Baseball is back. And thankfully the New York Times has mapped out most of Major League Baseball’s fans. The glaring exception is, of course the omission of Canada/Ontario, home to the Toronto Blue Jays. The piece maps the data of Facebook likes down to the zip code and then offers details on a few border regions in particular.
And apparently back home, I am not the only person cheering for Boston.
Credit for the piece goes to Kevin Quealy, Josh Katz, David Leonhardt, and Tom Giratikanon.
Well, okay, actually there is. But the cultural reference would have made even less sense if I omitted the negative. Anyway, in honour of the two baseball games I am seeing this week—last night’s and tonight’s Red Sox games—here comes this piece from Pew Research Center.
It’s a simple but fairly clear graphic. We are looking at the ethnic breakdown of baseball since 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier. My only qualm, as ever, with this stacked area chart is that while you can see the clear trend upward in white share, it is a bit more difficult to see the directions the other ethnicities are moving.
Credit for the piece goes to Pew Research Council.
Spring training has begun for baseball fans. The glow from the Red Sox victory last October is fading as we now wonder if we can repeat. Fans of other teams now wonder if this is their year. Over at SB Nation, an article plotted 29 baseball teams—ignoring the Dodgers— and looked at their chances in the upcoming years. The article continues using the chart to explain which teams fall where.
And for the designers, note the type choice for “Nope”.
Credit for the piece goes to Grant Brisbee.
Last week the Boston Red Sox won the 2013 World Series. I did a wee bit of celebrating and so I did not have the chance to post today’s post until, well, today. A company called Statlas charted each game of the World Series. One of my coworkers pointed me in the direction of these visualisations, unfortuantely I missed out on most of them for the playoffs. Here, though, is when I started feeling a lot less nervous about Boston’s chances for winning Game 6.
There is a lot to see and look at in these games. And I will be curious to see where Statlas takes these—if they take them anywhere—for the 2014 season. Baseball is a game rich with statistics and data and teams and fans are increasingly using them to play and understand the play in the games. It’s about time somebody starts doing some valuable visualisations.
Credit for the piece goes to Statlas.
The World Series starts tomorrow night and for all but two teams, that means focusing on the upcoming 2014 roster. And rosters are often defined by payroll flexibility. A co-worker of mine forwarded along today’s interactive graphic that looks at team payrolls through stacked bar charts.
The design is certainly a bit clunky with heavy black outlines and garish colours. But the story told is clear, especially if you begin to look at different teams. Which teams have players locked up for the long-term and thereby have little flexibility?
The Red Sox, of course, sent most of that bar from 2011 to the Los Angeles Dodgers near the end of 2012. That allowed them to pick up the free agents like Mike Napoli, Johnny Gomes, Shane Victorino, and Koji Uehara. You know, the guys without whom the Red Sox would not have advanced to the World Series.
Credit for the piece goes to Phil Roth.
If you’re not a Boston Red Sox fan, what’s wrong with you? Well, okay, so long as you’re not a Yankees fan, you’re not that bad. Anyway, the Boston Globe looked at the 2013 Red Sox season. Game by game, inning by inning. And because Boston is now advancing to the American League Championship Series, and since they will probably face Detroit, here’s a screenshot of the great game that was Scherzer vs. Lester.
Credit for the piece goes to Chiqui Esteban.
Normally this would be a Friday post. But, for those of you fellow Red Sox fans who happen to live near enough to Fenway to go catch a game, Wednesday night is Dollar Beard Night. This graphic by the Red Sox details the different types of beards worn by Red Sox players this year. It’s like the bunch of idiots of 2004.
Wednesday night if you show up to Fenway with a beard, you can get a $1 ticket for Dollar Beard Night. Hence why posting this Friday would do you fellow Red Sox fans no good.
Credit for the piece goes to the Red Sox.
Major League Baseball is set to suspend Alex Rodriguez this morning—if the news reports are true. That will all but end the season for Rodriguez, though he could well play through his appeal so you never really know. But what does this mean for the Yankees and their offense?
The New York Times put together an interactive scatter plot charting the annual salary against the number of hits (roughly a measure of offensive production throughout the year) with benchmark lines for the league average of both. First, the user can see the team averages.
At the team-level, one can see that, roughly speaking, the more money a team pays to hitters, the more productive the team. Production it should be noted, does not necessarily equal wins. Look at the Angels, who have some of the most hits, but are in fourth place (out of five) and in a difficult place to make the playoffs.
But then the user can switch to the top-10 paid hitters on each team. (Four presets are offered beneath the piece, but click on a player from any team and his compatriots will appear.) You can see how the Yankees are hitting poorly in comparison to the Red Sox. (The only reason the Yankees are not truly awful is because their pitching has not been horrible.)
So if Rodriguez is suspended for this year and next, maybe they can use his salary for next year to buy a one-year free agent that isn’t at the bottom right of the this chart.
Credit for the piece goes to Mike Bostock and Joe Ward.
Today’s Friday. So maybe at this point, after a week of baseball-related posts, you are ready to go see a game yourself. If you go, here is a flow chart from SB Nation to help you choose your foods and drinks for the game.
Credit for the piece goes to Eric Wayne.
In Chicago there is much ado about renovating Wrigley Field. As a Red Sox fan, I can only say that the Fenway renovations are being well-received. A little while back, the Chicago Tribune illustrated just what these proposed changes will be. The first image was from the above the fold section, and the second was a smaller set of illustrations that were below the fold.
Really, it’s just always a treat to be able to post printed graphics.
Credit for the pieces go to the Cubs and Chad Yoder of the Tribune.
