Alright so this morning I’m sitting with my coffee thinking, hmm what baseball stats would folks wanna see? Royals versus Yankees popped into my head – classic matchup, always some fireworks.
First thing I did was hit up the MLB site for the box score from last night’s game. Started clicking through pages feeling kinda lazy, like “man, scrolling through all these names…” Wish they made it easier.
Seeing all that raw data kinda froze me up at first. Had this moment like, “Ugh, how do I make sense of this spaghetti?” Decided to just grab the whole messy thing. Copied it all – batters, pitchers, even the weird symbols – pasted right into Notepad. Saved it as “yanks_royals_*”. Real professional, I know.
Fired up Excel next. Thought about doing pivot tables but nah, too much brainpower needed. Just eyeballed the big numbers. Bobby Witt Jr.? Kid was cooking! Two homers jumped off the page. And for the Yankees, Judge being Judge – crushed one deep. Scribbled their names on a sticky note like “Okay, these dudes showed UP.”
Then I got stuck. Needed the team totals – runs, hits, that stuff. Scrolled back up and kinda squinted at the tiny print. Accidentally grabbed someone’s OBP instead of hits. Twice. Felt like an idiot. Finally just typed the team runs directly into my draft: NYY 6, KC 4. Simple.
Time for the pitchers. Oh boy, this part sucked. Yankees used, like, 47 relievers (okay, maybe 5). Had to scroll back down, check names, innings pitched. Cole Ragans for KC? Solid stuff. Scribbled “Cole: 6 IP, 8 Ks, dude fought” in my notes. For the Yanks bullpen… just wrote “committee”. Because honestly? Tracking all those ERAs mid-analysis would’ve made me cry.
Putting it together felt good. Took my sticky note stars (Witt, Judge), slapped in the team scores, dropped the pitching highlights. Could’ve used SQL or some fancy tool? Sure, why not. But honestly? My eyeballs and Notepad got the job done. Biggest takeaway? Sometimes the stars shine (Judge, Witt), but the guys you don’t expect? They sneak up and decide the game. Yankees won by committee, KC lost but Witt went off. Numbers tell both stories.
