Was ten years ago this time in October. Boston was on their way to winning their World Series in 86 years. But to get there, they had to go through the New York Yankees. And they did it in dramatic fashion, winning a riveting best-of-seven series. Why riveting? Because it had never been done before. (Nor since, actually, but that’s not included in the graphic.)
This past weekend was some good Red Sox baseball. Okay, so we only won two of three from Oakland, but that second game was fantastic. John Lester dominated. Last fall I mentioned a studio called Statlas that was visualising the World Series. They continue to update and tweak their product and so it was great to see Lester’s performance documented.
Though, as you can see, Lester so dominated the Athletics, you can see almost nothing happening from Oakland’s batters. But, I will skip the near ninth-inning implosion of Boston’s relief corps that nearly cost us the game. Mostly because the visualisations of the game tell a great story. And so if you like baseball and data visualisation, you should check it out.
Credit for the piece goes to Statlas.
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.
The Boston Red Sox are in Chicago this week to play the other Sox, i.e. the White Sox. So this week we have a bunch of baseball-related pieces. The first is this recent interactive graphic from the New York Times. It is a daily-updated graphic that looks at the payroll of all Major League teams that is tied up on players on the Disabled List, i.e. those unable to play because of injuries.
Clearly the Yankees are paying a lot of money for no production. You can go down the list and compare each team’s total spending. But if you want intra-team details, the piece offers you the ability to look at player-by-player salary details. Interestingly one of Chicago’s baseball teams ranks just above the Red Sox while Milwaukee sits just below.
Credit for the piece goes to Shan Carter, Kevin Quealy and Joe Ward.
I am a fan of the Boston Red Sox and have been since 1999. The first (and sadly only) Red Sox game I saw at Fenway was the day after Nomar Garciaparra hit three home runs in one game. Two of them were grand slams. For you non-baseball folks (NBF) reading this, that is majorly impressive. Anyway, the Red Sox traded him in 2004 to acquire some pieces they needed to make a run for the World Series title that had eluded them for 80+ years (also significant for NBF). The result? My favourite player traded to the Cubs, but my favourite team won the World Series.
But now it’s Opening Day, the kickoff for the baseball season—that reference is for you American football fans. (To be fair, there was a game last night between two Texas teams, but today’s the de facto start.) Since that 2004 trade, however, the Red Sox have not had a consistent, long-term shortstop of the same offensive calibre of Nomar. How bad has this revolving door been? My infographic today looks at the shortstop replacements for Nomar Garciaparra.
The Boston Red Sox hired John Farrell this weekend to be their manager just one season after hiring Bobby Valentine for the role. There is a lot to be said about just who is to blame about the Red Sox’ awful season. But it was pretty awful. How awful? The Boston Globe shows us in this interactive piece.
It’s a series of small multiples of line charts. However, one of the big problems with the infographic is that the labels are entirely absent. As best I can tell the line is the number of games over .500, i.e. an even split between wins and losses. But, it could be more clearly called out if not in the legend or on the axes than in the title.
But over all it does put this past season into a sober perspective.
Credit for the piece goes to Daigo Fujiwara.
