Free Player Injury Database

by Josh Hermsmeyer

When I started working on Rotobase I knew I wanted to generate notes like the following:

Negatives:
Injured wrist last season. 12% chance of re-injury. Players saw power drop by 17% in the year following this injury.

However all the databases out there are either proprietary, or don’t allow for easy access to the underlying data for analysis. So, I started developing my own database, starting with 2009. It was a bear. Scouring the news sites and local papers for injury info is not fun. It makes me respect completely the work Corey Dawkins put in to generate his tool, but it also makes me upset knowing that the work had been done, but that it wasn’t available for other folks to analyze.

So 2 months ago I asked some gentlemen in India to help me. Last week they blew me away, and delivered a pretty good data set of all players back to 2002. The database uses the data model developed by Tom Tango, where each injury is broken out by body part injured, side and description. This allows for a pretty granular analysis.

The work was hard, but I’m pleased to report my portion of it is finished (for now). I’m making the CSV file and the SQL dump available for download here. I’m hoping the community will find it useful enough to help me keep it updated.

All players are referenced using retroIDs.

There are only two restrictions on using the data, and folks can use it for commercial purposes if they choose.

1. You must post a link back to Rotobase.
2. You must make any additions to the database public in CSV or SQL dump form for others to use and enjoy.

I look forward to seeing what the saber community does with the info. For my part, I’ll be posting my analysis of some of the data in the next few days.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: File is offline while I update the database.
Injury_database.zip