One of Stathead Basketball's most powerful tools just got even better.

The Player Span Finder now has WNBA stats. This tool gives you the power to search for player stats over any consecutive span of games from any point in their career. Now, with WNBA spans, you can answer questions like "Who had the most points in any 20-game span in WNBA history". Read the rest of this entry

In our quest to show the most data possible, FBref has taken a major step forward this week. We have dramatically expanded our coverage of leagues and competitions with advanced stats.

In addition to our in-depth data for the Big Five Competitions (England, France, Germany, Italy & Spain), Champions League, Europa League, and MLS, we have added coverage of Women's Football for current seasons (and in some cases historical seasons) for:

• 🇺🇸 American NWSL
• 🏆 Women's Champions League
• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 English Super League
• 🇦🇺 Australian A-League
• 🇫🇷 French Division 1 Feminine
• 🇩🇪 German Frauen-Bundesliga
• 🇮🇹 Italian Serie A
• 🇪🇸 Spanish Liga F
• 🏆 Women's World Cup and Euros

But wait, there's more. On the Men's side we are adding more depth to our coverage including our first in-depth coverage of Latin American Football.

• 🇳🇱 Dutch Eredivisie
• 🇵🇹 Portuguese Primeira Liga
• 🇧🇷 Brazilian Serie A
• 🇲🇽 Mexican Liga MX
• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 English Championship
• 🏆 Conmebol Copa Libertadores
• 🏆 Men's World Cup, Euros and Copa America

Expanding access to data is a core value at Sports Reference, so we had to make changes to provide this level of coverage. We are pleased to announce that we are now a partner with Stats Perform Opta. Opta's data has replaced the previous data from StatsBomb on our site in all cases. This new partnership is the largest data deal we've ever signed and represents a huge commitment by FBref to advance access to Women's football data throughout the world. We are grateful for the long-term commitment that Stats Perform has made to us. And if you all flock to the site in the way we expect, this is just the start of the data we may present over the life of our partnership with Stats Perform.

Read the rest of this entry

We apologize for the inconvenience this will cause a handful of users, but we have decided to sunset our widget service effective January 1, 2023. We have only a few users utilizing this service and it is no longer cost effective for us to maintain this service.

On January 1, 2023, the widget service will just return a note that this service has been disabled.

On January 1, 2024, the service will start returning a server error.

This summer, Sports Reference is welcoming eight interns. This is by far our largest intern class and includes Engineering, Marketing, Data, and User Experience interns. Let’s get to know them…

Rylee Buchert, Engineering Intern, grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is studying Computer Science at the University of Tulsa. He plans on getting his Masters in Data Science next year to pursue a career in Sports Analytics. Rylee’s favorite teams are the New York Yankees and the OKC Thunder but he also loves watching Formula 1, NCAA Softball, and Indycar. In his free time, Rylee likes to golf, hang out with his pets, and attend local sporting events.

Kara Cannon, UX Intern, was born in Columbus, moved to Atlanta and then back to Ohio in Reynoldsburg. She is a rising sophomore at Ohio Wesleyan University studying computer science and graphic design. She runs Division 3 track and her favorite event is the 400 meter dash. Kara Cheers for The Cincinnati Bearcats Track and Field, where her brother competes.

Amelia Delphos, Marketing Intern-Social Media, is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia where she studied History and Tony Bennett’s Pack Line Defense. In her fourth year she worked in Creative Services in Virginia Athletics as a Social Video Intern where she fell in love with the social-side of sports (and UVA Men’s Lacrosse). You can check out her work on her Instagram @ameliadelphotos and/or read her ramblings on Twitter @ameliagrace0. Go Hoos!

Billy Fryer, Data Intern, is a rising senior at NC State from Columbiana, Alabama. At school, he enjoys working with the Women’s Basketball team and the Baseball team as well as being the President of the Sports Analytics Club at NC State. Outside of school, he likes to volunteer with the kids at his church and visit national parks. Since there are no major league sports teams in Alabama, Billy cheers for the Montgomery Biscuits (AA Tampa Bay Rays as of 2022) and the teams at NC State.

Eli Gnesin, Data Intern, recently graduated from William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, with a degree in Data Science and Applied Mathematics. This fall, he will be starting a Masters in Statistical Science at Duke University in August. Being from Northern New Jersey, Eli is a lifelong Mets, Jets, and Devils fan, but also loves to watch college sports and Formula 1. You can find him on twitter at @EGnesin.

Gregory Harvey, Data Intern, recently graduated from the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL with a degree in Business Analytics & Information Systems. Some of his previous work experiences include stints with BaseballCloud and as a Data Tracking Manager for the USF Baseball team. His fandom is a mix of New York and Tampa as he actively roots for the Rays, Mets, Lightning, and Giants. In his free time, Greg plays golf, participates in a local wind ensemble, and creates intriguing sports content. You can find his content on Twitter at @BetweenTheNums.

Mac Stone, Marketing Intern, was born and raised in Evanston, Illinois and plans to graduate from Northwestern University this spring with degrees in journalism and psychology as well as a certificate in Integrated Marketing Communications. He is a lifelong Chicago sports fan, with a special emphasis on the Cubs. He’s been a Northwestern sports fan for a while too. Outside of work and school, he loves to play Spikeball with his friends and plays a healthy dose of video games as well. You can find him on Twitter @MacStone00.

Joe Zobel, Engineering Intern, is from Frankfort, Illinois and hopes to graduate from Purdue University this fall with a degree in Computer Engineering and a minor in Business Economics. He is a lifelong Chicago White Sox fan and now cheers for the Boilermakers, too.

One thing we take pride in is having our interns work on highly visible and impactful projects. Even though the program only started three weeks ago…

• Billy, Eli, and Gregory (data) have been researching nicknames of historical players, past World Series rosters, and women's college basketball conferences while solidifying our NHL draft records and preparing for the upcoming NBA draft.
• Rylee and Joe (engineering) began by tackling several small projects but now have moved on to larger projects like Goal Logs and Draft pages for FBref.
• Amelia and Mac (marketing) have been researching various partners and podcasts to help promote our products as well as contributing to content creation and growth of our social media accounts.
• Kara (user experience) has been attending user interviews and already led her first focus group as part of her project researching different forms of fandom.

Welcome aboard to our Summer Intern Class of 2022!

We're very excited to announce some updates to the Batting and Pitching Player Season Finders on Baseball Stathead, including a new feature that ranks as one of the most requested ones we've received over the years.

Watch this video to see these amazing new updates in action, or keep reading to learn what's new.

Read the rest of this entry

Katie Sharp has joined Sports Reference and will be working both on social media and customer success for our Stathead subscription service. Katie spent seven years as a researcher with ESPN's Stats and Info Group, and since then has worked as a writer, editor and researcher on dozens of articles and books. Most recently, she has been a recurring guest on Jomboy Media's Talkin' Yanks podcast. Katie graduated from Williams College and also has an MBA from the University of Oregon. She's on twitter at @ktsharp.

Per-36 minute player projections are now live on Basketball-Reference for the 2020-21 season. These projection are 'simple' projections using the Marcel the Monkey system.

Marcel's keeper, Tom Tango, describes the system as follows:

"[I]t is the most basic forecasting system you can have, that uses as little intelligence as possible. So, that's the allusion to the monkey."

So there is no consideration for injuries, change of scenery, etc., in these projections.

Just in time for the 2020 postseason, Baseball-Reference has added championship win probability added (cWPA) and championship leverage index (cLI) to the site.

Just as single-game win probability added (WPA) measures how a player impacts their team's chances of winning a game, cWPA measures how a player impacts their team's chances of winning the World Series. Similarly, championship leverage index uses the same concept of single-game leverage index (LI), but expands the scope to measure the importance of a particular play, in how it impacts a team's chances of winning the world series.

These stats are highly dependent on context and are best used as "story stats" rather than determining which player was better. When telling the story of the history of baseball, we point to the greatest moments such as Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round the World, Bucky Dent's home run over the monster, David Freese's clutch performance in Game 6, or Madison Bumgarner's Game 7 performance. Moments like these are captured in cWPA and cLI, but it's not just history's greatest moments. Every event in our play-by-play database has a value.

How are cWPA and cLI calculated?
Let's look at Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round the World for example. This was the third and final game of the National League tiebreaker series. A win for the Giants would clinch the pennant with a 50% chance of winning the world series. However, a loss would end their season, meaning a 0% chance of winning the world series. The difference between a win and a loss in this game is 50%. To get the championship leverage index, we simply divide .5 by our baseline of .006 (The baseline is explained here). This means that the Giants' cLI for the game is 83.33 (.5/.006). The LI for Bobby Thomson's final at-bat was 4.74. To get the cLI for the at-bat, we simply multiply the game cLI by the at-bat's LI, which gives us 395.0 (83.33*4.74). This mean's that this at-bat is 395x more important to the Giants' chances of winning the world series than the average play on opening day.

When Thomson stepped to the plate, the Giants were down 3-1 with 1 out in the bottom of the 9th, giving them just a 29% probability of winning the game at the start of the at-bat. Since the home run ended the game, the probability of winning the game at the end of the at-bat was 100%. To get the cWPA for the play, we multiply the difference between game win probability at the start and end of the at-bat by the difference between the championship win probability of a win and a loss. This gives Thomson .355 cWPA ((1.0 - .29) * (.5-0)). This means that Thomson's home run increased the Giants' probability of winning the world series by 35.5 percentage points. On the flip side, the opposing pitcher Ralph Branca is given -.355 cWPA for the play.

Note: cWPA values are displayed in percentage format, so the example above displays as 35.5%.

There are currently a number of places to find cWPA and cLI on Baseball-Reference:
Regular Season Leaderboards: Career Regular Season Batting Leaders
Postseason Leaderboards: All-Time Batting Leaders
Batting and Pitching Game Logs: Yaz's amazing 1967 season
Batting and Pitching Win Probability Tables: Sandy Koufax's Pitching Win Probability
Postseason Series Pages: 1991 World Series
Box Scores: 1960 World Series Game 7
League Batting and Pitching Win Probabiliy Pages: 2020 MLB Batting cWPA
Team Batting and Pitching Win Probability Tables: 1975 Reds Batting
Team Schedules: 1978 Yankees

If you have any questions or feedback on this new feature, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

With Major League Baseball making a mad dash to complete the 2020 season, a number of norms and standards have gone by the wayside this season. Due to postponements, cancellations, and Canada's need for a quarantine of those playing America's Pastime, MLB has been forced to schedule what they've considered home games to be played on the road. In these games, the host team bats first and they often go through the charade of wearing their road unis while the traveling team wears their home whites. We handle these games in a certain way and this has led to confusion as to what the home and road records and splits represent on Baseball-Reference.com.

Our policy has been and remains that a team playing in their home park is the home team regardless of whether they bat first or second (we call these Home Team Batted First or HTBF). We feel that home and visitor refers to location and not batting order. In a neutral site game (of which there have been very, very few), the home team would be the team to bat last. Since 2007, there have been 19 games where the home team batted first, those are listed below.

Read the rest of this entry

The Play Index first launched on Baseball-Reference.com over thirteen years ago and has been one of the most used research tools for baseball ever since. Many of these tools have been recreated on our Basketball, Football, Hockey and College sites over the last twelve years, and, likewise, they have earned a dedicated user base of their own. Our Baseball Play Index was always a subscription product, but we never applied that model to the other sports' tools. It was always our intention to charge for these products, but for a variety of reasons that never happened.

The Sports Reference sites have continued to grow in traffic and advertising revenue over that time to the extent that the Play Index and our ad-free options are a very, very small portion of our revenue. Most of that is on us, as we have not done a great job of promoting and marketing tools that are highly valued by a dedicated group of users. The Basketball, Football, Hockey, and College Play Indexes represent well under 1% of our revenue. In addition, the Play Index tools are complicated to maintain and manage, and quite frankly are a money-loser for us at this time. It's well past time for us to re-think how these tools are positioned within our constellation of sites.

While Sports Reference is doing well overall, I'm not comfortable with having so much of our revenue dependent on advertising. We are very beholden to search engines continuing to send us traffic, and likewise the ad market can be fickle and difficult for a small to medium size operator to navigate. With the economic downturn currently taking place, our ad revenue is down significantly as well.

In addition, advertising on the sites does not make it easier for you to answer the questions you have. This is our primary mission. We maintain a relatively low level of advertising on the sites (at least compared to your regional newspaper), and we are loathe to add additional advertising units or more intrusive units. Some of you may use an ad blocker, in which case we are making no money from your use of the site at all, and the audience for our ad-free product has proven to be very small as well.

A subscription model aligns our interests much better with our users' interests as well. I realize that users are being asked to sign up for lots of subscriptions these days, but we feel the tools within the Play Index are so specialized and useful that they warrant a paywall.

So we are making some changes. The Play Index for each site will be moving to Stathead.com. Stathead.com will become the center for all of our subscription products. We expect these products to include tools and information beyond just a redesigned set of Play Index tools. This won't happen all at once, but we've started with baseball and are proceeding through the remainder of our sports over the next two months. Also, we have ended our dedicated ad-free product and instead Stathead memberships will have ad-free built-in. There just aren't enough users to justify a separate ad-free product. These changes will began in April for baseball and will be followed by Hockey in May, Basketball and probably Football in June and then College over the summer.

You can try out Stathead Baseball now. If you do a little digging, you will see that we are charging $8/month for a single sport and subscribing to all sports will cost $16/month. We realize moving from free to $8/month is a big ask, but we feel the tools provide a great deal of value and also believe that we can't continue to support the products without a viable revenue stream.

During the deployment of these changes, the existing Play Indexes will remain free.

--sean forman