Hi Sal,
The Hardball Times buys Major League Baseball stats from Baseball Info Solutions, who send us the stats in CSV files daily. I then update our database tables with these stats. The stats pages you see are generated from code I wrote in PHP that basically consists of several classes that wrap around SQL queries. I used PEAR::DB and PEAR::DataGrid to fetch and render the data, as well as Smarty for some templating.
So, it's not open source, but I might be able to help if you have any questions.
I already contacted BIS about stats, but unfortunately they don't provide the stats I'd require. I'm going to have to automate a data-gathering system myself, and that I'll be able to take care of. It's more the data organization that is giving me a headache -- to create the massive sortable lists that are available on THT is what I'm trying to find an easier way to do. I was just wondering if you'd created all the code for the sortable stats database yourself, or if there was some sort of open source data-sorting code that was available. I guess the answer is no. Is there any advice you can provide other than just putting my heart, soul, and freetime into creating the PHP for it? Care to take on another project that will have global consequences and revolutionize the internet as we know it?
Hi Sal. Can you send me an email? Might be easier to chat that way. My contact info is here. I don't have any spare time to take on another project, but I might be able to advise on how to approach it. It really depends on how much SQL experience you have and how much web scripting experience (PHP, Ruby/Rails, etc.) you have.
p.s., I use PEAR::Structures_DataGrid to generate the html table and add the column sorting functionality. It might be easier to just generate the tables yourself, however. DataGrid is great for some simpler things, but I had to use some advanced features of it to get it to work right with the THT data. If you want to use PHP, I highly recommend using some kind of development framework like CakePHP or Symfony.