Won't somebody think of the database administrators?

August 26, 2024 6:19 AM

Danny Jansen will be the first baseball player to play for both teams in the same game.

Eric Money is the only NBA player to have scored for two teams in one game, although there were others that played for both sides.

I can't find any evidence that this has happened in the NFL or NHL, but would love to know if it has.

posted by jacquilynne (25 comments total)

Jansen was at the plate with a runner on first and one strike in the count when the umpires called out the tarps for the finale of Boston's series against the Blue Jays in June. The game will be resumed at that point as part of a day-night doubleheader on Monday afternoon, Toronto's first trip back to Fenway Park since then.

Jansen likely will be behind the plate at catcher when the Blue Jays send a pinch hitter to finish off his at-bat.

So it's kinda unexpected that this hasn't happened before (a player playing for both teams in the same game) given the length of MLB's history and how many games are played in each season. But the player playing both sides of the same at bat is absolutely wild.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:25 AM on August 26 [29 favorites]

I forsee a future where a baseball game can be played by one team against itself. When they're batting most of them are sitting on a bench anyway!
posted by jy4m at 6:26 AM on August 26

Every once in a while I watch a game and try to contemplate the kind of SQL database that enables the announcer to make comments like "this is X's first time making to 3rd base on a hit in the 6th while wearing blue shoelaces." (And the interns who enter the data into it.)
posted by ocschwar at 6:31 AM on August 26 [8 favorites]

Every once in a while I watch a game and try to contemplate the kind of SQL database that enables the announcer to make comments like "this is X's first time making to 3rd base on a hit in the 6th while wearing blue shoelaces." (And the interns who enter the data into it.)

A few weeks ago I actually encountered, in an antique store, a media guide—this is the thick, "Guinness World Records"-esque book that announcers keep on hand and still mention in games today, though for all I know it has gone fully electronic. OTOH, the one I found was only a handful of years old. It seems every team publishes a new one every year; presumably, announcers would have all 30 of them, then bookmark pages before each game based on the announced lineups?
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 6:38 AM on August 26 [4 favorites]

I love that weird granular stuff.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:45 AM on August 26

Great FPP title, and as someone currently taking a class on Harvesting and Cleaning Datasets, I will be adding this to a collection of cautionary tales.

If I were to create a baseball database from scratch, my first instinct is to make "at bats" one of the core atomic variables, but actually I guess "pitch equivalent events" may be the best foundation to constructing a dataset? That way events between each pitch, pick off attempt, balk etc could be captured. And that way you couldn't suffer from the assumption that a player trade could not happen between data entries.
posted by midmarch snowman at 6:51 AM on August 26 [4 favorites]

The Effectively Wild podcast Interviewed Kenny Jackelen, primary developer for baseball-reference.com, about this for their August 2nd episode.
posted by ursus_comiter at 6:51 AM on August 26 [5 favorites]

Some real blaseball energy here.
posted by Pitachu at 6:56 AM on August 26 [12 favorites]

Correction: Danny Jansen will be the first baseball player to play for both teams in the same game if you don't count the pre-season.
posted by Plutor at 6:57 AM on August 26 [2 favorites]

midmarch snowman, you'd really want to work with plate appearances, not at-bats, as at-bats does not include walks, hit by pitch, or sacrifices. But then, the pitch equivalent event thing solves the issue in this thread, so...
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:00 AM on August 26

presumably, announcers would have all 30 of them, then bookmark pages before each game based on the announced lineups?

There is a team of stat people off microphone who have prepared likely topics and situations pre-game, but who are also very very busy when weird shit starts to happen. But also if you live and breathe baseball, like I did growing up, the echoes of stories and oddities just become common parlance. A bunch of trivia just become "things you know." Of course I know Don Denkinger made the worst call in baseball history. Of course I know Eddie Gaedel was the shortest player to ever take an at bat (look that one up for some old timey baseball shenanigans).
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:33 AM on August 26 [5 favorites]

BTW It's probably my duty to add this link to Eric Money (kinda) Previously.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:24 AM on August 26

The same quirk has allowed for another fun fact in 2018.

May 15: Yankees at Nationals game is delayed.
May 20: Juan Soto debuts in the Majors.
June 18: The delayed game is rescheduled and continues, with Soto now in the line-up. Soto gets a home run.

As that game is recorded in the stats as being played on May 15, Soto's first homer in the major leagues is now five days before he debuted...
posted by ewan at 8:24 AM on August 26 [19 favorites]

So it's kinda unexpected that this hasn't happened before (a player playing for both teams in the same game) given the length of MLB's history and how many games are played in each season

Because up until the 2020 season, a suspended game such as this would have been restarted from the beginning. Restarting a game right from the moment it was suspended was part of the set of rules put in place to speed up the shortened COVID season such as 7 inning double headers and a ghost runner on 2nd in extra innings.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:29 AM on August 26 [10 favorites]

. It seems every team publishes a new one every year; presumably, announcers would have all 30 of them, then bookmark pages before each game based on the announced lineups?

It's called a Press Guide, and yeah, every team publishes one each year.

Here is Best Baseball Announcer in History Vin Scully talking for 8 minutes about what he and his team do to prepare for a game. He shows off the D-Back's Press Guide at about minute 4, but he really goes into what he's looking at during a game, and the interview is really a good watch.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:38 AM on August 26 [1 favorite]

I'm a timeseries database administrator, and this burns my soul. History is supposedly immutable, but in fact, stock markets send corrections for trades hours after they happen all the time. So on the one hand, you've got an immutable record of events at a given time, but some of those events are saying "Change a value on this previous event"! And exchanges aren't always the best at marking which events are real events and which ones are corrections to existing events, and if you don't process it correctly you'll throw off calculations to a measurable extent.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:39 AM on August 26 [3 favorites]

I worked adjacent to sports broadcasting at ABC/ESPN for a few years and you would be absolutely flummoxed at the prep work that would go into each game. I worked on football, not baseball, so there's less "weird timey wimey" occurrences, but over the course of the week there was a staff of ~10 "producers" (aka researchers) working to tease out potential story threads, achievements, etc. They would setup graphics for the likely/big happenings and have them at their fingertips to feed to the announcers/color guys/directors. So, so much labor and most of it destined for the digital dustbin.

The guys producing all that content lived for stuff like this. They were absolute sports/stats junkies and could keep an astonishing amount of trivialities in their heads, but even 20 years ago they were being backed up by monster databases.
posted by drewbage1847 at 8:54 AM on August 26 [5 favorites]

But the player playing both sides of the same at bat is absolutely wild.

On the bright side, the commute to the new job is excellent.
posted by chrominance at 10:14 AM on August 26 [3 favorites]

But the player playing both sides of the same at bat is absolutely wild.

if he was a pitcher instead of a catcher, and he was fielding first and batting in the continuation, could he get a run and an earned run charged against himself?
posted by ctmf at 11:36 AM on August 26 [1 favorite]

The pitcher that only bats against all pitchers that don't bat against themselves, also known as the James Russell Paradox
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:49 AM on August 26 [1 favorite]

if he was a pitcher instead of a catcher, and he was fielding first and batting in the continuation, could he get a run and an earned run charged against himself?

I'm not sure, but Jansen did catch his own strike-out, so that's something!
posted by Navelgazer at 12:07 PM on August 26 [1 favorite]

...and Jansen strikes out to end the game. Icing on the cake!
posted by Crane Shot at 1:26 PM on August 26 [1 favorite]

If I were to create a baseball database from scratch

...you must first invent the universe.
posted by Foosnark at 2:02 PM on August 26 [6 favorites]

Every once in a while I watch a game and try to contemplate the kind of SQL database that enables the announcer to make comments like "this is X's first time making to 3rd base on a hit in the 6th while wearing blue shoelaces." (And the interns who enter the data into it.)

Check out some Jon Bois videos on the Secret Base youtube channel if you'd like some real deep dives into baseball (and other sports) statistics. My favorite is "What if Barry Bonds Had Played Without a Baseball Bat?"
posted by rifflesby at 8:54 PM on August 26 [1 favorite]

I post a trivia question every day for my work chat (I also post it on Facebook, Bluesky and Threads if anyone is interested in following it) and since today's category was supposed to be Current Events, I honoured this deeply amusing happening by posting this question, which everyone in this discussion obviously knows the answer to:

TriviaQOTD: Due to a rainout, Danny Jansen played for both teams in the same MLB game. When the game was called, he was batting for Toronto. What position was he playing for Boston when it resumed?
posted by jacquilynne at 8:01 AM on August 28 [1 favorite]