Sunday, December 17, 2006

Baseball Reference: Play Index

Baseball Reference just went live with it's newest toy, Play Index. A searchable index which allows you to cull game level data rather than just season level data. The data was of course obtained from retrosheet. This is also the first part of baseball reference, that you need a subscription to fully use. I'll likely subscribe, as it's cheap and I've sponsored pages in the past.

I've been playing around a bit with some data and here are the top game scores for each year since 1990.

2006: John Lackey

2005: Chris Carpenter
2004: Randy Johnson
2003: Randy Johnson
2002: Curt Schilling
2001: Hideo Nomo
2000: Pedro Martinez
1999: Eric Milton
1998: Kerry Wood
1997: Roger Clemens
1996: Roger Clemens
1995: Frank Castillo
1994: Bobby Witt
1993: Randy Johnson
1992: Randy J0hnson
1991: Nolan Ryan
1990: Nolan Ryan

Whats a game score? A stat invented by Bill James in one of the mid 80's abstracts designed to measure how dominant a starting pitcher was in a given game. Start with 50 points. Add 1 point for each out recorded, (3 points per inning). Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th. Add 1 point for each strikeout. Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed. Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed. Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed. Subtract 1 point for each walk.

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