July 16, 2013

Feature Focus

Transactions Browser

by Rob McQuown

On the surface, the Baseball Prospectus Transactions Browser appears to be just another list of transactions—which, while useful, you could find in plenty of other places. But the Transactions Browser is much more than that. Here's the default page:

(Actually, it extends on for 46 more transactions.)

But—like an iceberg—90 percent of the Browser lurks just out of sight, or visible yet cleverly concealed.

• First, note that the date is linked. One might think that clicking on "7/16/13" would do something like bring up baseball events from July 16, such as "Ichiro Suzuki and Kazuhiro Sasaki call off their boycott of the Japanese press." But in actuality, it brings up all transactions from that date.
• Note next that the two small images are linked to other parts of the Baseball Prospectus site. Clicking on the Twins logo, for example, takes the reader to the Team Audit page for Minnesota. Clicking on Oswaldo Arcia's tiny head goes to his player card page.
• Continuing the theme of the linked date, the team name and player name links also go back to the Transactions Browser... for transactions involving that team or player, respectively, of course.
• Where applicable, transactions will include an "Analysis" link that takes you to the relevant Transaction Analysis article.

Advanced Search
Now, all of those feelings of simplicity and ease-of-use meet this titanic menu, which allows you to customize the type of transactions that appear:

While it's huge, the various components really are pretty easy to figure out—in order to see all 15-Day and 60-Day Disabled List stints by players on the Yankees this season, for example, it's only necessary to check the boxes for "To" in front of "15-Day Disabled List" and in front of "60-Day Disabled List," select "New York Yankees" from the left Team pulldown menu, and enter the date range (here 1/1/2013 and 7/15/2013), and then click the big green "Search >>" box at the bottom:

Remember that you can access the Transactions Browser at any time by mousing over the "Transactions" button on the navbar at the top of the page, then clicking the dropdown link. The nearly limitless possibilities should be enough to keep everyone too busy to post comments here, but should any comments or suggestions appear, they'd definitely be welcome.

Rob McQuown is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @robmcquown
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