Of course, Lincecum brought a superb resume to the Angels. As a member of the Giants from 2007-15, “The Freak” made four All-Star teams, won three World Series championships and took home two National League Cy Young Awards. The San Francisco version of Lincecum also piled up 1,643 2/3 regular-season innings (269 appearances, 261 starts) and posted a 3.61 ERA with 9.33 K/9 and 3.54 BB/9. For the most part, Lincecum’s career started going off the rails in 2012, in which his 2.74 ERA from the prior season skyrocketed to 5.18, but there was still some magic left. Lincecum threw a 148-pitch no-hitter against the Padres in 2013, and he no-hit the Friars yet again the next season.
Source: The Fall Of The Freak – MLB Trade Rumors
Above is an example how sports writers in general explain a career. Here’s how this data model explains a career.
Tim Lincecum
| Year | Rank | WAA | TeamID | Pos |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | XXXXX | 1.55 | SFN | PITCH |
| 2008 | +005+ | 9.09 | SFN | PITCH |
| 2009 | +004+ | 9.64 | SFN | PITCH |
| 2010 | +101+ | 2.96 | SFN | PITCH |
| 2011 | +022+ | 5.86 | SFN | PITCH |
| 2012 | -011- | -5.12 | SFN | PITCH |
| 2013 | -091- | -2.25 | SFN | PITCH |
| 2014 | -027- | -3.59 | SFN | PITCH |
| 2015 | XXXXX | -0.29 | SFN | PITCH |
| 2016 | -014- | -4.39 | ANA | PITCH |
| TOTAL | X | 13.46 | PITCH |
Easy to see which years he won Cy Young awards and which years he made all star team. His career did go off the rails in 2012 and stayed off the rails.
Hard to work on this data model without a live stream of data we get during a baseball season. This live stream of data is invaluable for finding bugs in the code and useful new features. In the meantime still working on converting this perl code into php and then java. More on this later ….