This Twitter thread:
led me to add a new feature to the Day by Day Database. Search for a pitcher from the starting page, then when you get to the player link page, you will see a link call Bill James Starting Pitcher Rank Log. This shows the pitcher’s rank the morning after he pitched, consecutively through his career. You can see at the link that Roger Clemens reached number one late in 1987, and held number one (at least after every time he pitched) through 7/24/1989. The dates are hyperlinks that lead to the complete ranking for that day.
I am still calculating the data for each date. I started with the 1980 season and am working forward to the present. It will take a few days to get the season in place.
Note that the display shows a line every time the player pitched, but only starts count toward the ranking. If someone moves to the bullpen, you’ll see his score diminish as he doesn’t start.
Also, by agreement with Bill James, my data for the rankings stops two years prior to the current date. If you want up to date ratings, you’ll need to subscribe to BillJamesOnline.com, which is well worth the money.
If you find any bugs, let me know.
Understood about current rankings, David, but that arrangement shouldn’t prevent you from going back even further into the day-by-day data to (eventually) create these rankings for (at least) the current data set (back to 1957), right? (I realize the work involved is not trivial…)
Wondering also if you are in a position to take the day-by-day data back further in time. While bb-ref has occasionally suggested that they would create tools similar to what yours provide, it hasn’t happened…and it would be great to have time slice capability for data back into the 20s and 30s–if you’re inclined to do so.
Yes, am taking rankings back as far as I can. I do think about taking DBD back further, but need to resurrect software to do so. Not sure what drive it is on at this point, or how complete data is on the retrosheet side.