DiamondView Lite

by FranklinScott on Jul 10, 2008 7:56 PM EDT

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?

1 recs | Comment 13 comments

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Comments

sounds bad ass—post that! Only question: what color is this truth machine?

by BrendanGreen on Jul 11, 2008 6:23 AM EDT 0 recs

Wedge votes for white and gritty.

by KevinV on Jul 11, 2008 6:17 PM EDT up 3 recs

1. There are enough other lawyers and law students who post here to tell me I’m wrong (not to mention Chuck), and I do not practice in the field of intellectual property, but I looked at the terms of use on their web site.

They “own or license the data, content, graphics, forms, artwork, and other material for this Site (the “Content”), as well as the selection, coordination, arrangement, and organization and enhancement of the Content (also, the “Content”) for [the] Site.”

Use, reproduction, or distribution of the Content is prohibited, but you can download or print one copy, “for your use in learning about, evaluating, or acquiring SRL’s or its licensees’ or licensors’ services or products,”

Interstingly, the terms of use allows search engines to copy the material to make search indexes of the material but not to cache pages. Appearantly Google has not read that part or does not follow it.

If the data you are getting from B-R is simply information about performance of players – AB’s, Hits, RBI’s, HR’s, etc that is publically available from multiple sources, I don’t think they’re going to come after you for using it as you have and sharing it with other interested people like us. If you’re using something B-R has produced as an analysis of that data, you’re getting into their intellectual property which could produce a problem if they ever knew you did it.

(Keep in mind you’re getting this comment from a guy who’s using a copywritten photo as his avatar.)

2. Hell yes.

3. Not until I see how it works.

"It's hard to win when you don't score." Cliff Lee, 9/28/05.

by Harry Doyle on Jul 11, 2008 11:08 AM EDT 0 recs

F.S., could just email B-Ref and ask?

by Brick. on Jul 11, 2008 11:26 AM EDT up 0 recs

But where’s the fun in that?

"It's hard to win when you don't score." Cliff Lee, 9/28/05.

by Harry Doyle on Jul 11, 2008 2:18 PM EDT up 0 recs

I’ve had to do some work on this. The raw results data itself is public domain like any other hot news. And if I remember by IP class right, raw math can’t be protected either. What B-Ref could probably protect is the code which distributes the data and makes it pretty and accessible and up-to-date. It would make an interesting case as to how much of that was going into FranklinScott’s database.

Of course, from a practical perspective, B-Ref (being, as it is, a couple of dudes) probably doesn’t have the resources to employ a legal dream team, and I feel safe in assuming FranklinScott isn’t a lip-lickingly deep-pocketed defendant. If it were me, I’d sponsor Eddie Mujica’s page and maybe ask nicely.

by fleerdon on Jul 11, 2008 11:49 PM EDT up 0 recs

I don’t know if the raw results data is entirely public domain. B-Ref pays for those data feeds.

by Jay on Jul 12, 2008 3:22 PM EDT up 0 recs

My bet is that data feed is the key term there. The fact that events like home runs actually occurred is public. If, for example, B-Ref paid some people to watch every game and keep an electronic scorecard, that would be fine. (Motorola did something similar and survived the lawsuit.) But the question would be, how much of the direct line out of MLB belongs to MLB, and by extension, B-Ref, and for how long? As I said, interesting case, and one I doubt anybody would bother to prosecute.

MLB would love for the data to be proprietary, by the way, because the league would then become a licensor for every fantasy league in existence. Then we could have black market fantasy baseball. Fun!

by fleerdon on Jul 12, 2008 8:30 PM EDT up 0 recs

B-Ref (being, as it is, a couple of dudes) probably doesn’t have the resources to employ a legal dream team, and I feel safe in assuming FranklinScott isn’t a lip-lickingly deep-pocketed defendant.

but he could assemble a team of lawyers and law students to come to his aid, once again scaring off the dudes at B-Ref.

"It's hard to win when you don't score." Cliff Lee, 9/28/05.

by Harry Doyle on Jul 13, 2008 1:06 AM EDT up 0 recs

Sean (the B-Ref guy) is a good guy and well-liked by everyone in the baseball blogosphere and many within the actual baseball industry. There is no reason to be ripping him off on the sly just because a couple of people here are lawyers. It’s both poor form and a dumb move.

by Jay on Jul 13, 2008 5:38 PM EDT up 0 recs

If you look at my original analysis, I thought that Franklin was not violating B-Ref’s usage policy by using raw information within the public domain. I took a different point of view with any analysis that made the information their intellectual property.

I do not support ripping anyone off on the sly (or otherwise), even if you really do have a team of lawyers at your disposal.

"It's hard to win when you don't score." Cliff Lee, 9/28/05.

by Harry Doyle on Jul 14, 2008 2:09 PM EDT up 0 recs

If you get scared off by the intellectual property, there is another way. Minor league game data is available in XML format similar to MLB Gameday information. Here is the first inning of last night’s Aeros game. There are several publically available XML parsers on the web specifically for the Gameday output that people use for PitchFX analysis that take the XML and put it into a spreadsheet or (even better) a database for manipulation. Someone with programming skills could throw something together fairly quickly. Here, for example, is a Python script that grabs all data for every Braves minor league team for a whole season – changing it to the Tribe is a matter of changing

‘ricaaa’, ‘msbaax’, ‘myrafa’, ‘romafx’, ‘dnvrok’, ‘brarok’, ‘dbrrok’

‘bufaaa’, ‘akraax’, ‘kinafa’, ‘lcoafx’, ‘mvsasx’, ‘dinrok’, ‘indrok’

That’s probably more trouble than it’s worth, but it is certainly legal.

by FredOx on Jul 11, 2008 12:21 PM EDT 0 recs

I wouldn’t worry about anyone coming after you. Worst case is they send you a Cease and Desist and you have to take it down. You are not causing them any harm or making a profit. Don’t worry yourself

by KevinV on Jul 11, 2008 6:20 PM EDT 0 recs