      .938         Matt LaPorta
   22    BUF    AAA      34      141        25       46       7       1       4       13        7       25      .326      .375      .475      .850      Asdrubal Cabrera
   20    KIN     A+       87      305        57       84      17       3      10       35       60       64      .275      .400      .449      .849      Nicholas Weglarz
   21    KIN      A+       78      314        53       76      17       1       0       23       28       44      .242      .316      .303      .619      John Drennen
   20    KIN      A+        64      240        25       61      15       0       3       32       19       58      .254      .312      .354      .666      Carlos Rivero
   24    BUF     AAA      74      288        33       77      20       2       4       27       20       45      .267      .317      .392      .709      Jordan Brown
   21    KIN      A+        88      338        56       94      27       2      15       60       41       70      .278      .362      .503      .865      Beau Mills
   23    AKR      AA        93      363        59       96      15       7       6       40       57       86      .264      .363      .394      .757      Joshua Rodriguez
   23    AKR      AA       91      340        52      107      18       3      10       72       42       71      .315      .389      .474      .863      Wes Hodges

 

By the way, I've sent an email to Baseball Reference telling them what I've done and whether I'm using their website fairly.  I wouldn't think posting these few lines would cause any problems, but I thought I'd let them know.

DiamondView is the name of the software the Indians use to collect and organize data about players.  It's supposed to be as automated as possible to save time and effort.  As the PD put it: “Consider it a kind of truth machine, whose function is to temper, or even override, subjective measurements with objective ones.”  I like the idea of a truth machine and have always wanted one myself.

Now, I'm no expert when it comes to spreadsheets and programming, but with a couple hours, I made some headway toward a DiamondView Lite.

Initial Desiderata

- to automatically keep track of the stats of the Prospects that Matter in a single spreadsheet.
- to upload the information to Google Docs or some such to share with the LGT community.

Implementation so far

Using Baseball Reference's minor league stats and Neo Office, I'm able to import the raw data for each player into a spreadsheet.  I can then select the specific row of information I'm looking for (in this case the basic stats for 2008) and collect it with the other players on one sheet.  I can then parse the raw row information into separate cells.

I'm not sure, but I don't think Google Docs allows extraction of web data, so I can't have the spreadsheet update itself online there.  I can, however, upload the already updated spreadsheet for everyone to see.

Results

1. I've got the 2008 data for most of the hitters on the Prospects that Matter list.  It should be fairly easy to continually update the data as B-Ref updates their stats.  It's not that hard to add or delete players.

2. Three hours lost not working on my dissertation.

Additional Benefits

The stats are sortable and allow comparisons among Indians prospects that ordinarily would be much more laborious to conduct.  The implementation is easily extendible to other stats, game data, and whatever else B-Ref offers. 


Issues for Discussion

1. I'm not sure about the legality of posting the spreadsheet on Google Docs or my website.  I don't, of course, intend to make a profit off the thing, but it might be bad to display B-Ref data elsewhere.  On the other hand, it's really just an extension of what we and many others already use the data for.

2. Would you find this a useful thing to have?

3.  Any additional hints on implementation or requests for features?

I couldn't wait for today's opener, so I simulated the game using the Strat cards from last season and some roster updates.  I have no idea what Chicago's lineup will look like, so I just made one up.  Below you'll find the boxscore.

 

 

BOXSCORE: 2007 Chicago (AL) Pale Hose At 2007
Cleveland Tribesmen

  Pale Hose                AB  R  H RBI   Tribesmen          AB  R  H RBI
  N.Swisher CF              4  0  1  0    G.Sizemore CF        3  0  0  1
  O.Cabrera SS              3  0  1  0    A.Cabrera 2B           4  0  1  0
  P.Konerko 1B              4  0  0  0     T.Hafner DH            3  0  0  0
  J.Thome DH                3  0  0  0     V.Martinez C            3  0  0  0
  J.Dye RF                      3  0  0  0     J.Peralta SS             3  0  0  0
  C.Quentin LF               3  0  1  0     R.Garko 1B              3  0  0  0
  J.Uribe 2B                    3  0  0  0     J.Michaels LF          2  1  1  0
  J.Crede 3B                  3  0  0  0     F.Gutierrez  RF        2  0  0  0
  A.Pierzynski C            3  0  0  0     C.Blake 3B               3  0  1  0
                                     -- -- -- ---                            -- -- -- ---
         Totals                  29  0  3  0          Totals                    26  1  3  1


Pale Hose....... 0 0 0  0 0 0  0 0 0  -  0  3  1
Tribesmen....... 0 0 0  0 0 0  0 1    -  1  3  0

Pale Hose                IP       H   R  ER  BB  SO HR  PC  SCORESHEET
M.Buehrle                 6       1   0   0   1   3  0  76  A1 C3
O.Dotel                      1       0   0   0   0   2  0  12  C4 C6
S.Linebrink LOSS  1       2   1   1   0   0  0  16  C7
Totals                        8       3   1   1   1   5  0

Tribesmen                IP       H   R  ER  BB  SO HR  PC  SCORESHEET
C.Sabathia                7       3   0   0   1   8  0  70  A1 C6
R.Betancourt WIN    1       0   0   0   0   2  0  13  C7 C9
J.Borowski SAVE     1       0   0   0   0   2  0  10  D1
Totals                         9       3   0   0   1  12  0

ATTENDANCE- 25,093 TIME- Day WEATHER- Average
T- 2:33
LEFT ON BASE- Pale Hose: 3  Tribesmen: 4
DOUBLE PLAYS- Pale Hose: 0  Tribesmen: 1
ERRORS- J.Crede
DOUBLES- O.Cabrera
SACRIFICE HITS- F.Gutierrez
SACRIFICE FLIES- G.Sizemore
WALKS- O.Cabrera, J.Michaels
STRIKE OUTS- N.Swisher-3, O.Cabrera, J.Thome-2, J.Dye,
J.Uribe-2, J.Crede-2,
             A.Pierzynski, G.Sizemore-2, A.Cabrera,
V.Martinez, R.Garko
GIDP- P.Konerko

Right now, DiamondView seems to be at peak value:

2. Recreating The Tribe - It's clear that Coonelly wanted to use the Indians as the model for the Pirates. Huntington certainly knows how the Indians work, but can he actually find the parts? The Indians have a dynamic GM, solid scouting, a great stats department, and the wild card of the DiamondView system. I've been told that one new GM asked about acquiring the system and was told he'd need to deal a top-level prospect for it. It's time to start wondering what D-View could fetch on the market. Sure, PECOTA likes him, but traditional scouts don't seem to give a damn. There's no way we trade with a division rival, so the Royals might be an option.

Poll

What would you take for DiamondView?

3%

Jose Tabata

1 votes

19%

Alex Gordon

6 votes

22%

Evan Longoria

7 votes

6%

Andy LaRoche

2 votes

25%

Clay Buchholz

8 votes

22%

Ichiro

7 votes

31 votes | Poll has closed

I spent most of yesterday in Norwich, CT at the Eastern League All-Star Game.  The South Division was coached by Akron's Tim Bogar and the Aeros had six players there.  Dodd Stadium is a pleasant place to watch baseball and the concession prices, relative to most stadiums, are excellent (2 buck hot dogs, 4 dollar 20oz beers!).

Unfortunately, the game was fogged out after three innings.  Since the gates opened hours early, I was able to watch batting practice and get some pictures for LGT.  

Here are the some really crappy videos of AstroCab, Barton, and Brown:

Outside the stadium:

Players stretching:

Jordan Brown:

Brian Barton:

AstroCab:

AstroCab and Barton:

I wanted to be able to watch mlb.tv games in full screen without using Mosaic.  Mosaic seems to hog a lot of memory and makes it difficult to do other things while I keep the Indians in the background.

From Lifehacker I discovered you can zoom in at pretty good resolution using the Control button and the trackpad (or mouse-wheel, I believe).  

Zooming-in on the regular mlb.tv feed yields a pretty good fullscreen that is easy to get out of.

Watch out, though, if you zoom in too far you might get Pronked.

If there are better ways of achieving fullscreen, please let me know.

Via Baseball Musings, a fun little challenge:

Come up with a 25 man roster from the past 25 years using the following rules:

Use each player only once.

Only pick one player from each year.

Respect the positions the players actually played (including set-up men, defensive replacements, etc.)

I did a bit of work on the hitters, but see what you come up with:

C 2005 Victor Martinez OPS+ 132

1B 2002 Jim Thome OPS+ 191

2B 2001 Roberto Alomar OPS+ 149

SS 1999 Omar Vizquel OPS+ 111

LF 1994 Albery Belle OPS+ 192

CF 2003 Milton Bradey OPS+ 151

RF 2000 Manny Ramirez OPS+ 185

DH 2006 Travis Hafner OPS+ 183

3B Uh, 1990 Brook Jacoby OPS+ 122 (but, whatever)

I'm pretty sure this destroys the Mets offense in the link, but I haven't added it all up.  

Today the Indians managed to win (2-1) despite having only one hit.  The AP recap claims:

The last time the Indians won while getting just one hit was April 12, 1992, a 2-1 victory over Boston.

This simply isn't true.  Although it may have been as cold today as it was in April 12, 1992, the Indians actually managed to get two hits that day.  Yet, there were two games played.  Matt Young pitched an 8-inning no-hitter in the first game that Indians won 2-1 and Roger Clemens two-hit the Indians to win 3-0 in the second game.  It may be true that this was the last time the Indians got fewer than two hits and won, but the AP's statement is false as stated.  I was only 11 at the time, but I remember how cold it was at the Stadium and how hot Clemens's fastballs were.  

Well, I needed an excuse to learn Applescript, so I made a little one that took a text file of the Indians schedule and made each game an event in iCal.  Maybe someone will find the calendar useful, so I've posted it on my website.  I'll apologize in advance for the somewhat poor formatting.

Here's the iCal file.  Make sure to command-click and 'Save link as...'. Please leave a comment if you downloaded it.

Update [2007-2-18 13:15:28 by FranklinScott]: Fair enough. I figured out how to add a start time and so I took the times out of the title. The new file is here

It looks like the Lake County Captains are in for a `treat' tonight when they face the Clemens family in Kentucky.  It'll be fun to see how they do.  By the way, the article mentions Clemens is preparing for the game like it's the World Series.

RHP Albert Vargas starts for the Captains.

Blah Blah

While I would be almost as content to sit at home and write snarky comments about the White Sox ring ceremony on LGT, it might be more fun to make snarky comments out loud.  Are there any people who live in the Southern New England area who are interested in watching the game at some bar?  I live fairly close to Hartford, CT but would be willing to travel a little for fun times.  There's a Southern New England Browns Backers club based in Hartford and I might ask if they want to do an Indians thing on Sundays.

I'm surprised no one else has posted on this, but BaseballMusings has a lineup analysis tool based on some work by Cyril Morong and Ken Arneson.  Here is a link to the tool:

http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/LineupAnalysis.py

Here is a link with some analysis of the analyzer:

http://educatedsports.blogspot.com/2006/03/lineup-analysis-again.html

I plugged in the Indians lineup used on the last day of the season and used the end of year stats:

Sizemore
Crisp
Peralta
Hafner
Martinez
Belliard
Broussard
Boone
Blake

The tool says this lineup would score 5.490 runs per game (or 889 runs per season, ceteris paribus).  The Tribe actually scored 790 runs last season, but of course didn't use this lineup in every game.  

The "optimal" lineup would be:

Martinez
Hafner
Crisp
Peralta
Sizemore
Blake
Belliard
Broussard
Boone

This lineup is supposed to score 5.595 runs a game  (or 906 runs a year).

The worst lineup is:

Broussard
Boone
Crisp
Blake
Belliard
Sizemore
Peralta
Martinez
Hafner

Which still manages to score 5.287 runs a game (856 runs a season).

If the tool is right, then it appears the Indians could pick up about 17 runs a year changing their lineup.  

I'll let others comment on the empirical adequacy of the tool, but one interesting aspect of the discussion has been that the third position in the lineup ought not go to one of the best hitters.  But many people cited the move of Peralta up in the order as a jump start for the offense last year.  The tool suggests he might be better placed elsewhere.
 

Who's the least valuable of the three, given that the Phillies seem to want a reliever for the potential Michaels deal?

Does anyone know Mota's contract status and value?  The reason to ask is maybe the Indians can save some money by giving up Rhodes.

Mota:                  BB     K
2004     LA  63.0   27     52     2.14     1.24     .228      
2004     FLA 33.2   10     33     4.81     1.01     .200      
2005     FLA 67.0   32     60     4.70     1.45     .254

WHIP, BAA vs Left: 1.62     .243    
WHIP, BAA vs Right: 1.32     .262     

My inclination is to rank them: Betancourt, Rhodes, Mota.  Especially if Mota is expensive.

It looks like a bunch of Indians are playing winter baseball.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=citadel-2_478915_264&prov=citadel&type=story

Franklin Gutierrez's numbers are particularly encouraging: 36 games, .323 (41-for-127), 23 runs, 5 doubles, 4 homers, 21 RBI, 7-for-7 steals, 23 walks, 21 strikeouts.

I can see letting Victor Martinez play in the World Baseball Classic, but why is he playing winter ball?

I wonder whether Ben Francisco isn't a better prospect right now than Synder and Gutierrez.

One of four:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-yankees-garciaparra&prov=ap&type=lgns

Most fans will recognize the name so there might be a ticket sales advantage for signing him.  Plus, he's right-handed.

Sounds like he might not get much playing time in New York.  Has anyone heard what he might be asking for in dollars and years?