NAME:  mlb_batting.dat
TYPE:  Population  
SIZE:  85988 observations,  21 variables

DESCRIPTIVE ABSTRACT:
Seasonal batting data for all players in Major League Baseball from 1871 (the 
first year of professional baseball)
through 2009. 

SOURCE:
Sean Lahman's Baseball Achieve website at www.baseball1.com.  The dataset was 
formed from the Batting.csv and Master.csv datafiles from the website.

FORMATS:
The batting dataset is available both as a data file "mlb_batting.dat" and a R 
workspace "mlb_batting.Rdata".  Tab characters are used to separate variables in 
the data file.

READING INTO R:
The data file can be read into R by the command
batting=read.delim("http://bayes.bgsu.edu/baseball/mlb_batting.dat")

VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS:
Each row represents the hitting statistics for one player in a particular 
season.

first.name		player's first name 
last.name		player's last name 
name			player's id code  
year			season  
game			games played  
ab			at-bats 
r			runs scored 
h			hits
x2b			doubles  
x3b			triples  
hr			home runs 
rbi 			runs batted in  
sb			stolen bases  
cs			caught stealing  
bb			base on balls 
so			strikeouts 
ibb 			intentional base on balls 
hbp  			times hit by pitch 
sh  			sacrifice hits 
sf  			sacrifice flies  
gdp  			grounded into double plays 
age			age of player
obp                     on-base percentage
slg			slugging percentage
ops			ops measure (obp + slg)
pa                      plate appearances

Missing values are denoted with NA.

PEDAGOGICAL NOTES:
This data contains the fundamental season hitting data for all players in 
baseball history.  One can look at the collection of batting averages or on-base 
percentages for all players in a particular season.  One can compare
hitting statistics across seasons.  For example, one could explore the changes 
in home run rates and triples rates across seasons.  One can look at the 
collection of batting averages or home run rates of a particular player over the 
years of his career.  The student can learn much about the history of baseball 
by exploring the changes in various hitting statistics over time.

REFERENCES:
Albert, Jim, Baseball Data at Season, Play-by-Play, and Pitch-by-Pitch Levels

SUBMITTED BY:
Jim Albert
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH  43403
albert@bgnet.bgsu.edu