Sports Reference Blog

Get a Free Baseball-Reference Play Index Trial Through April 15

Posted by Mike Lynch on March 27, 2015

We're offering free access to the Baseball-Reference Play Index through April 15. Just sign up here and use this coupon code: Analytics

The Play Index is the most thorough and powerful publicly available baseball research tool. Subscriptions are normally $36/year. Below is a sampling of some of the search tools:

The Batting or Pitching Season Finder. This tool allows you to search full-season or multi-year totals to find your own custom leaderboards. You can look at the entire history of baseball from 1871-2014 with every year, team, and position available, or you can filter the results in a vast number of ways: by specific years, by age, by first six seasons or last ten seasons, by American League only, by Cubs only, by switch-hitters, by catchers, by outfielder or infielder, by year of debut, but active or retired, by Hall of Famer, by height and weight, by living or deceased, or by a range of common statistical categories. Then you can sort the results by any common statistic, by the teams with the most players matching that category, by players with the most seasons matching that category, or by most recent, youngest, oldest, final year, or year of debut, and others.

The Batting or Pitching Game Finder. This tool allows you to search player game totals (think 4 for 5 with 3 RBI, or 10-SO shutouts) filtering on any of a dozen or more choices. This can be done either on a single player level or on any batter from nearly one hundred years or on any pitcher. The same can be done for Team Batting or Team Pitching Totals.

The Batting or Pitching Split Finder. This tool allows you to search player splits (think most road home runs, biggest lefty/righty splits or most hits in Yankee Stadium) filtering on any of a dozen or more choices. This can be done either on a single player level or on any batter from nearly 100 years or on any pitcher. The same can be done for Team Batting or Team Pitching Splits.

The Batting or Pitching Streak Finder. This tool allows you to search player games looking for the most consecutive games matching a particular set of criteria. This can be done either on a single player level or on any batter from nearly sixty years or on any pitcher. The same can be done for Team Batting or Team Pitching Streaks. Note that when searching for batters, you should limit your searches to 20-25 years when searching through all games.

The Batting or Pitching Event Finder. This tool is player specific and will out put a detailed summary and play-by-play list of all events of a specific type from a single year or an entire career. For example, you can see all of Harmon Killebrew's triples or even his outs to the second baseman.

The Batter vs. Pitcher Tool. This tool presents a complete sortable list of batter or pitcher with totals for every opponent they faced by career or by year. Clicking on the player's name will lead you to a detailed output of their head-to-head plate appearances.

19 Responses to “Get a Free Baseball-Reference Play Index Trial Through April 15”

  1. steve taylor Says:

    does this include box scores or is it just the play index

  2. Stephen Says:

    I am a DFS player and will want to use the player index to find splits for both batters and pitchers. Baseball Reference is the best site to find this information quick and easy.

  3. Vince Says:

    sounds like a MUST

  4. Ethan Says:

    How would I make a PI search for players with the most walk-off home runs?

  5. Ethan Says:

    I think I found a way, but it was difficult to find and even then it was very rudimentary.

  6. Richard Chester Says:

    @4

    Go to the Event Finder, batting by team.
    Set the Search Form to 2014, All teams, Homeruns.
    Click Get Report.
    When that Result sheet comes up click on walk-off at the top of the page and set the years from 1938 (the earliest possible date) to 2014 and click Get Report.
    On the Result sheet at the top of the page there is a list of the players with the most walk-off HR. Number 1 is Jim Thome with 13.

  7. James M Says:

    What does "gn" stand for next to the player's name?

  8. Mike Lynch Says:

    Where do you see gn?

  9. James M Says:

    It's next to a minor league player's names in the index listing. Example below:

    Menefee, Bret, gn. Bret R., b. 1961, played 1981-1982

  10. Adam Says:

    @7

    Given name?

  11. Mike Lynch Says:

    James M,

    Have a link?

  12. Mike Lynch Says:

    Steve,

    The box scores are all freely available (we have them back to 1914) here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/

  13. Ed Bupp Says:

    I am a subscriber. Signed for a year. Will the free time be added to the end of my subscription?

    Ed

  14. Warren Says:

    Which feature in the play Index will allow you to search results by date? For example, how would you search to find out how a team did on every May 5, June 9, etc.?

  15. Write-Up For Yesterday: April 9, 2015 (and a weekend preview!) | Banished to the Pen Says:

    […] and use the coupon code “Analytics” to receive a free subscription until April 15! More details here. (after that, use the coupon code “BP” to receive the discounted price of $30 on a […]

  16. Brian Says:

    Would this help me to find out how many appearances RP allowed ER in, and sort them? For example; Pitcher A appears in 30 games and allows runs in 4 of them, so his Scoreless Percentage would be %87 - I find this much more helpful for relief effectiveness and game impact than most other stats. If he allowed 1 run in each game or 4 runs in each game is less important to me than the fact he has 26 positive appearances. Optimally I would like to be able to account for appearances of more and 1 inning but that is not necessary initially. Right now I can only do this manually with game logs but it is time prohibitive to do every reliever over the entire season.
    Thanks in advance

  17. Mike Lynch Says:

    Brian,

    You can run a player pitch game finder search for most season games as a reliever with 1+ ER allowed

  18. Mike Lynch Says:

    Warren,

    Here are our game results tools: http://www.baseball-reference.com/games/

  19. Mike Lynch Says:

    Ed,

    I extended you for an extra week