OnRoto Player Notes Update

[joeizzo]

NEW Update: Sat Jul 1 12:46:41 EDT 2023

We just got this from Rotoworld:
"We hope to have the analysis field ready next week."
We'll get set up to pull the plain headline note, ("Bobby Miller yielded three runs in 5 2/3 innings Friday in a win over the Royals", for example) right away, and turn them on as soon as we can. But we won't have the corresponding analysis/spin until next week.
We've been talking with other suppliers, but we don't think that they'll agree to provide analysis, either. If they do, though, we can get that turn on almost immediately.
We will post updates when we actually know something concrete.

[joeizzo]

Most Recent Update: Wed Jul 12 09:57:13 EDT 2023

Player Notes should be back tomorrow, possibly later today.

We appreciate your patience as Rotoworld has worked through this.

[joeizzo]

Most Recent Update: Fri Jul 14 12:28:05 EDT 2023

We're still having issues with Rotoworld and their new system. They have been moderately responsive to our inquiries, but the answers they are giving are not correct.

We're ready on our end, and we should be able to launch within a minutes once they give us correct info. But given what's been happening with them, that could take several days of back-and-forth.

We've asked for a quote for full player notes from RotoWire, but since their business model involves selling their analysis, we expect it will be prohibitively expensive.

If the debug process with RotoWorld (now NBCSports, actually) doesn't resolve by today, then tomorrow (Saturday, 7/15) we will start creating notes out of the MLB transactions. What we have there are only official moves, without analysis, but when one of your players gets hurt or sent down or called up, etc, it will show as a player note while we work with RotoWorld/NBCSports to get the real notes.

We appreciate your patience as Rotoworld continues to work through this.

[joeizzo]

Most Recent Update: Sun Jul 16 11:31:13 EDT 2023

We have some news on the player note issue with RotoWorld/NBCSports. But first... We know how frustrated everyone is about this situation -- not all of the notes had truly useful information, but some of the analysis was really helpful, and its absence is felt. With very, very few exceptions, you guys have been very patient and understanding as things are being worked out, and we really appreciate that.

Here's the latest:

First, you may have noticed that your team home pages contain now as player notes the MLB transaction data from League Pages -> MLB Player Data -> MLB Transactions. These are not meant as substitutes for the actual player notes, but it's useful to see them on team home pages because they are sorted out so you don't have to hunt through the full list of transactions for moves involving just your players.

On the RotoWorld/NBCSports issues: This weekend, we brought a sales rep into the conversation (because those guys sometimes pressure the tech staff when the clients are unhappy), and he already replied, with this:

"we will escalate first thing tomorrow morning. Development is external to NBC on this, so we’ll make sure we connect the dots first thing tomorrow"

The unfortunate thing here is that from this comment, it appears that NBCSports farmed out this project to a 3rd party -- that explains to some extent why some things have been moving so slowly with them.

But the good news is that it appears that he is going to push his tech guys to get this figured out (the current status is that we have given the NBCSports tech people the exact code that we're using to access their notes, and NBCSports tech support doesn't know why it's not working). Anyway, the best case is that we'll get something from them on Monday which we can use. Regardless, we're going to keep the sales guy in the loop now so that he can keep the pressure on.

In the meantime... RotoWire has told us that they are in the process of preparing a quote. But as we've said, because of their business model, we're expecting it be prohibitively high.

Again, we appreciate your patience as Rotoworld continues to work through this.

[joeizzo]

GOOD NEWS UPDATE: Wed Jul 19 22:38:48 EDT 2023

We have reached a final agreement to get player news and notes from RotoWire, and we have their permission to post the info before the contracts are signed. We have built the feed-fetcher scripts and will run tests and do the launch first thing tomorrow.

Thanks again for everyone's patience.