DOCUMENT:Q126881 11-DEC-1999 [homemm] TITLE :Baseball 1995: ASCII Format Statistics (BS95STRM.TXT) PRODUCT :Microsoft Home Multimedia Titles PROD/VER:WINDOWS: OPER/SYS: KEYWORDS: ====================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The information in this article applies to: - Microsoft Complete Baseball Guide for Windows, 1995 edition ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY ======= The BS95STRM.TXT file contains Baseball Daily's ASCII format statistics. The following is the contents of the BS95STRM.TXT file included with Microsoft Complete Baseball for Windows, 1995 edition. ============================================== MICROSOFT COMPLETE BASEBALL'S BASEBALL DAILY ASCII FORMAT STATISTICS FILE ============================================== This file contains information not included in the User's Guide about Baseball Daily's ASCII format statistics file. To read this file on-screen, use the Page Down and Page Up keys. You can also print the file by opening this file in any Windows word processing program and choosing the Print command from the File menu. This file contains important information on the following topics: 1) WHERE THE ASCII FILE IS 2) WHAT THE ASCII FILE IS 3) WHAT THE ASCII FILE CONTAINS 4) HOW THE RANKINGS IN THE ASCII FILE ARE CALCULATED ================================================================= 1. WHERE THE ASCII FILE IS ================================================================= **** Sample ASCII file located at: **** x:\MSBS95\BS95_STA\MLSTATS.txt where x is your Complete Baseball drive Every day when you download the Baseball Daily, you also receive an ASCII file of player statistics. This file appears within the BS95_STA subdirectory of your MSBS95 directory, assuming you installed in the default directory suggested in Setup (the regular Daily file has a .mvb extension and appears in the BS95_DLY subdirectory of your MSBS95 directory). The ASCII file has a .txt extension and includes the date of the file in the name. For example, the ASCII file for April 7, 1995, would be named 19950407.txt. A sample ASCII file ships with Complete Baseball in the BS95_STA subdirectory and is called MLSTATS.txt. ================================================================= 2. WHAT THE ASCII FILE IS ================================================================= ASCII is a common file format supported by most software programs. Since the file is in ASCII format, you can easily use it in your favorite spreadsheet, database, word processor or other software program that supports the ASCII format. Many programs will read ASCII format directly, so you can just open the file directly in those programs. Others, typically database programs, support ASCII format via an import function. This allows you to import the ASCII file into those programs where it is converted to the native format of that program. Consult your program's documentation for how ASCII is supported and how to use directly or import ASCII files. Notepad, which comes with MS Windows, will also read the ASCII file directly but it can not open files over a certain size, and formatting may not be ideal for viewing the file. You should be able to open the ASCII stats files during the season with Notepad and you can use it to open the sample ASCII file (MLSTATS.txt) included with Complete Baseball (keep in mind this file is provided as a sample and does not include every player who played last season). By getting your statistics in this format, you can use your favorite program to search, sort, and manipulate the players' statistics in any way you wish. This makes it simple, for example, to track the statistics of your favorite player, or to sort all second basemen by ranking them on how many home runs they have hit. You also can easily chart or graph the performance of players on key measures using any built-in graphing features of your favorite program. You could also, for example, develop your own formula for ranking players' performance and use the ASCII file to provide the statistics you need to create your rankings throughout the season. Please note that these ASCII files are copyrighted and are licensed to you for your personal, non-commercial use, and any other use or redistribution of these files is expressly prohibited. ================================================================= 3. WHAT THE ASCII FILE CONTAINS ================================================================= The file covers every player in the league and contains over 30 statistical categories including players' most recently played position and a ranking based on key statistical measures. The ranking is described below. The stats are cumulative season-to-date totals and are updated daily. Both pitchers and hitters are included. Players' statistics include their most recently played position so you can, if you want, sort them by position in whatever program you use to view the statistics. All players who are active roster players are listed everyday even if they did not play the previous day. ================================================================= 4. HOW THE RANKINGS IN THE ASCII FILE ARE CALCULATED ================================================================= Along with the statistics, each player is given a ranking for the season-to-date (updated daily). This ranking is for all players by league. So if you wanted to find out who the highest ranking American League shortstop is, you would you use your favorite program to sort on shortstops in the American League section of statistics and also on ranking as the secondary sort criteria (see your program's documentation for how to do sorts and secondary sorts). This might give results like the following: Player Position Ranking ------ -------- ------- Cal Ripken Jr. SS 8.40 Mike Gallego SS 7.94 Greg Gagne SS 5.67 Ozzie Guillen SS 4.34 Cal Ripken Jr. might be the twelfth ranked player overall with his score of 8.40 but the highest ranked shortstop (and Mike Gallego, perhaps the 27th ranked player overall but the second-highest ranked shortstop, and so on). This ranking system is preferable to a system ranking just by position (where Cal Ripken Jr. and Mike Gallego would have numerical rankings of 1 and 2, respectively) because it gives you a relative measure of a player's performance -- if players are ranked 1, 2, 3, etc., you have no way to tell the gap in performance between each player. With overall rankings, though, it is clear that two players who ranked 1 and 2 by position have far different relative performance levels if their overall rankings are 12 and 13, for example, versus 12 and 157. In the latter case they might have ranking scores of 8.40 and 4.43, while in the former their ranking scores might be 8.40 and 8.34 so you can easily see their relative performance on the measures included in the ranking. The Microsoft Complete Baseball Ranking System uses the following formulas to rank players: Hitters: At bat = .5 point; Single = 1; Double = 2; Triple = 3; Home run = 4; RBI = 1; Run = 1; Stolen Base = 1; Caught Stealing = (-1); Walk (BB) = 1; Strikeout = (-1) Pitchers: Inning pitched = .5 points; Win = 8; Loss = (-4); Save = 5; Game Finished = 2; Strikeout = 1; Walk (BB) = (-1); Earned Run = (-1); Hit = (-.5); Complete Game = 2; Shutout = 3 Players' points are summed for all games they have played and are then divided by games played to render a ranking that is based on average points per game. To sort on relief pitchers versus starting pitchers, search for pitchers with zero games started (these are the relief pitchers). The Microsoft Complete Baseball Ranking System is intended for personal reference purposes only and does not attempt or purport to establish any objective value for one player over another -- it is ranking only the performance of a particular player against other players over the course of the season on an arbitrary set of measures. Additional query words: kbhowto 1995multi media multimedia multi-media mmtitles kbmm ====================================================================== Keywords : Technology : kbHomeProdSearch kbGamesSearch kbBaseballSearch kbCompleteBaseballSearch kbCompleteBaseball1995 Version : WINDOWS: ============================================================================= THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THE MICROSOFT KNOWLEDGE BASE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. MICROSOFT DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. 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