Minor League Splits Blog

I’m guessing not many users of this site take advantage of the day-by-day Game Log feature available for every player. I just discovered that–for I don’t know how long–the result of that script was Dustin Pedroia’s game log! It appears that the last time I uploaded that script, I accidentally uploaded my version for debugging which, rather than using the player ID it’s given, just went ahead and generated Pedroia’s game log. Every time.

Anyway, that’s fixed now. Game Logs are still quite slow to generate; because I’m updating the logs daily, I upload the complete play-by-play log for an entire league’s worth of games in a single file. Every time that script runs, it has to go through that entire file. I’m working on a couple of things that should accelerate the process considerably, but they will probably wait until the offseason.

Also, I updated the Game Log script so that player sponsorships appear on log pages as well.

Yesterday I wrote about the new Minor League Splits sponsorship program, which allows you, for just $5 or $15, to sponsor all of a player’s pages on MinorLeagueSplits.com. This morning, I also made it possible to sponsor teams.

Team sponsorships cost $10, and buy you placement on all seven of a team’s pages. For example, look at the Visalia Oaks menu page. Whoever sponsors the Oaks will have their sponsorship link and message displayed on that page, as well as all six of the other pages–the team roster, the batter- and pitcher-specific rosters, the team hitting and pitching splits, and the games played by position chart. If I add more team pages in the future (if and when I add defensive stats, that’s probably how those will be formatted), they’ll be included as well.

If you have any questions about MLS sponsorships, or if you run across any problems trying to sign up for and purchase a sponsorship, please drop me an e-mail and let me know. Thanks!

Now you can support your favorite Minor League player and support the Minor League Splits Database at the same time! Like so much else that baseball database people do, my sponsorship system owes a lot to Sean Forman’s (baseball-reference.com) …only his is much better. Mine, however, is cheaper: you can get Roger Clemens or Chipper Jones for only five bucks! In fact, about 6,000 players are $5 each. Only another 200 or so–the prospects who are rotated through the “Prospects” section of the front page–are more, at $15 per.

To see an example of Minor League Splits sponsorships at work, check out the first sponsorship: Dustin Pedroia. Thanks Marc, for helping me debug my system and becoming the first sponsor of the site.

The whole system is pretty simple. Much like Sean’s approach, the idea is to get enough advertising to pay for the site’s costs (and maybe compensate me a tiny bit) without turning every page into a billboard. Jumping around baseball-reference.com, I’ve always been fascinated to see how people use the sponsorship box, and I’m curious to see in what ways you take advantage of the space here.

The more people sponsor pages, the less I’ll be inclined to add other advertising (though Google ads are probably inevitable) and the more I’ll be able to work on the site to add in-demand features like defensive stats and 2005 splits. Also, within the week, I’ll make team sponsorships available, as well.