Essential Books on Minor League Baseball

Back in 1987 and again in 1998, a panel of SABR members compiled a list of books that should be in every personal baseball library. The first was before my time in SABR and the second I must not have been paying attention. But I was struck by the fact that only three titles related to the minor leagues were included. It's been eleven years since the list was compiled, so I wondered what books would be added by members of the Minor League Committee now.

An obvious choice would be the three editions of The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball by Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff. But there are others and I would be interested to know what you think they would be. Please send your list (ranked from top choice on down) to me here or write to my home address (please see the SABR online directory). This will also be posted in the Spring issue of the committee newsletter, Beating the Bushes. The results will appear in the Fall issue. (SABR and Minor League Committee members only please.)

Minor League Committee Meeting at SABR 38

The Minor League Committee will meet at the SABR 38 Convention in Cleveland, OH on Friday, June 27 from 12:00-1:00 p.m. If anyone would like to make a research presentation or share details about a research project, please contact me at this e-mail.

Call for Volunteers (Revised) for Paul Porter Data

Ted Turocy, technical coordinator for the SABR Minor League Encyclopedia, has posted a request for volunteers to work on data contributed by Paul Porter:

Hi again all,

I'd like to put out a "revised" call for volunteers to help move the process of getting Paul's spreadsheets incorporated into the database.

I have been working on some tools to automate much of the ID mapping process I was originally looking for. It turns out some pretty simple tests can identify around 85-90% of the players in a typical spreadsheet. Most of the rest are spelling variations, or other ambiguities (two players with the same name on the same club, etc.)

So, I'd like to break up the process into two parts. The first thing that we need to do is to restructure the team and league columns in the spreadsheets. I've just uploaded a file called
"1903-stdclubs.xls" which illustrates the process using 1903.

What has been done:

(1) Create three columns for team names, Team1, Team2, Team3. For multi-club players, enter the teams he appeared for one per column. (There are very rare instances of 4-club players. If this happens, just leave the original club entry in Team1. I will process these specially, there are so few.)

(2) Make sure the team names match the names in the database. Some common divergences include things like "St Paul" (we use "St." with a period), "Ft Worth" (we always spell out "Fort"). Check the website if you're not sure.

(3) Expand the league abbreviation out to the full league name as we have it in the database.

You should feel free to sort the spreadsheet if it helps -- just make sure that if you do, your spreadsheet selects all the rows and columns. Some spreadsheets have column C blank, which would mess things up. (By that way, if this does happen, my programs will freak out later on -- so we will know something went wrong. Don't be afraid that a bad sort will rewrite history!)

I am going to be traveling the next few days. If you're interested in doing this, feel free to just post to the list which years you've taken. If you're any good with spreadsheets, you can probably
manipulate one year in 15-30 minutes at most. Once you've finished them, send them to me off-list -- we will wind up using most of our 100Mb limit in the Files section pretty quickly otherwise.

Once this is done, I hit the spreadsheets against the database to map players. Then, the next task will be for a human to look at the unmatched players and determine why they failed to match. This should be a small fraction of the total players in the database -- much easier than having to do the whole shebang.

Ted Turocy
Technical Coordinator, SABR Minor League Encyclopedia

SABR Minor League Encyclopedia

The SABR Minor League Committee is pleased to announce the launch of the alpha version of the online SABR Minor League Encyclopedia. It can be found at: http://minors.sabrwebs.com

The SABR Minor League Encyclopedia project is led by Kevin McCann (Committee Chair), Kevin Johnson (Quality Control Coordinator), and Ted Turocy (Technical Coordinator). The foundation for the database is the donated work of Ed Washuta. Others who have contributed to its launch include Mike Emeigh, Frank Hamilton, Reed Howard, Rod Nelson, Paul Rivard, and Tom Ruane.

The database features individual batting, pitching, and fielding statistics (complete and incomplete) for affiliated and independent leagues between 1901 and 2007, plus league standings and statistical totals. Statistics and data for 19^th Century leagues donated by Reed Howard will be added soon.

Later this year, the database will be integrated into version 2.0 of the online SABR Baseball Encyclopedia, allowing researchers to view both major and minor league records for individual players. Because it is an alpha version, there are errors and gaps in player records. However, researchers can use this version to determine what information is already available, and what information needs to be supplemented or added.

Volunteers to enter data, identify and correct errors, and contribute biographical information are needed to help move the project forward. SABR has many researchers who are experts for specific teams, leagues, regions, and eras. Some have compiled statistics using box scores for leagues that were not included in the Guides. Donations of such research will help make the database more complete and useful for the SABR community.

If you would like to volunteer, please contact Kevin McCann or Frank Hamilton. Volunteers can also join the SABRminorleaguesDATA eGroup. To subscribe, send an e-mail to: SABRminorleaguesDATA-subscribe@yahoogroups.com