Hey everyone.
I said a few weeks ago, I had a big announcement coming. We are at least ready to officially reveal (even though word got leaked out a bit) that my very own Project Libra, which started here as a fanpost on Purple Row, has been expanded into something new - and awesome. I started Libra with the intention of making it easier for people here at Purple Row (or elsewhere) to have important information about player contracts and status, all throughout the organization from MLB to Rookie, all gathered in one place and easy to access and to understand. While many other entities out there cover MLB transactions, they often seem inconsistent, incomplete or sometimes outright inaccurate. With Libra, I wanted to consolidate as much of that confusing info as I could.
While the procedure was, for the most part, effective and easy, the interface wasn't designed to run all those tables and data, making the pages a little finicky, and more difficult to interpret than I would have liked, and Libra never really caught on within the blog.
Last year, Tim Zappe (Purple Row's "BlakeBomber") approached me about developing Libra into its own self-contained website. After cooking up an impressive preview site, I accepted, and the two of us have been hard at work designing it since. Tim built the website and helped me transfer the Libra information over, and the two of us have been testing and improving it over the past few months.
So, without further boring history, I give you:
RockiesRoster contains all of the information I had on Libra, and much, much more. Tim had many great ideas about what sorts of stuff could be added. Here is a breakdown of the features on RockiesRoster:
- Easily understandable database of player information for all American affiliates of the Colorado Rockies.
- Like Libra, RockiesRoster will keep track of player options, contract statuses and daily updates on organizational transactions.
- In addition, RockiesRoster contains even more new information, such as player ages, origins, payroll year by year, and perhaps most exciting of all, service time. Beginning with opening day, we will be tracking MLB service time for all players daily, meaning no more having to take an old number and doing the math to figure it out. (For the moment, service time is still one year outdated, and we will update as soon as accurate starting numbers are available).
- Extra helpful new transactions features which include a Twitter account (Here), which will update every time we add a transaction to the website, and best of all, transactions will be able to be sorted by player and team, in addition to just date. Just as with Libra, RockiesRoster will be covering all transactions involving any of the minor league teams.
- Rockies Roster was created under the support of Purple Row, and we fly under Purple Row's banner. Therefore, RockiesRoster will be part of the Purple Row Community, though it's really for anyone and everyone's use. I highly encourage everyone to send it out to anyone who may be interested, here on the blog or elsewhere.
- We will both be easily contactable through the site (or you can use my e-mail here on Purple Row at the bottom of the page) to answer any questions or suggestions at any point during the year, or fix any errors you may find (it's a large database, and we're probably not going to be perfect, though we'll sure try).
The site is still fresh and simple, and we will likely be adding to it as time goes by with new features based on your ideas. Tim and I, as well as the rest of the Purple Row staff hope that this will add to your experience here at Purple Row.
I have a link or two after the jump.
Here's a FanGraphs article the Rockies and Ultimate Zone Rating. This article relates specifically to the divide between the UZR calculations and how they differ from the perception of good defensive play. Now many of you know UZR is my least favorite metric. Being more knowledgeable about transactions than sabermetrics,I'm hard pressed to write a good article articulating my skepticism, and I'm sure Jeff, Andrew F or another can do a much better job of answering questions or comments about this article than I can.
For anyone who doesn't know what UZR is or wants to know more, I highly suggest you take a glance at this FanGraphs UZR primer.
Thanks to hjrrockies for the tip in yesterday's Rockpile comments.
Don't forget, Spring Training tickets are now on sale!