I am currently working on an update to the Nippon Professional Baseball historical database (in Lahman format) that can be imported into OOTP for play use. I've tested it, and the following changes have been added:
- Full statistics for the 2007 season
- Updated franchise information, making franchise moves and expansion/contraction possible
- A separate database with MLB equivalencies for NPB players based on historical era (new!), making for more realistic statistics when playing concurrent historical MLB and NPB seasons
- Accurate and working importing of award winners and hall of famers
This is in addition to the features from last year's version of the database, which is a detailed Lahman database for Japanese baseball with every NPB player, complete batting and pitching statistics for the majority of players, fielding statistics from 1990-now and for select earlier players, all stars, award winners, hall of famers, team history, franchise history, etc.
I would release it now, but the database has the following flaws, which were in last year's version:
- Missing secondary batting stats (doubles, triples, caught stealing) for some players from the 30s to the 80s
- Missing fielding position information for some players from the 30s to the 80s
- Lots of missing fielding statistics from the 30s to the 80s (current workaround: fake stats based on an average NPB player)
The last issue won't be fixable for now, as fielding statistics before the 80s are extremely difficult to find.
However, the
Data Warehouse at
Japan Baseball Daily has been updated since I last posted this database, and currently contains nearly all of the missing batting statistics and positional information for nearly every player that has played in NPB. This is great, except that it is not in database/spreadsheet format. Instead it is a bunch of tables on separate web pages on the site. I would love to add this information, but it would probably take months to enter it all manually into the NPB Lahman database myself.
Fortunately, it looks like the data at
Japan Baseball Daily is in a pretty standard format, and could be pulled from the site into a spreadsheet/database using a script. Unfortunately, I don't have the expertise to do this. However, if there is anyone that does and is willing to help, please let me know. I would love to have a more complete version of the database available for historical players. If you can help with this project, or if you are aware of a newer NPB database that has this information, please PM me.