Chuck Lucas has been seeing the leaderboards I’ve been posting for my 1966 National League replay using the APBA Basic Game and he asked about how I keep my stats. I thought the best way to show him (and everyone else) is to make a video tour of my stats setup.
Note: because of the nature of the content, it’s probably best to watch the full screen video for better viewing.
As I’ve mentioned before, I use Microsoft Excel to keep game stats, standings and generate leaders. At this point, once I enter in the actual stats there is little else I need to do manually to display standings and leaders. Most of it is automated.
A few questions answered:
Why do I need to do all this to simply enjoy APBA?
You don’t. I have always said that the beauty of APBA (especially the board game) is that you can play it any way you can and hence, keep stats (or not!) any way you wish.
However, if you are a stat geek or enjoy working with numbers, you might find this particular method fun.
Why use Excel when BallStat or Statmaster is out there?
I like to tinker. I also like to be in control of my data. With my current setup (as imperfect as it is), I feel I have a part in how it looks. You know the old APBA slogan, “YOU be the Manager”? I feel like I am the “MLB Stats Bureau” in 1966.
And honestly, it makes doing stats a whole lot of fun for me.
Isn’t this a lot of work to set up?
In a way it was a lot of work to get to where it is now. I keep adding new features to it. For example, since I made the video, I have added a way to track hitting streaks. That adds a whole level of fun. I now get to see who is “hot”.
That said, there are a lot of shortcuts. I certainly didn’t create all of this from scratch. For example, once I created one player sheet, I copied it multiple times and changed the name. And once I finished the whole team file, I copied that file and used it for a different team again changing the names.
Excel also has a lot of time-saving copy and paste shortcuts.
A whole worksheet for each player?
I started doing this when Mike Bunch introduced me to this idea and I won’t go back. I can really see how a player is doing at a glance. An Excel file can certainly handle enough worksheets for every player and pitcher and the file size is still quite manageable.
Does it take a lot of time to enter stats?
It doesn’t take much time at all once I learned some keyboard shortcuts (like Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn to navigate the worksheets. That reduces the amount of the time the hand moves from the keyboard to the mouse. I would say maybe 10 minutes per game.
Do you keep score digitally?
Actually no. I use pen and paper using this scoresheet. I have tried keeping score digitally a couple times but I really love a good written box score!
How do I get a stats set up like this?
Do what I did. Start out simple and keep adding to it. Start with a team page with a worksheet for each player. The important thing is to make sure the players’ stats get inputted correctly. The leaderboards and such are just fancy stuff you can add later.
I should give due credit to APBA fans Mike Bunch and John Brandeberry. Both use Excel in tracking stats in both replay and league format. The three of us trade, borrow and outright steal each others’ ideas for our projects.
Also, I’m going to give Rod Caborn’s regular APBA Blog column a plug. While Rod keeps his stats the old-school way, I don’t underestimate the sheer number of concepts that transcend the methods we use.
Let me know if this looks interesting to you. I’ve given you a video tour of my overall setup. Now that you have seen what it looks like, I may post shorter “how-to” videos if there is interest.
Great stuff! This solves a problem I have…tracking hitting streaks. The linked team results that filter to the individual players allows one to see a hitting streak unfold.
Hi Rod,
thanks! Means a lot coming from you.
Now that I am officially tracking hit streaks (I’ll do something on that in the future), it’s really interesting. Players who are hot even if they’re not superstars, are showing up. Even some bench warmers are on the top ten list.
Love this, thanks for posting! Already made changes to my own Excel spreadsheet after watching. Any chance you could make yours available for download for some of us to use as a template? I’m not really sure how you did your leaders so a template would be a big help.
Hi Brett,
Thanks! At some point, I’m going to make a “starter file” available. Give me a little time.
Tom
Brett,
I did find this team file I created a couple years ago for download.
http://www.apbablog.com/resources/excel-users-try-my-spreadsheet-for-keeping-baseball-stats
As for leaderboards, I’m using pivot tables which take a bit of getting used to unless you’re an Excel geek. They’re quite powerful though. I’ll probably do a video tutorial at some point if people are interested.
Tom
Thanks Tom! I’ll definitely check it out. Your post and video have already given me a lot of good tips I’ve started to put into use.
Brent
And yes, I would be very interested in a tutorial video on the pivot tables!
Excellent video, Tom. Makes me wish I rolled the dice more. Maybe when I retire.
Tom, it was great to see the spreadsheet in action. Can you possibly share the formulas on how these different stat files work. Example, how do the individual team player files get moved to the master, etc. That would really help. Thanks
Hi Justin (and others),
I think I will post other tutorials (video and otherwise). Stats Saturday? :)
I will definitely include formulas and methods and such. This video was simply to give you an idea of how it works.
Glad you liked it.
Tom
Hi Tom,
Thank you for the video! I look forward to your future tutorials. I was a big fan of using Ballstat/Ballscore, but using excel to track stats seems much more fulfilling to me.
A quick question though. Your master sheet links to transactions for each day of games. Do you link to a separate sheet that has the transactions in it? Or does it just link to something like retrosheet for that day?
Thanks!
Hi John,
Good question. The transactions link is just a reminder that a transaction happened on that day. I have a different worksheet that lists all relevant transactions and the link just points to that transaction on that page.
I’m just paranoid I’ll miss a trade or something and Cepeda or somebody will keep playing for the wrong team :)
Tom