Did you know that you can use the B-R Play Index to search for information regarding interleague play? With games between leagues starting later this week, here are a handful of PI tricks:

* Search for great single-game or multigame player/team performances using the Game Finders. This lets you find trivia like the all-time winningest career pitchers in interleague play.

* Use the Streak Finders to look for long streaks in interleague games.

* Query franchise head-to-head records using the Head to Head Finder. This allows you to search for lists like the Mets' records vs. each opponent since 1997, which includes all of their interleague games.

* The Situational Finder can search teams' records in interleague games and find items like the teams who had the best interleague records in a single season.

Give them a try, and learn something new about interleague play.

2012 Japan Central League / Japan Pacific League / Atlantic League / Pecos League / All 2012 Leagues Covered

Starting today, we will be updating statistics for Nippon Pro Baseball and American independent leagues, like the Atlantic League, on a daily basis. Hope you enjoy this one of a kind feature on Baseball-Reference.com. Because you know you want to follow Lastings Milledge of the 2012 Yakult Swallows.

All 2012 Leagues Covered

As with baseball and basketball, we've now added player Twitter account links to player pages. Let us know if we're missing anybody.

WAR Comparison Chart - Baseball-Reference.com

Colin Wyers was kind enough to fill this out for WARP, so I've added WARP to the comparison chart and also split it off onto its own page for easy linking. If you want to know why numbers are different from one site to the next, this explains why.

WAR 2.1, Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained

As some noticed in our last update to WAR. Pitchers were being significantly bumped up in value. This was due primarily to a change in our runs to win calculation. After some consultation with noted, anonymous sabermetricians Tom Tango and Patriot, we worked out a more sophisticated approach that still accounts for the player's effect on the run environment, but doesn't overvalue the contribution of stellar pitchers. We've added a new page to run through the changes we've made when converting from runs to wins. Converting Runs to Wins.

There are a few other changes that have been made as well.
Read the rest of this entry

From the award's website...

A group of distinguished baseball writers and researchers have collaborated to create a new award as a memorial to the late baseball researcher Greg Spira. The new Greg Spira Baseball Research Award (www.SpiraAward.org) will be given annually in recognition of the best published article or paper containing original baseball research by a person 30 years old or younger. The winning entry must display innovative analysis or reasoning.

Greg Spira founded the annual Internet Baseball Awards (IBA) in 1991 and announced the 2011 winners a month before his death. The IBA are now maintained by Baseball Prospectus at www.baseballprospectus.com/iba. Spira was an early adopter and a pioneer in using the Internet to advance baseball analysis, particularly via Usenet’s groundbreaking rec.sport.baseball as well as via BaseballProspectus.com.

Spira later contributed to many sports books as a researcher, writer, and editor, including the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia, Total Baseball, and several annual periodicals about the Mets. A lifelong and passionate Mets fan, Spira died on December 28, 2011 in his native New York City.

Working with the Spira family, the creators of the Greg Spira Award include Sean Forman of Baseball- Reference.com, Joe Hamrahi and Dave Pease of Baseball Prospectus, Sean Lahman of Baseball1.com, and Gary Gillette of 24-7 Baseball, L.L.C.

The winner of the Greg Spira Baseball Research Award will receive a cash prize of $1,000. The program will also recognize two additional writers with awards of $200 for second place and $100 for third place.

Articles or papers eligible for consideration include those published on the World Wide Web, in e-books, and in print, as well as academic dissertations and presentations at conferences. Winners of the Greg Spira Award will not be eligible for consideration for future awards.

The inaugural Greg Spira Baseball Research Award winner will be announced on April 27, 2013--the 46th anniversary of Greg’s birthday. Future awards will be announced on April 27 of succeeding years.

A seven-person panel of judges will determine the winner. Greg’s brother Jonathan Spira has agreed to serve as one of the initial judges for the Award. Deadlines and procedures for submissions will be announced on June 1, 2012.

Remembrances, tributes, and other information about Greg Spira can also be found on these Web sites:

• www.GregSpira.com
• www.BaseballProspectus.com
• www.Baseball-Reference.com
• www.Baseball1.com
• www.247Baseball.com

For more information, please go to www.SpiraAward.org or contact Gary Gillette (GilletteAT247Baseball.com).

The change from oWAR and dWAR to ndWAR and dWAR is confusing folks, so I'm making an additional change.

afWAR => Average-Fielding-WAR. The player's WAR if they were a league average fielder, or what you should use if you trust no fielding metrics.
dWAR => Defensive WAR thanks to fielding and position.

afWAR = batting + baserunning + DP's + replacement + position
dWAR = fielding + position

(NOTE POSITION IS IN BOTH OF THEM!)

afWAR + dWAR does not equal WAR as you'll be double counting the position adjustment. And on a team level you shouldn't be using WAR anyway to determine what your team is good or bad at.

I'll start adding version numbers as I make tweaks to the system. This one changes no numbers, so it really is just a naming convention.

Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained - Baseball-Reference.com

As many have noticed, we have not been updating the 2012 WAR data in-season. The reason for this is that we have been working on a major upgrade to our WAR framework. The link above gives a very detailed rundown including: how to compute each part of our WAR formula, our reasoning on making the changes, downloads for historical WAR data, charts of the various constants and factors we use, and a chart of differences between the new B-R WAR, the old B-R WAR and FanGraphs WAR.
Read the rest of this entry