Sports Reference Blog

Want to find a chain of teammates between any two players in MLB history, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon-style? Then check out our Oracle of Baseball, which can help you find things like this:

Chain from Mickey Mantle to Mike Trout

I have added a Team Score Finder to the Basketball-Reference.com Play Index. With this new tool you can answer questions like:

• What is the record for most points scored in the fourth quarter?
• How many teams have been held scoreless in an overtime period?
• What is the record for largest deficit overcome after three quarters?
• How many teams have blown a halftime lead of 25 or more points?
• What is the record for most points scored in a regulation game?

If you have any questions or comments about the Team Score Finder, please leave them here or use our feedback system. Thanks and enjoy!

Today, we added a new feature to our popular Approximate Value metric on the site -- AV totals for kickers and punters. (Don't worry, we've warned Doug Drinen, and he hasn't suffered any adverse health side-effects that we know of.)

The methodology is described in tortuous detail on the AV formula page, but we basically looked at salary data to calibrate kicker and punter AV against our existing AV data, and used some simple metrics (kicking points added above average using distance data; punting gross yards per attempt w/ an adjustment for blocks) to measure kicking/punting performance. The best career AVs in each category are as follows:

We're still working out some AV kinks (particularly in terms of All-Pro bonuses) with certain players who played both kicker/punter and another position -- think Lou Groza -- but for the most part we're happy with the results, and we thought it was time special-teamers got their AV due.

Players born on June 14 - Baseball-Reference.com.

Some folks want to see all of the Phillies or Braves born on this date, so I've added a column of franchises played for that you can easily search (you do know ctrl-F right?).

It's the Finals, so that means it's time for a reminder to check out the Basketball-Reference Play Index. In case you don't already know about the PI, it's a set of research tools that allow you to create customizable queries on our database, save the results, and share them with others. With the PI, you can:

• Use the Player Season Finder to search through all NBA, ABA, & BAA players' regular season and playoff statistics for performances that match your criteria.
• Use the Player Game Finder to search through NBA players' regular season and playoff game logs (since 1985-86) for games matching your criteria.
• Use the Head-to-Head Finder to search for games in which two selected players played against each other.
• Search for player and team consecutive-game streaks that match your criteria using the Streak Finders.
• Search for team performances that meet your criteria with the Team Season Finder and Team Game Finder.
• Use the Draft Finder to search through every NBA/BAA draft for picks that match your criteria.
• Use the Player Comparison Finder to compare the stats of up to four players through (or in) a given season.

Also, take a look at the Play Index Plus for even more data-searching goodness. The PI+ lets you sift through the play-by-play data of every game since 2001, making it possible to look for specific events, lineup data, and shooting stats (including clutch shots and shot breakdowns by distance).

Best of all, these features are 100% free to use! So go ahead, give them a try, and you'll wonder how you ever got along without them.

The Major league Baseball draft is tonight, so here are some tools you can use to prepare for the event:

• B-R Draft Section - Search every year, every pick, in draft history
• 2013 Draft Preview - Draft order for first 3 rounds + historical info for pick #s
• Draft-related B-R Blog posts

Check them out as you get ready for the 2013 Draft!

With Wins Above Replacement (WAR) gaining more prominence since last season, it's a good time to remind everyone about our WAR 2.2 guide:

• Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained - This explains the basics of WAR, the philosophy behind the stat, and some of the changes we made to the formula the past few years.
• Weighted Runs Above Average (wRAA) Explained - This describes how wRAA, the core hitting stat of WAR, is computed.
• Position Player WAR Calculations and Details - This explains how we turn wRAA, Baserunning & Double-Play Runs, Fielding Runs, Positional Adjustment Runs, and Replacement level Runs into WAR for position-players.
• Pitcher WAR Calculations and Details - This explains how we take a pitcher's runs allowed & innings pitched, and turn it into WAR.
• Converting Runs to Wins - This further describes the process by which Runs Above Replacement (for both pitchers and position players) are converted into Wins Above Replacement.
• WAR Comparison Chart - This chart shows the differences between the WAR found here at Baseball-Reference and those from a variety of other sources, including FanGraphs & Baseball Prospectus.
• WAR Data Downloads - If you want to download the raw WAR data yourself and play around with it, you can also get the Batting and Pitching data from our site.

Many of the questions we typically get about WAR can be answered by reading the guide linked above.

Here's a page you may not know about, because even I didn't know it existed until Sean pointed it out this morning:

2013 Major League Baseball Recent Transactions & Injuries

Simply put, it contains a list of recent transactions, as well as a report on who's currently injured (i.e., questionable for tonight's game or on the disabled list).

Today, we added a small new dataset to the site's Awards Section: All-Decade Teams. We have the official All-Decade Teams from the Pro Football Hall of Fame (and, in the case of the AFL, the AFL Hall of Fame) going back to the 1920s:

• Pro Football Hall of Fame All-1920s
• Pro Football Hall of Fame All-1930s
• Pro Football Hall of Fame All-1940s
• Pro Football Hall of Fame All-1950s
• AFL Hall of Fame All-1960s
• Pro Football Hall of Fame All-1960s
• Pro Football Hall of Fame All-1970s
• Pro Football Hall of Fame All-1980s
• Pro Football Hall of Fame All-1990s
• Pro Football Hall of Fame All-2000s

We also assembled our own Pro-Football-Reference All-Decade teams using Approximate Value, and list those as well:

• Pro Football Reference All-1960s
• Pro Football Reference All-1970s
• Pro Football Reference All-1980s
• Pro Football Reference All-1990s
• Pro Football Reference All-2000s

I am very close to having a complete set of proofed line scores (i.e., scoring by quarter) for the 1950-51 NBA season forward. By "proofed" I mean that I have verified that the line score total equals the team point total. There are almost 55,000 regular season and playoff games in that period, but I only have 21 12 issues that need to be resolved.

First, here are the cases where the line score total does not match the team's point total:

195111100BOS BOS pts  83 (game)  84 (line) Found!
195812270PHW PHW pts 114 (game) 115 (line) Found!
195812270PHW STL pts 108 (game) 105 (line) Found!
196003090DET MNL pts 116 (game) 117 (line) Found!
196011050STL STL pts 119 (game) 120 (line) Found!
196111180STL CIN pts 133 (game) 136 (line) Found!
196203040SYR SYR pts 115 (game) 105 (line) Found!
196301310SYR SYR pts 112 (game) 102 (line)
196403010DET SFW pts 100 (game)  94 (line)
196403170LAL PHI pts  97 (game)  94 (line)
196602160NYK SFW pts 108 (game) 106 (line)

Second, here are the games that are missing line scores:

195011040WSC MNL and WSC
195011110NYK SYR and NYK Found!
195011110WSC BOS and WSC Found!
195011150MNL SYR and MNL
195011220BLB NYK and BLB
195011250WSC SYR and WSC
195101060WSC FTW and WSC
195102220NYK TRI and NYK
195103290SYR NYK and SYR Found!
196203120LAL NYK and LAL

I have almost exhausted the resources that I have at my disposal, so I would be very grateful if any of you could lend a hand. You can post additions/corrections here or submit them using our feedback form. Please supply documentation to support your claim. Thanks in advance for any help that you can provide.