NPB database construction plan

Player data for NPB are scattered, messy, and often not integrated for analysis. The environment for an analytical approach towards NPB is missing: Professionals such as 1point02 charge for membership that are unavailable for people outside Japan; Newsletters often only focus on specific topics at a short period of time, without long-term tracking. Amateurs usually post their analysis on twitter (now X), FC2 and various websites. Although the contents from amateurs can be amazingly good, they share the same issue with newsletters, that readers only have limited freedom to explore.

There are, of course, numerous data websites that keep track of team and player data. Two databases that I usually use are nf3 and the offical NPB site. For drafting seasons, I also use the drafting page in [Kyureki] (https://www.kyureki.com/draft/yosou/).

Again, they are databases with distinctive focuses. But when we are considering a topic, we often have to place the puzzle pieces together to see the full picture. For example, if we want to predict (or comprehend, for a confusing result like this year) drafting, we have to consider the short-term and long-term team strategy, the player structure (age and position) of each team, relative strength and weakness, and gaming against other teams. This cannot be simply answered by one analysis or one database. This is the original purpose of this series.

About me. I started to watch baseball since the 2016 Koshien. I support Kisarazu Sohgoh and Tohoku Rakuten Eagles, thanks to Hayakawa Takahisa. I left for my college studies in 2018-2019, and returned in 2020 for Shinogi Kentaro and a new era for Hayakawa. That is to say, I have only started to watch NPB since 2020. I regard myself as a learner for NPB, so no professional analysis here. But I will try to be as analytical as I can. At least I can practice my academic skills in data analysis and visualization here.

This series aims to cover the topics below:

• Understanding the Pacific League
  • Characterize each team
  • What makes Orix the winner?
  • Power play: Tradings, FA and MLB
• Understanding the Central League
  • Characterize each team
  • What makes Tigers the winner?
  • Power play: Tradings, FA and MLB
• Understanding the Nippon Series
• Understanding the 2023 draft
• Predicting 2024

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