I’m looking for the most objective way to program a computer to determine earned runs. I realize that will never be able to be done completely because of the rule book saying to give the pitcher the “benefit of the doubt”, and as far as I know, there’s no way yet to make a computer think in the kind of terms it takes for figuring out something like benefit of the doubt. However, by going through the process step by step, I think I’ve managed to get pretty darn close, or at least to eliminate having to do analysis on every single run. But I’m wondering if maybe I’ve missed something, and so I’m throwing the question open for challenge and input.
In doing this, I needed some kind of an example I could go back to over and over again, and as it just so happens, the 6th game of the last WS is a pretty good example of many things that have to be taken into consideration.
In attempting to determine earned runs, the 1st thing I did was once the game was over, account for each and every run individually. If you look at the 1st page of :
http://www.infosports.com/scorekeeper/images/ers.pdf
you’ll see where I’ve combined part of the pitching and part of the hitting from the box score, onto one page.
I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible. Which at bat is the number of the at bat in the game. Half inning and inning are how I track top and bottom of an inning. Roerror is whether or not the batter reached on an error, Runs are of course if he scored or not, and ER will tell whether a run is earned or not.
The 1st page shows every run that scored in the game, and is broken down by pitcher and team for verification if necessary, and is the starting point.
The 2nd page eliminates all runs scored in an inning where there was no error and no passed ball. And the 3rd page only lists the runs where an error was made in that inning and the runner that scored didn’t reach on an error or defensive interference, and are really the only runs that have to be given a lot of thought.
The last page has all the ABs in the inning where a run was scored that had to be considered.
If anyone has anything to add or questions the logic in any way, I’d appreciate the input.
Thanx.
Original Post