Learning R: An introduction
Or: An English major tries to learn an actual skill.
As a baseball writer, my analysis and commentary are at their worst when I’m merely regurgitating stats from FanGraphs or Baseball Prospectus or Baseball Reference or Baseball Savant or wherever else statistics can be found. The information found on these websites is freely available and any baseball fan with a moderate understanding of how to read it could see that Mike Leake is moving away from his sinker or that César Hernández chased way more often last year. Good baseball analysis teaches you something you can’t figure out yourself by looking at a player’s FanGraphs page. It goes *ahem* beyond the box score.
Because I consider myself a writer first and an analyst second, I recognize that my ability to go beyond is limited by technical acumen. That’s why I’m (finally) taking it upon myself to learn R. This was something that I meant to do over the offseason when my brother bought me a copy of Analyzing Baseball Data with R, but I wound up playing a lot of Slay the Spire instead.
With the season suspended indefinitely and with Rob Manfred’s comments earlier this week making a May return sound incredibly unlikely, there’s still time. Our capitalist obsession with productivity dictates that we use this time to learn a new skill. Though I have been learning to paint miniatures (just another thing that Henry Cavill and I have in common), learning R seems slightly more useful for my professional development. Also, I can’t go back to my friendly local game store to get more paints.
As might be surmised, I’ll mainly be working from the second edition of Analyzing Baseball Data with R by Max Marchi, Jim Albert, and Benjamin S. Baumer. If you’re interested in picking up a copy for yourself, you can order directly from the publisher. I’m sure supplementary materials will be needed eventually (soon?) as I know exactly zero programming languages, and it’s been close to 10 years since I took any sort of STEM class. I am a blank slate.
Every Sunday, I’ll be chronicling my progress or lack thereof. My hope is that other prospective baseball analysts will use this as inspiration to begin themselves. Personally, I find it helpful to know that other people struggle with new skillsets. I don’t get discouraged as easily when other people find it difficult, too. In the coming weeks, I will lay my buffoonery bare in solidarity and support.
This is also about accountability. I’m a lazy person, and I won’t do something unless I have to. The siren song of Slay the Spire remains ever alluring, and I’ll do a better job of resisting it if I believe strangers on the internet will be disappointed in me if I fall victim to it.
As of now, I have read the first chapter of ABDR, installed R, and downloaded Sean Lahman’s baseball database. Next week, I dive into the Tidyverse and maybe actually learn some syntax.
Kenny Kelly is the managing editor of Beyond the Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter @KennyKellyWords.