The Elusive Search: User-friendly Spring Training Stats
I’d have better luck finding treasures in Al Capone’s Vault.
To be cool, I’ll join everyone else and blame Bud Selig. Why should finding user-friendly spring training stats be so difficult? If I go to Yahoo, I get 2006 regular season stats. Same at ESPN. Even the regular statistics screen at MLB.com will just show me last seasons stats. The only way I could track some down was by going through google. To save everyone else time, here’s the link to the official MLB.com spring training stats.
http://pressbox.mlb.com/pressbox/statistics/spring_training_07.jsp
In a section named the “MLB Pressboxâ€. I’ve never been to that section before, and hell, I subscribe to the service.
So, after tracking them down, what do I get? Crap, that’s what. I have the option of selecting league leaders (with no link click throughs on the players names). For team stats I get one page with both hitting and pitching statistics for each player. Once again, no click through. And I also can’t sort the list, it’s all in 100% text, with no links. This page is right out of Yahoo circ 1994. To top it off, if I want to check the stats for another team I have to press the back button, as there are no links on the page.
Maybe I’ve been spoiled by ease in which I’ve been able to track down stats in the past few years. But for a league that generates billions of dollars of revenue per season, it would be nice to be able to find, let alone sort, spring training stats.
Addition: I am one big fool. The MLB does have spring training stats, for the league and teams. Choosing by teams is still difficult (to change teams it takes about three steps). But I am a fool none the less. I now, in editing glory, focus my rant towards ESPN & others. Sorry Mr. Selig.
Kman
Yo, the spring training stats aren’t hard to find. They seem to be on every teams respective homepage on mlb.com — here is the one for the Cubs for example, sortable and all…
http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/stats/sortable_player_stats.jsp?c_id=chc
if you go to each mlb team’s website (ex.=www.chicagocubs.com) and go to “stats,” the spring training stats should be there.
Thanks, Jack, for posting your comment while I posted mine, thereby making me look like a jerk. 😉
It very well could have turned out that you posted yours…while I posted mine 😉 Great minds think alike I suppose…
Um, if you go to the MLB.com website and click on stats, it takes you right to spring training stats. Now daily box scores, that’s a different story…
http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/sortable_player_stats.jsp?c_id=mlb&baseballScope=mlb&teamPosCode=all&statType=Overview&timeSubFrame=23&sitSplit=&venueID=&Submit=Submit&timeFrame=1
Good call guys, I missed those
I checked them out, and they do have the sortability option but it’s still a pain in the ass. If I want to check out another team I have to go to the right, select the league from the menu, then spring training 2007, and then press go. And the team pages only list 25 players per page, so I have to go clicking onto another page to see who’s struggling in batting average, etc.
They need to do a better job with this system in the future.