A Note About Suspended Games

On the website after the Friday night part of Game 2 of the World Series, I posted that some players from both teams would still get points from the completion of a suspended game between the Pirates and the Cubs.  In the end, those players did not get those point.  They didn't for three reasons:

1. It didn't matter.
2. I've never used stats from completions of suspended games on any other day.
3. It would have been a pain in the ass to do so.

As most of you know, our stats service Onroto publishes the daily stats to their website around 6:00 a.m. each morning. These stats exactly match those that you would see in the boxscores on Saturday morning if you looked. What you may not know is that after Onroto publishes the stats, any number of corrections to the stats may be made the the leagues offices.  Onroto publishes these changes in "corrections" files that are posted on the website too. Typically they are minor things that have no bearing on FNFT.  (e.g. changing a passed ball to a wild pitch - that sort of thing).  But sometimes they are things that would affect FNFT.  Here is the corrections file from 9/4:

09.01 batters 1744 Miguel Cabrera Det game 1 H from 4 to 3
09.01 batters 1744 Miguel Cabrera Det game 1 Safe_error from 0 to 1
09.01 batters 5986 Mike Aviles Cle game 1 E from 0 to 1
09.01 pitchers 2429 Corey Kluber Cle game 1 H from 7 to 6
09.01 pitchers 2429 Corey Kluber Cle game 1 ER from 5 to 2
09.01 pitchers 2429 Corey Kluber Cle game 1 Safe_error from 0 to 1
09.03 batters 3123 Gregor Blanco SF game 1 E from 1 to 0

As you can see, the official scorer changed a play on 9/1 (three days ago) on which Miguel Cabrera had originally been credit with a hit to a safe on error. This change affected Corey Kluber's stats and the fielder's stats.  9/1 wasn't an FNFT day, but if it was, to go back and change this in the FNFT records would be an incredible pain.

So, what I have always done - and will continue to do - is use the daily stats that Onroto publishes as "official" for FNFT purposes.

What does this have to do with suspended games?  Well, what Onroto did on Saturday morning is published the stats from the part of the Pirates-Cubs game that had been played. On Sunday morning, they published the rest of the stats for the game in one of these corrections files.  To use that, I would have had to go in and manually edit each player involved.  For a World Series game that wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but for a regular season game it would have.  Plus, I don't really keep track of all of the Major League suspended games.  Most of them slip past me without my knowing.  So, when a game is suspended, you will only get the portion of the game that was played and not the completion part of it.  I will amend the rules to reflect this change.

Holy Grails

The FNFT website went online in 2003. In its early days it was simple a way to disseminate the box scores each week so I didn't have to mail them (to most of you).

Every year since 2003 I have tried to make the site better than it was the year before.  Every year I have. Some of those changes were huge, like in 2008 when the roster system debuted. Other changes weren't so visible - they were more upgrades to things that happened behind the scenes - like in 2010 when I had to transition everything to our current stats service OnRoto.  Last year I added Playoff Probabilities to the standings and added the Yahoo! links late in the year that most of you will first start using now.

This year's changes I think are pretty big.  They are both things that I have been contemplating and trying to accomplish for a number of year and both are finally done. Thus, I call them Holy Grails.

MASTER PLAYER LIST

On the main menu of the roster system, under the "MLB Players" button, you will see a new table called "Master Player List".  This is an alphabetical list of every player in the OnRoto database.  This list includes many retired players and many minor league prospects, but if you are thinking of picking up a player, there is a 99.9% chance that his name is on this list.  This will allow you to pick up prospects who are called up mid-season who have not yet appeared in a game and therefore are not yet on the Batter and Pitcher Stats.

TRADES

Under the newly designed FNFT Rosters menu, you can now submit your own trades without me being involved. You have been asking for this and I have been saying I'm working on it for three or so years.  It's finally here.

This feature runs on the honor system like most things on the FNFT website. Any owner can post a trade for any player on any other team to any other team. It is up to all of you to use it only for its intended purpose and not for shenanigans and skulduggery.

Here is the process for posting a trade:

1. Open your team's roster by clicking the '+' in front of your team.  Under the "Trade To" column, after the player(s) you are trading, use the drop-down list to indicate which team is getting your traded player(s). When you are done, click the "Lock Traded Player(s)" button at the bottom of your roster. You must do this or the trade will not process.  (When you select a name in the "Trade To" column, a blue disk will light up at the front of the row for that player.  Once you click the "Lock Traded Player(s)" button the disk will go grey and the change is locked.  You can also lock players one-by-one by clicking the blue disk or undo the selection by hitting the curly arrow next to it.)
2. Next open the roster of the team you are trading with and under the "Trade To" column, select your name from the drop-down list for the players you are getting.  Again, click the "Lock Traded Players" button at the bottom of the roster.
3. When you are done, scroll to the very bottom of the page and click the "Submit Trade" button.  This will move all of the traded players to the bench their new team and post the trade to the transaction table.

It is only necessary for one of the teams involved in a trade to post it.  Doesn't matter who, but it only needs to be done once. If you want to cancel a trade and/or start over, just click the "Cancel Trade" button at the bottom.

So, go ahead and try it. I'm serious. Post a trade from your team to Bill Hicks' team.  Poke around to see that it took. When you are done, post another trade of the same players from his team back to yours.  I'll see those posts in the transaction table and delete them and I'll know that you've given it a whirl.