Webscrape MLB Draft

https://github.com/zetvzb/SABR/blob/master/Scraping%20MLB%20Drafts%20with%20rvest.R

#Creating a model for analyzing draft

library(dplyr)

library(sqldf)

library(rvest)

###########################################################

#Scrub former Drafts manually with rvest

#Specify the URL for desired Website (Note Year and Round)

#################################################################

pages = 40 #Number of webpages to scrape. Hence there are 40 rounds in the MLB Draft

sci_df <- data.frame()

for (page in (1:pages)) {

print(paste0("getting data for page: ", page))

URL <- paste0("https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?draft_round=", page,"&year_ID=2005&draft_type=junreg&query_type=year_round")

webpage <- read_html(URL)

page_list <- webpage %>%

html_nodes('td') %>%

html_text() %>%

gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$", "", .) #strip the white space from the beginning and end of a string.

Round <- webpage %>%

html_nodes('th+ .right') %>%

html_text() %>%

as.data.frame()

Pick <- webpage %>%

html_nodes('.right:nth-child(4)') %>%

html_text() %>%

as.data.frame()

Name <- webpage %>%

html_nodes('td:nth-child(9)') %>%

html_text() %>%

as.data.frame()

Team <- webpage %>%

html_nodes('.left:nth-child(7)') %>%

html_text() %>%

as.data.frame()

Position <- webpage %>%

html_nodes('.left+ .left a') %>%

html_text() %>%

as.data.frame()

School <- webpage %>%

html_nodes('.left:nth-child(24)') %>%

html_text() %>%

as.data.frame()

tmp <- data.frame(Round,Pick,Name,Team,Position,School)

if(pages ==1) {

sci_df <- data.frame(tmp)

} else {

sci_df <-rbind(sci_df, tmp)

}

}

names(sci_df) <- c("Round", "Overall Pick", "Name", "Team", "Position", "School")

write.csv(sci_df, "Draft2005.csv")