The Lahman Baseball Database Version 5.0 Release Date: December 15, 2002 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- README CONTENTS 0.1 Copyright Notice 0.2 Contact Information 1.0 Release Contents 1.1 Introduction 1.2 What's New 1.3 Acknowledgements 1.4 Using this Database 1.5 Revision History 2.0 Data Tables 2.1 MASTER table 2.2 Batting Table 2.3 Pitching table 2.4 Fielding Table 2.5 All-Star table 2.6 Hall of Fame table 2.7 Managers table 2.8 Teams table 2.9 BattingPost table 2.10 PitchingPost table 2.11 TeamFranchises table 2.12 FieldingOF table 2.13 ManagersHalf table 2.14 TeamsHalf table 2.15 Salaries table 2.16 SeriesPost table 2.17 AwardsManagers table 2.18 AwardsPlayers table 2.19 AwardsShareManagers table 2.20 AwardsSharePlayers table ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 0.1 Copyright Notice & Limited Use License This database is copyright 1996-2002 by Sean Lahman. A license is granted for individual use for research purposes. It may not be re-distributed without permission. Any commercial use, or other dissemination of the database in part or in whole is prohibited. Use of this database constitutes acceptance of these terms. For licensing information or further information, contact the Baseball Archive at: database@baseball1.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 0.2 Contact Information Web site: http://www.baseball1.com E-Mail : database@baseball1.com This database can also be purchsed on CD-ROM. See http://baseball1.com/statistics for more details. If you're interested in contributing to the maintenance of this database or making suggestions for improvement, please consider joining our mailinglist at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/baseball-databank/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Release Contents This release of the database can be downloaded in several formats. The contents of each version are listed below. MS Access Versions: lahman50.mdb readme50.txt Comma Delimited Version: readme50.txt Allstar.csv AwardsManagers.csv AwardsPlayers.csv AwardsShareManagers.csv AwardsSharePlayers.csv Batting.csv BattingPost.csv Fielding.csv FieldingOF.csv HallOfFame.csv Managers.csv ManagersHalf.csv Master.csv Pitching.csv PitchingPost.csv Salaries.csv SeriesPost.csv Teams.csv TeamsFranchises.csv TeamsHalf.csv ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.1 Introduction This database contains pitching, hitting, and fielding statistics for Major League Baseball from 1871 through 2002. It includes data from the two current leagues (American and National), the four other "major" leagues (American Association, Union Association, Players League, and Federal League), and the National Association of 1871-1875. This database was created by Sean Lahman, who pioneered the effort to make baseball statistics freely available to the general public. What started as a one man effort in 1994 has grown tremendously, and now a team of researchers have collected their efforts to make this the largest and most accurate source for baseball statistics available anywhere. (See Acknowledgements below for a list of the key contributors to this project.) None of what we have done would have been possible without the pioneering work of Hy Turkin, S.C. Thompson, David Neft, and Pete Palmer (among others). All baseball fans owe a debt of gratitude to the people who have worked so hard to build the tremendous set of data that we have today. Our thanks also to the many members of the Society for American Baseball Research who have helped us over the years. We strongly urge you to support and join their efforts. Please vist their website (www.sabr.org). This database can never take the place of a good reference book like Total Baseball. But it will enable people do to the kind of queries and analysis that those traditional sources don't allow. If you have any problems or find any errors, please let us know. Any feedback is appreciated ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.2 What's New Version 5.0 represents a major leap forward for the database. There have been major improvements made to the design, tremendous additions of new data, and a lot of effort to enforce the integrity of the database. Details of the design for each table are available in section 2.0 of this document. Below is a summary of the changes made for this version of the database. a) The master table has been redesigned, with several new fields added. PlayerIDs have been split into several categories. There is now a playerID, a manager ID, and a Hall of Fame ID. People have an ID for each category in which they belong. Anybody who appeared as a player will have a player ID, anybody who served as a manger will have a manager ID, and anybody who received votes for the Hall of Fame will have a HOF ID. Some individuals will have all three and some may have just one. These new IDs help to better link with the corresponding tables. Information about place of death has been added. The name fields have been expanded from two to five fields, to allow the addition of more detail. The height field has been compressed from two to one. Now, an individual's height is expressed in inches. The debut year field has been replaced with debut date. College information has been added for many players, although this data is incomplete. Finally, some cross refernce tools have been added, with the IDs for each player that were used in previous versions of the database as well as in other databses, such as RetroSheet's player codes. b) TeamIDs now conform to the IDs created by RetroSheet. Previous issues of inconsistencies with team names have all been resolved. Another table has been added called "TeamsFranchises," in recognition of the fact that for a variety of reasons, teams often change names. The creation of franchise IDs lets us connect those team together (eg., the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers or the California & Anaheim Angels). As with the master table, some cross reference fields have been added here to ensure compatability with other databases. c) Stint IDs have been added to the batting, pitching, and fielding tables. For players that played with more than one team in a season, this field records the order in which he appeared with those teams. d) A new table has been added called "FieldingOF", which gives total games played at each of the three outfield positions for all outfielders from 1871 to 1995. For players after 1995, the breakdown has always been included in the fielding table. e) The "Pos" field has been removed from the batting table. This information is available in the fielding table. f) In the pitching file, the field for "Inninings Pitched" has been replaced with "IPouts." To calculate innings pitched, simply divide this number by three. This is an attempts to solve problems with rounding errors using fractional innings. g) Double play data has been added to the batting table and the post season abtting table. h) The fielding table has added three new fields: Games Started, definsive innings played, and zone rating i) The Awards table has been split into four pieces. Awards for managers and players have been separated, as part of an overall design decision. For both managers and players, and additional table has been created with award share information. This records the total numebr of votes each player received as well as the number of first place votes. j) Two new tables have been added to account for a handful of split seasons. "TeamsHalf" and "ManagersHalf" have seprate sets of data for the first half and second half of those seasons. k) A table with player salaries has been added, using data from the Pappas collection. This data is available for players since 1985. l) A table with the results of each post season series has been added. m) The Hall of Fame table now contains complete voting results, both for players who have been inducted and those who have not. Several fields have been added to accomodate this new information. n) Last, but not least... all of the tables have been tested for referential integrity. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.3 Acknowledgements Two people have been key contributors to this version of the database. They also have been trailblazers in taking this database and creating new things with it. Sean Lahman launched the Baseball Archive's website back before most people had heard of the world wide web. Frustrated by the lack of sports data available, he led the effort to build a baseball database that everyone could use. Baseball researchers everywhere owe him a debt of gratitude. Lahman served as co-editor of the last two editions of Total Baseball and has been active in developing databases for other sports. The work of Sean Forman to create and maintain an online encyclopedia at "baseball-reference.com" has been remarkable. Recognized as the premier online refernce source, Forman's site provides an oustanding interface to the raw data. His efforts to help streamline the database have been extremely helpful. Most importantly, Forman has spearheaded the effort to provide standards that enable several different baseball databases to be used together. In the past year, these two Seans have led a group of researchers who volunteered to maintain and update the database. Five of those researchers have made substantial contributions to version 5.0 of this databse. Listed alphabetically, they are: Derek Adair, Mike Crain, Kevin Johnson, Tom "TangoTiger", and Paul Wendt. These folks did most of the heavy lifting, and are largely responsible for the improvements made to the current release. Others who did important work include: Randy Cox, Mitch Dickerman, Mike Emeigh, F.X. Flinn, Dan Holmes, Micke Hovmoller,Bruce Macleod, Ken Matinale, Michael Mavrogiannis, Cliff Otto, Alberto Perdomo, Dave Quinn, Tom Ruane, Theron Skyles, and Rob Wood. Many other people have made significant contributions to the database over the years. The contribution of Tom Ruane's effort to the overall quality of the underlying data has been tremendous. His creation at "retrosheet.org" integrates the yearly data with the day-by-day data, creating a reference source of startling depth. It is unlikely than any individual has contributed as much to the field of baseball research in the past five years as Ruane has. Sean Holtz helped with a major overhaul and redesign before the 2000 season. Keith Woolner was instrumental in helping turn a huge collection of stats into a relational database. Clifford Otto & Ted Nye helped provide guidance to the early versions. Lee Sinnis, John Northey & Erik Greenwood helped supply key pieces of data. Many others have written in with corrections and suggestions that made each subsequent version even better than what preceded it. The work of the SABR Baseball Records Committee, led by Lyle Spatz has been invaluable. So has the work of Bill Carle and the SABR Biographical Committee. David Vincent, keeper of the Home Run Log and other bits of hard to find info, has always been helpful. Salary data has been supplied by Doug Pappas, who chairs the SABR Business of Baseball committee. Pappas is the leading authority on many subjects, most significantly the financial history of Major League Baseball. We are grateful that he has allowed us to include some of the data he has compiled. Thanks is also due to the staff at the National Baseball Library in Cooperstown who have been so helpful -- Tim Wiles, Jim Gates, Bruce Markusen, and the rest of the staff. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Dave Smith and the folks at Retrosheet. There is no other group working so hard to compile and share baseball data. Their website (www.retrosheet.org) will give you a taste of the wealth of information Dave and the gang have collected. Thanks to all contributors great and small. What you have created is a wonderful thing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.4 Using this Database This version of the database is available in Microsoft Access format or in a generic, comma delimited format. Because this is a relational database, you will not be able to use the data in a flat-database application. If you are unable to import the data directly, you should download the database in the delimted text format. Then use the documentation in sections 2.1 through 2.6 of this document to import the data into your database application. Please note that this is not a stand alone application. It requires a database application or some other application designed specifically to interact with the database. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.5 Revision History Version Date Comments 1.0 December 1992 Database ported from dBase 1.1 May 1993 Becomes fully relational 1.2 July 1993 Corrections made to full database 1.21 December 1993 1993 statistics added 1.3 July 1994 Pre-1900 data added 1.31 February 1995 1994 Statistics added 1.32 August 1995 Statistics added for other leagues 1.4 September 1995 Fielding Data added 1.41 November 1995 1995 statistics added 1.42 March 1996 HOF/All-Star tables added 1.5-MS October 1996 1st public release - MS Access format 1.5-GV October 1996 Released generic comma-delimted files 1.6-MS December 1996 Updated with 1996 stats, some corrections 1.61-MS December 1996 Corrected error in MASTER table 1.62 February 1997 Corrected 1914-1915 batters data and updated 2.0 February 1998 Major Revisions-added teams & managers 2.1 October 1998 Interim release w/1998 stats 2.2 January 1999 New release w/post-season stats & awards added 3.0 November 1999 Major release - fixed errors and 1999 statistics added 4.0 May 2001 Major release - proofed & redesigned tables 4.5 March 2002 Updated with 2001 stats and added new biographical data 5.0 December 2002 Major revision - new tables and data ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.0 Data Tables The design follows these general principles. Each player is assigned a unique number (playerID). All of the information relating to that player is tagged with his playerID. The playerIDs are linked to names and birthdates in the MASTER table. The database is comprised of the following main tables: MASTER - Player names, DOB, and biographical info Batting - batting statistics Pitching - pitching statistics Fielding - fielding statistics It is supplemented by these tables: AllStar - All-Star appearances Hall of Fame - Hall of Fame voting data Managers - managerial statistics Teams - yearly stats and standings BattingPost - post-season batting statistics PitchingPost - post-season pitching statistics TeamFranchises - franchise information FieldingOF - outfield position data ManagersHalf - split season data for managers TeamsHalf - split season data for teams Salaries - player salary data SeriesPost - post season series information AwardsManagers - awards won by managers AwardsPlayers - awards won by players AwardsShareManagers - award voting for manager awards AwardsSharePlayers - award voting for player awards Sections 2.1 through 2.20 of this document describe each of the tables in detail and the fields that each contains. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.1 MASTER table playerID A unique code asssigned to each player. The playerID links the data in this file with records in the other files. managerID An ID for individuals who served as managers hofID An ID for individuals who are in teh baseball Hall of Fame birthYear Year player was born birthMonth Month player was born birthDay Day player was born birthCountry Country where player was born birthState State where player was born birthCity City where player was born deathYear Year player died deathMonth Month player died deathDay Day player died deathCountry Country where player died deathState State where player died deathCity City where player died nameFirst Player's first name nameLast Player's last name nameNote Note about player's name (usually signifying that they changed their name or played under two differnt names) nameGiven Player's given name (typically first and middle) nameNick Player's nickname weight Player's weight in pounds height Player's height in inches bats Player's batting hand (left, right, or both) throws Player's throwing hand (left or right) debut Date that player made first major league appearance college College attended lahman40ID ID used in Lahman Database version 4.0 lahman45ID ID used in Lahman database version 4.5 retroID ID used by retrosheet holtzID ID used by Sean Holtz's Baseball Almanac bbrefID ID used by Baseball Reference website ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.2 Batting Table playerID Player ID code yearID Year stintID player's stint (order of appearances within a season) teamID Team lgID League G Games AB At Bats R Runs H Hits 2B Doubles 3B Triples HR Homeruns RBI Runs Batted In SB Stolen Bases CS Caught Stealing BB Base on Balls SO Strikeouts IBB Intentional walks HBP Hit by pitch SH Sacrifice hits SF Sacrifice flies GIDP Grounded into double plays ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.3 Pitching table playerID Player ID code yearID Year stintID player's stint (order of appearances within a season) teamID Team lgID League W Wins L Losses G Games GS Games Started CG Complete Games SHO Shutouts SV Saves IPOuts Outs Pitched (innings pitched x 3) H Hits ER Earned Runs HR Homeruns BB Walks SO Strikeouts BAOpp Opponent's Batting Average ERA Earned Run Average ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.4 Fielding Table playerID Player ID code yearID Year stintID player's stint (order of appearances within a season) teamID Team lgID League Pos Position G Games GS Games Started InnOuts Time played in the field expressed as outs PO Putouts A Assists E Errors DP Double Plays ZR Zone Rating ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.5 All-Star table playerID Player ID code Year Year lgID League ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.6 HOF table playerID Player ID code yearID Year of ballot votedBy Method by which player was voted upon ballots Total ballots cast in that year needed Number of votes needed for selection in that year votes Total votes received inducted Whether player was inducted by that vote or not (Y or N) category Category in which can ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.7 Managers table managerID Player ID Number yearID Year teamID Team lgID League inseason Managerial order. Zero if the individual managed the team the entire year. Otherwise denotes where the manager appeared in the managerial order (1 for first manager, 2 for second, etc.) G Games managed W Wins L Losses rank Team's final position in standings that year plyrMgr Player Manager (denoted by 'Y') ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.8 Teams table yearID Year lgID League teamID Team franchID Franchise (links to TeamsFranchise table) divID Team's division Rank Position in final standings G Games played GHome Games played at home W Wins L Losses DivWin Division Winner (Y or N) WCWin Wild Card Winner (Y or N) LgWin League Champion(Y or N) WSWin World Series Winner (Y or N) Pct Winning percentage R Runs scored AB At bats H Hits by batters 2B Doubles 3B Triples HR Homeruns by batters BB Walks by batters SO Strikeouts by batters SB Stolen bases CS Caught stealing HBP Batters hit by pitch SF Sacrifice flies RA Opponents runs scored ER Earned runs allowed ERA Earned run average CG Complete games SHO Shutouts SV Saves IPOuts Outs Pitched (innings pitched x 3) HA Hits allowed HRA Homeruns allowed BBA Walks allowed SOA Strikeouts by pitchers E Errors DP Double Plays FP Fielding percentage name Team's full name park Name of team's home ballpark attendance Home attendance total BPF Three-year park factor for batters PPF Three-year park factor for pitchers teamIDBR Team ID used by Baseball Reference website teamIDlahman45 Team ID used in Lahman database version 4.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.9 BattingPost table yearID Year round Level of playoffs playerID Player ID code teamID Team lgID League G Games AB At Bats R Runs H Hits 2B Doubles 3B Triples HR Homeruns RBI Runs Batted In SB Stolen Bases CS Caught stealing BB Base on Balls SO Strikeouts IBB Intentional walks HBP Hit by pitch SH Sacrifices SF Sacrifice flies GIDP Grounded into double plays ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.10 PitchingPost table yearID Year round Level of playoffs playerID Player ID code teamID Team lgID League W Wins L Losses G Games GS Games Started CG Complete Games SHO Shutouts SV Saves IPOuts Outs Pitched (innings pitched x 3) H Hits R Runs ER Earned Runs HR Homeruns BB Walks SO Strikeouts BAOpp Opponents' batting average ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.11 TeamFranchises table franchID Franchise ID franchName Franchise name active Whetehr team is currently active (Y or N) NAassoc ID of National Association team franchise played as ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.12 FieldingOF table playerID Player ID code yearID Year stintID player's stint (order of appearances within a season) Glf Games played in left field Gcf Games played in center field Grf Games played in right field ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.13 ManagersHalf table managerID Manager ID code yearID Year teamID Team lgID League half First or second half of season G Games managed W Wins L Losses rank Team's position in standings for the half ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.14 TeamsHalf table yearID Year teamID Team lgID League half First or second half of season divID Division DivWin Won Division (Y or N) rank Team's position in standings for the half G Games played W Wins L Losses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.15 Salaries table yearID Year teamID Team lgID League playerID Player ID code salary Salary ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.16 SeriesPost table yearID Year round Level of playoffs teamIDwinner Team ID of the team that won the series lgIDwinner League ID of the team that won the series teamIDloser Team ID of the team that lost the series lgIDloser League ID of the team that lost the series wins Wins by team that won the series losses Losses by team that won the series ties Tie games ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.17 AwardsManagers table managerID Manager ID code awardID Name of award won yearID Year lgID League tie Award was a tie (Y or N) notes Notes about the award ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.18 AwardsPlayers table playerID Player ID code awardID Name of award won yearID Year lgID League tie Award was a tie (Y or N) notes Notes about the award ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.19 AwardsShareManagers table awardID name of award votes were received for yearID Year lgID League managerID Manager ID code pointsWon Number of points received pointsMax Maximum numner of points possible votesFirst Number of first place votes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.20 AwardsSharePlayers table awardID name of award votes were received for yearID Year lgID League playerID Player ID code pointsWon Number of points received pointsMax Maximum numner of points possible votesFirst Number of first place votes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------