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Web Queries Part 2: How To Make a Dynamic Excel Web Query

Web Queries Part 2: How To Make a Dynamic Excel Web Query

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We’re about to take web querying to the next level.  If you’re not familiar with web queries or if you missed our first discussion, you can brush up on Excel web query basics in Part 1 the Web Queries Series here (ha, that rhymes).

This will also make more sense if you’re familiar with the concepts of player IDs and website URLs discussed in this post.

The Weakness In Our First Query

You might recall that our first web query was specifically linked to Jose Fernandez’s player page at BrooksBaseball.net.  This is a great way to pull his specific pitch mix into an Excel file.  But it’s also pretty limiting that we can only pull in Jose Fernandez’s statistics and would have to create a new query to look up another player.  At that point it’s faster to just go to BrooksBaseball.net and start searching for players manually.

What is a Dynamic Web Query?

A dynamic query would be designed in such a way so that we only have to initially set up one query.  That query is not static, linked to one specific page or player, it’s dynamic, meaning it is linked to an input that can change.
Said another way, instead of linking the web query to player ID “11530“, link the web query to a specific cell in Excel.  Then whatever player ID is typed into that cell will be used in the web query.

A New Example

Instead of linking to BrooksBaseball.net, we’ll link to the player pages at Razzball.com. miguel_cabrera_razzballIf you haven’t checked them out, these player pages over are an incredible resource.  Take a look at Miguel Cabrera’s page using this link:

http://razzball.com/player/1744/Miguel+Cabrera/

And just to illustrate something about the URLs at Razzball, try this link:

http://razzball.com/player/1744/

They load to the same page.  The player’s name is not necessary for the page to load.

Stop Blabbering And Asking Me To Read Things.  Show Me How To Do This.

Sorry about that.  Video is more conducive to understanding this dynamic web query example.  Here you go:

Have Any Questions?

Don’t just watch the video.  Give this a try.  You could use this to more easily do projections, evaluate trades, set the ideal daily fantasy lineup, and much more.

If you like getting your hands dirty in Excel and doing player analysis like this, sign up for the Smart Fantasy Baseball newsletter where you’ll get more great ideas like this.

Be smart.

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Player ID Map Updated For 2014

Player ID Map Updated For 2014

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If you’re looking to get a jump start and create your own rankings for the 2014 fantasy baseball season, the SFBB Player ID Map has been updated for those players expected to be “fantasy relevant”.  ESPN’s player IDs have also been added to the spreadsheet.

You can download the updated map here.

A complete list of changes can be found in the “Change Log” tab of the spreadsheet.

ESPN_Player_ID

Some of the more notable additions to the Player ID Map are:

  • Jose Fernandez
  • Sonny Gray
  • Wil Myers
  • Anthony Rendon
  • Bruce Rondon
  • Zack Wheeler
  • Kolten Wong
  • Mike Zunino
  • Michael Wacha
  • Yasiel Puig
  • Xander Bogaerts
  • Brad Miller
  • Danny Farquhar
  • Danny Salazar
  • Taijuan Walker

If you’re new to the site, consider checking out these past posts that illustrate some interesting things you can do with player IDs.

Please let me know if I’ve missed anyone.  Stay smart.

 

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Baseball Professor

Just How Much Does Playing Time Matter?

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If you’re a dedicated Smart Fantasy Baseball reader, you know I like to harp on playing time as an often overlooked and under-weighted component of player value.  Well I now have some proof to back it up!

Check out this guest post I wrote at baseballprof.com.

Baseball Professor

I took the results of a real rotisserie league of mine and analyzed the standings to find out just how important the effect of playing time was on the final standings.  Pretty tables, Excel conditional formatting, and more.

While you’re over there, please take a look around.  The guys from Baseball Professor crank out a lot of high quality content.  I can only post one or two articles a week.  So if you’re looking for more smart fantasy information to consume, check out baseballprof.com.  These guys work their tails off and it’s sabermetric-oriented, interesting, and diverse.

The group was also kind enough to invite me to participate in an early 2014 mock draft. It feels great to already get some of those draft anticipation juices flowing.  In fact, I’ve already received a few e-mails from SFBB readers about how they can start preparing rankings and projections for the 2014 season.  It’ll be March before we know it!

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Web Queries Part 1: How to Make Your First Excel Web Query

Web Queries Part 1: How to Make Your First Excel Web Query

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Did you know there is an easy way to grab baseball statistics from web pages and easily pull the data into Excel?  And if that same data on the web changes, the new information will automatically pull into your Excel file.  The function in Excel is called a “web query” and it’s pretty amazing stuff.  I’ll show you how to make your first web query in the post to follow

Credit Where Credit Is Due

I recently learned of web queries when I was looking into features in Excel 2013, and more recently I came across the idea being applied to baseball statistics in Joseph Adler’s book, Baseball Hacks: Tips & Tools for Analyzing and Winning with Statistics.  If you enjoy the Excel and data analysis articles here at SmartFantasyBaseball.com, you need to get your hands on a copy of “Baseball Hacks”.  I cannot recommend it enough.  Web queries are only one of the 75 different “hacks” in the book.

Please note that I only recommend resources that I think are extremely valuable and that I use myself.  The links to Baseball Hacks above are affiliate links, through which I earn a small commission if you were to purchase the book. The book will cost you the same if you directly go to Amazon and search for it. If you prefer a generic link through which I receive no benefit, use this.

Acquire A Target

The first thing you’ll need to do is identify a web page that has the data you want to grab.  The information has to be in a table format.  For this first example we’ll go to one of my favorite sites, Brooksbaseball.net, and pull in the pitch type usage information for Jose Fernandez.

If you visit the link above or look at the image below, you can see the percentage use of each type of pitch is presented in a tabular format (below the graph).  It is this table that we will now link to an Excel file.

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Image and pitch data courtesy of BrooksBaseball.net

Making Your First Web Query

You can watch the video or refer to the written step-by-step instructions below. (more…)

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