OOTP5 Archive!

[kq76]

Originally posted by dangarion
I'm running into the same exact problem with Excel not wanting to look for CSV files.

I first used a fresh completely unservice packed XP version, and then I updated it all the way to SP2 and my Excel still doesn't like the CSV files for some reason. It will bring them up when I initially set the folder, but when I try to add another year Excel doesn't have CSV in the drop down option when you are trying to change the file type (xls,html,etc). It's deffinately some type of Excel problem. But I don't know if there is a work around that can be produced by KQ76 or not.

Well a couple days ago I got the same situation (the Update Values titled window popped up) too, for the very first time. Then I realized I had the CSVs path as a folder that I had deleted the CSVs from. I corrected the path and it worked. So it could be that the path the user selects is just wrong (the CSVs need to be in the folder first), or that the formulas got screwed up by the path changing and they won't change back, in which case using a fresh copy of the utility is the simplest solution. Some people have said it does indeed work, so it's not just my computer it works on. Other than that, I don't really have any ideas at the moment.

However, what threw me off from these reasons before is if I correctly understood the first 2 gentlemen with problems with it in this thread, the CSVs indeed popped up at first, and then that window popped up, which shouldn't happen because obviously the path was correct in the beginning of the macro and it shouldn't change. But then Alec got it to later work past that problem, for him at least. And his last problem I now suspect might have been a memory problem (I believe, I should check our emails). If the computer has been on too long or you're running too many programs or you don't have enough RAM or maybe other things, it might just shut down for no good reason, and it makes it look like an error in the code. But if you restart the computer and try again, I've often seen it work with no problems.

Anyways, I've been thinking that the next thing I should do with it is definitely split up the stats and ratings sheets and make it so that people can select what sheets they want to be processed, or at least what group of sheets. That way it would be quicker for the user and the less processing might make it work better for some people. Right now it can process a whole hell of a lot of numbers and though it can do it for even large leagues, you might need an optimal processing environment (see RAM etc sentence above) to do it in.

[dangarion]

I'm pretty sure it's not RAM, I got 1/2 a gig. I will try doing it again from step one and I will screen shot the issue for ya.

[YoungEagle]

Am I correct in that Access can hold more data than Excel easier?

True

And can Access do everything Excel can, especially the sorts?

True again... actually Access sorts can go beyond the 3 field limit of Excel.

Including all the VB macros?

Yes

I learnt basic Access years ago and off and on I've been wondering if I should change the utility to Access, if it would be better somehow, but I just don't know as much about it as I do with Excel. Maybe I could check out your Access utility sometime?

Sure, I could send you a copy if you'd like - I could also contact you through AIM to walk you through Access.

[84CubsFan]

This looks really great, Kieran. Just a few questions:

1) Your site seems to suggest that the archive doesn't track postseason records. Is this for teams (i.e. who wins pennants and world series) or for individual players or both?

2) Is there a way to compare players directly from different eras? One of the great features of Cato is that it includes similarity ratings in the same manner as baseball-reference.com. Does your archive have this capability?

3) Does your archive track team records and league history? I.e., if a team changes nickname or city or league, is the archive able to reflect it?

4) Does the archive track individual accomplishments for players, i.e. first ML hit, spectacular games, # of POG awards, Hall of Fame induction, etc.?

Don't mean to grill you with questions; I'm really excited about the prospects of this program. I tried out an early version a while ago, and am anxious to try it out again. Thanks for sharing your stuff!

[kq76]

Originally posted by 84CubsFan
This looks really great, Kieran. Just a few questions:

1) Your site seems to suggest that the archive doesn't track postseason records. Is this for teams (i.e. who wins pennants and world series) or for individual players or both?

The latest version, v5.35, does not record any post-season stats. Some previous versions did, but not this one. When I deleted the Best / Top sheets, the P-S sheets were included in that, and in my hurry to just get out the version, I didn't replace them with full p-s sheets. Post-season player stats will be in the next version though (there's some exciting things in it btw, for me at least , thanks to some community members). I'd love to include p-s team records, but the CSVs just don't spit those out. When I was first playing around with the workbook for myself, I had a sheet where I manually inputted the p-s team records, but when I turned it into a utility for others to use as well I deleted that sheet as the utility would have done nothing with it. I suppose I could add the sheet back in and people could copy it to the archive and manually add in those team records like I used to..

2) Is there a way to compare players directly from different eras? One of the great features of Cato is that it includes similarity ratings in the same manner as baseball-reference.com. Does your archive have this capability?

Umm.. I don't think so. What exactly do you mean by similarity ratings? I am fairly familiar with baseball-reference.com, but I'm not certain of what you mean. Do you mean the "similarity scores" [ http://www.baseball-reference.com/ab...milarity.shtml ]? If so, no, I do not include those and I doubt I will go that far. Those ratings are more for fun and probably shouldn't be taken as serious ways to compare players over eras. Let me explain why. Players get points based on stats. But over the eras, different stats become more or less important. Look at pitching. In the early days, IP was huge for starting pitchers. Now it's just not that big of a factor. Or let's look at homers for batters. In the early days homers barely existed. Now they're a huge part of the game. Bill James does not take steps to make these scores comparable over eras. Sure, he may call them similarity scores, but are they really? No. And how does he come up with the weightings (5 points for this, 10 for that)? That's awfully subjective looking. If he made the weightings different depending on the years or eras I could see this as being a bit more useful, but he doesn't do that. Can similarity scores be kind of cool to look at? Sure, I guess. But it certainly won't be high on my priority list for awhile.

EDIT: Hmm, I thought about this some more and "similar" does not necessarily mean "of equal value". So are these players with similar similarity scores really similar? Well in the sense that they have close scores, yes. But how did those scores breakdown? Can a player who is primarily an OBP guy have a similar score to a primarily SLG guy? I guess. Are they really similar though? Not really. Perhaps if it was done with run production in mind and adjusted for the eras, but again, it doesn't do that.

EDIT: Does it sound like I'm just making excuses not to include things? Maybe it sounds that way, but that is not my intent. I have certain objectives in mind for the utility and certain constraints. Some things in my mind just don't fit in it, or at least not before other things. I have a prioritized to do list for it, which I'm completely fine with adding things to it, but I think it's important to do what seem to be the most important or valuable stuff first. For instance, the top priority right now is to get rid of the problems some people are having with it. The next version should go a long way to achieving that.

3) Does your archive track team records and league history? I.e., if a team changes nickname or city or league, is the archive able to reflect it?

It does not track nicknames. It does track cities and leagues, but it doesn't have like a running history of each franchise, no. Just trying to think of how I could add that, I do not know how it would work. I've seen this in Cato's, but I don't know how he does it. From my experience teams can change their "team ID#" when there's expansion or other things like that, so I don't know how you would keep track of the teams other than my current system of just using the abbreviations. (I'm not even certain the entire archive works properly after an expansion. I'll test it with the UBL.)

That said, the archive is more for analyzing stats than (I'll take the changing nicknames one step further) tracking manager changes and things like that. I suppose I could add the full team names and nicknames, but I don't think I'll ever go so far as tracking manager changes. But who knows.

One thing that is happening is I'm noticing that a lot of things that I can see could be added to the utility should really be done in a database. With large leagues the archive is starting to hit a point with so many years where there's just too much data, some of which is needlessly duplicated on different sheets, and excel can't really handle it. However, though a database would be best, like I said above, how many people have it and know how to use access fairly well? If in time I switch it over to access, it will 1) likely be a whole lot of more work for me (We need to remember that I just dabble in this for fun when I feel like procrastinating. Sometimes I have more time than others, but time is definitely a constraint. People with skills like Cato and CommishJoe could probably do a lot more with this in less time than I can, but I'm just not in their league. In time though, who knows.), and 2) I'm not sure how many people would use it. I'll talk with YE some more and see whether it might be worth it.

4) Does the archive track individual accomplishments for players, i.e. first ML hit, spectacular games, # of POG awards, Hall of Fame induction, etc.?

No, but this is something that I've been considering adding for awhile now. Again, I could add a whole lot of things, but really, it would probably work best in a database.

Don't mean to grill you with questions; I'm really excited about the prospects of this program. I tried out an early version a while ago, and am anxious to try it out again. Thanks for sharing your stuff!

You're welcome, thanks for enjoying it.

[kq76]

I just uploaded v5.40.

Update History:

5.40
-Reworked setup directions
-Added ability to generate CSVs from utility
-Added error checks
-Added confirmations of locations
-Added ability to select what groups of sheets to process
-Added batting and throwing handedness
-Added team cities and nicknames
-Separated Stats and Ratings sheets
-Replaced multiple processing sheets with Clips, Fill and Fill2 sheets
-Added back Post Season sheets
-Sheets (except for fielding) pre-sorted from best to worst
-Added P% (Pythagorean %) and WD (Win Differential, W%-P%) stats
-Added RAR (Runs Above Replacement) stat for batting and pitching
-Added ERC (Earned Runs Component) stat
-Added numerous pitching rate stats
-Added TB/H batting stat which can be thought of as a pure power stat
-Added PP (Primary Position) to fielding sheets to differentiate from Pn
-Rearranged Refs sheet
-Added AFC sheet directions
-Simplified directions on Home sheet
-Added web links

[kq76]

v5.41 uploaded.

Update History:

5.41
-Added Change CSVs Folder button as a possible fix (listed in the troubleshooting section) to the problem that was happening for some people with v5.3#.
-Fixed the CSVs folder path from not being fully replaced (lengthy paths caused them not to be replaced in some formulas)
-Fixed the copying of the ratings and post season sheets to the archive
-Added the ability to customize what sets of sheets to process
-Reworked Refs and Arrays sheets into 2 Refs sheets and only the league specific refs, Refs2, gets copied to the archive
-Separated regular season and post season stats processing groups
-Added Generate CSVs button for times when all you want to do is generate CSVs or change the CSVs folder (I'd make a separate one for it, but it would depend on some of the answers to the generate CSVs macro)
-Added Delete Archive button to delete archive
-Added the ability for "N/A" to be marked beside some ref info folders for when those options are rejected. Now, if later those options are accepted, the last selected folders can be reused
-Fixed minor problems with the ATTT, ATTA, YLTS, and YLTF sheets
-RARs now show as 0 instead of divide by 0 error
-Extra (non-raw) stats in Stats sheets are now value pasted instead of formula pasted
-Added the DH
-Fixed some column widths
-Redid the Directions section
-Redid the Notes section, including an explanation of RAR

[84CubsFan]

Just wanted to say that you're doing good stuff here. Keep up the good work and keep expanding the program!!

[kq76]

Thanks 84CubsFan, I appreciate the kind words. Unfortunately I think the problems some people had with v5.3# will discourage many from trying later versions, but it's ok as most of it I'd do for myself anyways.

[Alec Burkhardt]

As one of the people who had problems with v. 5.34, let me just say that I've downloaded the updated versions but I've been very busy and haven't had a chance to play much OOTP the last month so I hadn't tested any of them to see if the would run. I just tested 5.41 (using the same data as I'd used for 5.35) and had no problems. So if there is anyone who hasn't tried the new versions because 5.34 wouldn't run, they should give 5.41 a try.

[kq76]

Ah, that's great news Alec. Thanks for letting us know!

[dougaiton]

Originally posted by kq76
Thanks 84CubsFan, I appreciate the kind words. Unfortunately I think the problems some people had with v5.3# will discourage many from trying later versions, but it's ok as most of it I'd do for myself anyways.

Don't get despondent! I'm pretty sure now my problems all stemmed from my copy of Excel - it appears that it may have been tailored by techy chaps, as I can't get any CSV files to be recognised by it any more. The bugs certainly weren't on your end...! Darn Microsoft.

Thanks for keeping it updated - although my own computer can't process them, I can simply get them done elsewhere and posted back to me.

Great work

[kq76]

Originally posted by dougaiton
Don't get despondent!

Oh, I'm not anymore.

Thanks for keeping it updated

You're most welcome.

[kq76]

I just uploaded v5.42. It's not a big update unless you're really into the finances of OOTP. For that I included a number of hopefully useful figures.

5.42
-Completely re-worked team finances sheet (now has much more info and room for info not tracked by CSVs)
-Added FA, Arb El, and Auto Renew flags
-Fixed TY Player Expenses (Profit is now also fixed as a result)
-Updated Exporter link
-Changed division IDs to #s

[kq76]

CommishJoe's Exporter is now at: http://bosi.allin1websolutions.com/downloads.html

I updated the link in v5.42, but it's moved yet again.

[CommishJoe]

Originally posted by kq76
CommishJoe's Exporter is now at: http://bosi.allin1websolutions.com/downloads.html

I updated the link in v5.42, but it's moved yet again.

Sorry bout that. I retired jpbaseball, then I found out my php page wasn't working on the new site, so I just worked up a quick html page to take care of it.

[kq76]

Not a big deal. Just someone e-mailed me this morning asking if it was still available saying that the link was not working.

If anyone wonders why I don't host a copy of it myself, I think it's best that people are aware of Joe's site so that they can get the most up to date exporter and learn about the many other things he has available.

Oh, Joe, you might want to update your sig as well.

[kq76]

I just uploaded v5.43. Another not big update, but depending on what you look at the most, it's probably worth the download. I've actually been using most of this latest version for months now myself and just didn't get around to polishing up for a public release until now. Unless there are any problems with it, it will probably be the last OOTP5 version.

5.43
-Completely redid the YLTF (finances) sheet yet again to give people more information to help in budgeting, including "Actual Year To Date", "Forecasted Current Year End", and "Forecasted Next Year Start"
-Fixed the problem of not copying the data of the last few players in the stats and ratings sheets
-Fixed finding ExporterDir for archive.bat
-Added day and month to date
-Fixed some formatting
-Changed sorting of batter stats to XR
-Updated Exporter link

[sporr]

Thanks kq!

[kq76]

A double release, probably the last version for OOTP5 and the first for OOTP6. They're available at: http://members.shaw.ca/kq76/ootp/

6.00
-Fixed problems resulting from new OOTP6 and Exporter6:
--team IDs, fielding stats, ratings
-The "$ for..." formulas have changed and the utility cannot access the new data, so in some cases the figures will be the same as in the game and at other times they will just be as close as possible
-Added some ratings:
--Running Speed, Stealing Ability, Baserunning Instincts
--Velocity, Groundball %, Holding Runners, Endurance
--Infield Arm
-Added/Updated Contract Stats:
--Con Ys, Con $s, Con Mnr, FA, Ext Ys, Ext $s, Ext Mnr, Roster, On 40M, D4A, On DL, On TB, On W, Mjr Ys, Mjy Ds, 40M Ys, 40M Ds, Pro Ys, Pro Ds, FA Eli, Arb Eli, Auto Re-Sign, Option Ys, Rule 5 Eli, Mnr FA
-Added Team Financial Data:
--Total Games, Home Games, Wins, Market Size, Fan Loyalty, Fan Interest, Ticket Price, Attendance, Att Rev / Home Game
-Added Financial Options:
--Revenue Sharing, Divisor, Released Player Expenses Expensed In Year Paid Not All In Year Released, Default $ for Formulas
-Added Day Data:
--Start Day, Current Day, Max Service Days Per Year, Max Service Days This Year
-Added Input sheet
-Removed batting RAR

5.44
-Fixed Arbitration Eligible formula
-Fixed ATLF totals
-Bypass most of post-season processes if no post-season stats yet