It’s the 28th today. That’s a magic day in the Illowa APBA League because that’s when our stats our due from each manager. My cross town rival Brando loves doing stats. When we come home from a long tiring weekend where we’ve 30 league games, he tells me he’s going to stay up late that night and tally his team’s stats.
Not me. I’m notorious for waiting till 11pm on the 28th to email them to our commish. It’s not that I don’t like doing stats it’s just that I’m a procrastinator. Why do now that you can put off till the 28th?
I have streamlined the process though. Back in day, my first 10-15 years in the league, I would tabulate stats for each player individually before going on to the next. That meant a lot of shuffling of papers and quite honestly, losing my place where I was at.
Now, I can thank Brando for a pretty cool Excel spreadsheet he passed on to me. The spreadsheet has a game log for each player and pitcher. which links to a worksheet on the same spreadsheet which compiles the totals. When doing the stats, I just do one game at a time which means if I get interrupted even midstream of a game, I can pick up where I was at without missing a beat.
Another advantage from the new system is picking up on trends and streaks. I know now that Mike Cameron struck out 10 times in his first four games (oh, yes he did). And that in 4 straight appearances, rookie Chris Perez gave up 9 runs in 4 1/3 innings (you bet it’s true).
The spreadsheet doesn’t help my team have better stats or a better record (I’m 12-18 so far this year). Nor does it help me get my stuff in any earlier though I did send them in on the 27th this month.
Maybe there’s a trend emerging.
