Line up and rotation tools - who's interested?

[kin9pin5]

Ok, so I started by asking Knight165's opinion of these to determine whether I would offer them up to the community.

I've used python (on linux) to build two scripts. One called lineups.py and one called rotations.py. Now, I have to caveat well ahead of time that the rotations.py script does not really provide the actual rotation, as determining how to figure out mathematically what the actual rotations were can be iffy at best. Of course, factors like days off become an impediment as well as the years and era's you might be looking for (like the rotations of the late 1800's were very small, like 2 or 3 pitchers, then all the years of a 4 man rotation, and then of course the specialty pitchers of today). So what the rotations script does is provide all the pitchers on the rosters, that started a game, how many starts they made, and a list of the games the pitcher actually pitched. So the ace of the staff (an often the opening day starter will be the guy who has a 1 at the front of his list of games pitched. That means he pitched the first game of the season.

I must also mention that these scripts were written to parse the game log files as provided for download by retrosheet.org.

Here is an example of the rotations.py script being run, and I'll select in this example, the 1915 Baltimore Terrapins of the Federal League.

david@david:~/baseball-research$ ./rotations.py
Years available:
1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880
1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920
1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950
1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960
1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970
1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
2011 2012 2013

Enter year (YYYY): 1915

Teams available for 1915:
BLF BOS BRF BRO BSN BUF CHA CHF CHN CIN
CLE DET KCF NEW NY1 NYA PHA PHI PIT PTF
SLA SLF SLN WS1
Enter Team: blf

Bill Bailey: (23)
6 9 14 16 23 43 52 55 61 64 67 71 74 78 83 86 90 94 97 102
106 112 123

Charlie Young: (5)
124 130 137 150 154

Chief Bender: (23)
3 7 18 22 26 30 32 36 42 48 51 53 58 62 68 75 81 89 96 100
104 113 118

Dave Black: (4)
143 146 149 153

Frank Smith: (9)
2 11 15 19 27 34 38 41 46

George LeClair: (9)
110 116 119 125 129 134 141 148 151

George Suggs: (25)
5 12 17 21 25 29 33 37 40 44 49 56 60 66 72 77 85 91 99 103
108 117 120 126 132

Jack Quinn: (31)
1 4 8 10 13 20 24 28 31 35 39 45 47 50 54 57 65 70 79 87
92 95 101 105 109 114 122 128 136 139 144

Rankin Johnson: (19)
59 63 69 73 76 80 84 88 93 98 107 111 115 121 127 133 138 142 147

Snipe Conley: (6)
82 131 135 140 145 152

As you can see here, Jack Quinn started game 1 of the Baltimore Terrapin season, with Frank Smith pitching game 2 of the season, and so on.

Now, with the lineup.py script, there are two options, if run with no command line flags, the user will be prompted for the year, team, and game number, at which point the official starting line up for that game will be output. If the user adds a -d command line flag, then the script will not only prompt for the year and the team, and the output will consist of everyone that batted for the team that season, with every line up spot that they batted in, and how many times they batted in that position. The intention with this was that it could be used to generate a default lineup (hence the -d option). Here is an example of the lineups script being run both ways.

david@david:~/baseball-research$ ./lineups.py
Years available:
1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880
1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920
1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950
1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960
1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970
1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
2011 2012 2013

Enter year (YYYY): 1915

Teams available for 1915:
BLF BOS BRF BRO BSN BUF CHA CHF CHN CIN
CLE DET KCF NEW NY1 NYA PHA PHI PIT PTF
SLA SLF SLN WS1
Enter Team: blf

Games available:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80
81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100
101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120
121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140
141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154
Enter game number: 1
1. Benny Meyer
2. Otto Knabe
3. Vern Duncan
4. Guy Zinn
5. Harry Swacina
6. Jimmy Walsh
7. Mickey Doolin
8. Yip Owens
9. Jack Quinn

This is the official lineup for game 1 of the 1915 Baltimore Terrapin season.

Here is a sample using the -d command line flag, also for the Balt. Terrapins.

david@david:~/baseball-research$ ./lineups.py -d
Years available:
1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880
1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890
1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920
1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950
1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960
1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970
1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
2011 2012 2013

Enter year (YYYY): 1915

Teams available for 1915:
BLF BOS BRF BRO BSN BUF CHA CHF CHN CIN
CLE DET KCF NEW NY1 NYA PHA PHI PIT PTF
SLA SLF SLN WS1
Enter Team: blf
"Fred Jacklitsch": [(8, 28), (6, 9), (7, 5), (5, 2)]
"Snipe Conley": [(9, 6)]
"Benny Meyer": [(1, 34)]
"Ed Forsyth": [(1, 1)]
"Otto Knabe": [(6, 28), (2, 26), (1, 24), (7, 14)]
"Jimmy Smith": [(7, 28), (8, 3), (6, 2)]
"Chief Bender": [(9, 23)]
"Dave Black": [(9, 4)]
"Joe Agler": [(1, 22), (6, 14), (2, 12), (8, 9), (7, 2)]
"Frank Smith": [(9, 9)]
"Harry Swacina": [(4, 31), (6, 23), (5, 20)]
"Enos Kirkpatrick": [(5, 24), (1, 9), (6, 6), (7, 5), (2, 2)]
"Steve Evans": [(4, 88)]
"Ken Crawford": [(1, 15), (3, 2), (4, 1)]
"George Suggs": [(9, 25)]
"Harvey Russell": [(5, 7), (6, 6), (8, 1)]
"Rankin Johnson": [(9, 19)]
"John Gallagher": [(8, 32), (9, 3), (7, 3)]
"Hack Simmons": [(3, 10), (4, 6), (5, 1)]
"George LeClair": [(9, 9)]
"Yip Owens": [(8, 50), (7, 19), (6, 14), (5, 11)]
"Charlie Young": [(9, 5)]
"Guy Zinn": [(3, 46), (4, 22), (2, 9)]
"Jimmy Walsh": [(5, 87), (6, 15), (4, 3)]
"Jack Quinn": [(9, 28), (6, 3)]
"Mickey Doolin": [(7, 70), (8, 30), (6, 19)]
"Jack McCandless": [(1, 49), (2, 41), (6, 9), (7, 4), (4, 1)]
"Doc Kerr": [(6, 1)]
"Bill Bailey": [(9, 23)]
"Charlie Eakle": [(7, 2)]
"Jim Hickman": [(3, 20)]
"Wally Reinecker": [(7, 2), (8, 1)]
"Charlie Maisel": [(6, 1)]
"Vern Duncan": [(3, 76), (2, 64), (4, 2)]
"Karl Kolseth": [(6, 4), (5, 2)]

We'll look at the last player in the list so you don't have to scroll back up. The last line, which represents Karl Kolseth, shows that Karl batted in the 6th spot in the lineup in 4 games, and the 5th spot in the line up in 2 games. For those that want to be picky, I will tell you now, that these are only based on official starting line ups and likely do not contain any pinch hitters that might have entered the game later. But this tool is meant to give a player of The Show, a quick and easy way to find out what the starting line up was, and who the starting pitcher was.

So what do you folks think, any interest for these scripts? I'm crazy about trying to simulate seasons using as much official information as I can.

I'd also like to thank retrosheet for making the historical game logs accessible from their website.

Thanks and I hope you folks enjoy this idea.

[mapmaker2020]

How can I get a copy of the tools?

[Caulfield]

Quote: Originally Posted by mapmaker2020

How can I get a copy of the tools?

if you want to see the starting lineup to a particular game visit baseball reference.com

[kin9pin5]

Quote: Originally Posted by Caulfield

if you want to see the starting lineup to a particular game visit baseball reference.com

Yeah, that's probably a more likely place to go now, but I created that script back in 2014, when baseball-reference had not implemented so many additional tools. They've definitely improved since then.

Oh, and sorry about the complete lack of response, it's been a long time since I have been on OS.