Lindholm: Baseball ejections, a visual analysis
From SABR member Scott Lindholm at Beyond the Box Score on January 19, 2015:
Retrosheet is the spine upon which most modern baseball databases are built, the core box scores and play-by-play descriptions that are the basis of modern measures. More information on their history can be found here, and my point isn’t so much to proselytize for the work they do (even though I should) as much as acknowledge and thank them for doing it. Without the compendium of information they’ve compiled, I (and many others) can’t do the type of analysis I do.
Some time last year I stumbled across a section I had never seen before titled “Umpires”. In addition to games and position I saw something I’d always been interested in but had a hard time finding, let along quantifying and analyzing — data on ejections and reasons why. I’ve written about this in the past, and as I was updating data from the 2014 season I clicked on the page that listed the data credits:
The newest section of data now available on the website relates to umpires.
I can’t define “new” in this context, but it made me feel better at least to think that this data hasn’t been sitting around since the mid-1990s just waiting for me to find it.
One of the other things I’ve discovered in the past year is using Tableau data visualizations, and I use them not to junk up a post but because a picture really can say a thousand words, if used correctly. I use charts and graphs to illuminate and as shorthand — in my former life as a pharma sales rep, I could discuss a clinical trial with physicians but saw the light go on if I had a chart I could reference that summarized the pertinent data. This is the data viz of all recorded ejections in baseball history, with plenty of explanation to follow.
Read the full article here: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/1/19/7628715/mlb-baseball-umpire-manager-ejections
Originally published: January 20, 2015. Last Updated: January 20, 2015.