The Pecan Park Eagle

It’s difficult being a technically challenged person with all the information that’s available to us today on the Internet, but I try – and often times I even succeed, with help of data websites that are able to anticipate the needs of researchers like me and make it easy to access. The key here is – you have to go hands and eyes on what the website is trying to make easy for you. Sometimes, they even express it in written instructions that hardly anyone could possibly misunderstand – unless a person simply refused to read the website guide material.

Baseball Reference.Com is my favorite example of a website that goes into extra innings to make their baseball history data available and usable, but you have to read the instructions to fine tune data into comparable data files. For example, let’s say you want to compare how Craig Biggio performed in his first ten years as a hitter versus how he performed in his second ten years of his twenty total year MLB career.

First, click this link to the website:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/

Second, type in his name, Craig Biggio, at the active search window and press enter.

Third, click in the last column at the end of the 1997 row in the white area. Then do the same in the 1998 row. That will produce the first summery you see below on Craig’s first ten years.

Fourth, repeat that action for the two rows that bookend the second half of Biggio’s career (1998-2007) and you will have the same data that is visible below in the second data summary.

Have some comparative fun. We are only limited now by our imaginations and our curiosities as to how we use this one tool alone.

Have a nice Day!

Craig Biggio

Data Bank One: Craig Biggio Batting Stats, 1988-1997

 Data Bank Two: Craig Biggio Batting Stats, 1998-2007