Sports Reference Blog

We've added pass target data to player pages and team pages since 1998 - see the 'Tgt' column under 'Receiving'. And if you mouse over the targets number, it will show you the player's catch percentage, defined as his number of receptions/number of targets.

This target data is derived from the play-by-play data that's used to populate our play finder tool, so when you see something in a box score like "Jay Cutler pass incomplete short left intended for Brandon Marshall", we are counting that as a target for Marshall as determined by the official scorer's judgement.

Look for these to be added to the player season finder and player game finder tools soon. And if you're curious, the most-targeted player in our DB is Marvin Harrison in 2002 with a whopping 205 targets, which might explain why he was able to set the single season receptions record that year.

To help provide more insight into a player's current year performance, we've added a box with the current year's gamelogs to the top of every active player page highlighting this year's game lines. This box also lists his bye week, the next 3 opponents, and his per-game averages against each opponent at a glance, so you can to see Joe Flacco's career gamelogs vs. the Browns, for example. This box also has quick links to all career gamelogs, penalties, splits and more, for all your gameday number-crunching needs.

We've also added the ability to filter by team on each player game log page - just change the team in the select box above the table and you can break down career numbers vs. only that team (for example, Tom Brady vs. the Dolphins).

By Dan Pizzuta

There's not many things in sports that can increase ticket prices on the secondary market like successful on-field performance. Generally the best teams have the highest ticket prices. However, early in the season some of the price points are still based on preseason expectations and on-field performance has not yet led to shifts in the market. That's especially true early in the college football season on the secondary market.

TiqIQ tracks the most average prices by school on the secondary market during the college football season with the TiqIQ Top 25. Of the schools with the 25 most expensive average prices, 12 are also currently in the Top 25 of SRS after two weeks of the season.

Through two games, the closest match between SRS and secondary market prices is Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish are ranked as the top team with a SRS of 56.99. Notre Dame football tickets are also the third most expensive on the secondary market with a $215 average price for 2014 home games. The University of Georgia is close to Notre Dame, ranking fourth in SRS and second on the secondary market as UGA football tickets have an average price of $219. The biggest disagreement between the two is Ohio State. Ohio State football tickets are the most expensive in the country with a $252 average price. Ohio State's average is 15 percent above the next school, however, they come in just 55th in SRS, 7.43 points above average.

Four of the top ten schools in SRS do not appear in the 25 most expensive schools on the secondary market. Of those four, only Michigan football tickets are the closest to cracking the Top 25. The Wolverines currently have the 26th highest average price in the country at $120. Home games on the Michigan football schedule are typically more expensive, but both high profile rivalry games against Notre Dame and Ohio State were scheduled on the road this season.

When it comes to average prices on the secondary market, there's not much of a difference between top offensive and defensive schools. Both eight of the top 25 schools in defensive and offensive SRS appear on the TiqIQ Top 25. The best defensive schools have a bit of an edge when the it comes to being top five units. Four of the top defensive teams in the TiqIQ Top 25 are in the top five in Defensive SRS. However only two of the eight offensive teams on the secondary market are top five in Offensive SRS--Georgia and Auburn.

Of the 25 most expensive schools on the secondary market, Auburn football tickets might be the best deal. The Tigers rank 14th on the TiqIQ Top 25 and third in SRS. They are only top secondary market school that rank in the top 25 in SRS for both offense and defense. For that type of balance, the $149 average price at Jordan Hare Stadium could be considered a steal.

Just a quick post to announce that we've rolled out an enhancement to the Play Index Game Finders (comprised of Player Batting, Playing Pitching, Team Batting & Team Pitching Game Finders).

Previously, subscribers could customize their searches by a team's first "x" games. Now, you can also select a player's first "x" career games or a span of career games from "x" to "y." Additionally, team games can also be searched using any span from "x" to "y" within a season.

If the above made little sense, here's a few concrete examples of searches that can now be completed:

• Ichiro played for the winning team in 114 of his first 162 games (most by a non-pitcher since 1914).
• Rudy York's 55 HR in his first 162 career games played are the most by any player since 1914.
• Jorge Soler is just the third player since 1914 with an extra-base hit in each of his first five career games.
• Since 1914, only Dwight Gooden had more double-digit K games in his first 83 games than Yu Darvish.
• The most wins by a non-playoff team in the Wild Card Era from Games 82-162 is 52 by the 2006 Angels.
• Phil Niekro won 148 games after his 500th game. That's the most by any pitcher since 1914.

We hope you enjoy these new tools as much as we do. If you're not already a subscriber, but are interested in the Play Index, you can subscribe here for less than a dime per day.

As we enter the final weeks of the MLB regular season, we've made a small (but useful) addition to the Play Index Team Batting & Team Pitching Split Finders. You can now refine your searches to include only non-playoff teams, playoff teams, division winners, Pennant winners or World Series winners.

With this feature, you can now find:

• The World Series winner with the worst OPS in Late & Close situations since 1955.
• The best record at the All-Star Break for a non-playoff team in the Wild Card Era (please note all 2014 teams currently show up in this search).
• The worst record at the All-Star Break for a division winner in the Divisional Era (excluding strike seasons).
• The Pennant winner with the worst winning percentage in September/October regular season games since 1914.
• The World Series winner with the best record vs. .500 or better opposition during the regular season since 1914.
• The non-playoff team with the best record vs. .500 or better opposition during the Wild Card Era (please note all 2014 teams currently show up in this search).

The above represents just a small fraction of what this new search is capable of doing. We encourage current Play Index subscribers to play around with this feature and share any interesting information.

If you're not a Play Index subscriber, but are interested in generating this sort of information, please read more about the Play Index or subscribe.

Thanks to Chris Creamer and his wonderful site SportsLogos.net, we've added current logos to all 2014 school pages, as well as a new top 25 listing in the left column on the college football front page. Clicking the link below the logo on the school page will take you to the SportsLogos.net historical logos page for that team, where you can see historical logos, helmets, lettering, and more.

After reading Jeff Passan's article about WAR and his view of its failings, I got a little hot under the collar and intemperate in my discussion of the issue on twitter.

The defensive metrics are constantly critiqued. I agree that there may be issues with the defensive stats, but my issues aren't the ones brought up by the critics. I believe that the metrics do a decent job of measuring the percent of time a particular ball with a particular hang time has been caught in the past. All you need for that is a stopwatch and a way to mark the play's location on the field. Sure there may be biases in this, but there are biases in who batters and pitchers face or even what umpire they appear against. So this isn't the biggest issue with fielding stats.

It's also true that fielding stats don't correlate quite as strongly year to year as the batting stats do (see chart after break), but there is also a lot more variability in opportunity for fielders than for batters (and more variability in batting stats than people perceive). A batter is going to get 3-6 PA's per game every game. The distribution of balls hit to fielders is much more random. But even this isn't the big issue with fielding stats.
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I'm excited to announce the Team Game Finder as a long overdue addition to our college hoops site. This is a sibling of the very popular feature on our NBA site.

We have complete box scores going back to 2010-11 which power the game finder. You can select any criteria among a school's box score statistics, its opponent's, or the difference, as well as other important characteristics such as home/away, overtime games, regular season vs. the NCAA Tournament, and so on.

The search options allow you to span seasons, count matching instances and match against cumulative criteria, for one season or many.

We hope you find this useful and please let us know if you have any suggestions or find any bugs.

It's been a while since we last announced new "advanced stats" features to Hockey-Reference, but with the latest shake ups in the hockey stats world, we felt that this was a good time to begin rolling out new features for the more statistically-minded fans out there. This is by no means the only roll out, as there are numerous features to come, but we feel it is better to roll out features as we complete them rather than waiting until they are all done.

That said, here's what we've added:

1) Additional Possession Stats to the Player Additional Stats Page

We've added Situational TOI, Relative Corsi For %, Relative Fenwick For %, On-Ice Save and Shooting %, and Offensive and Defensive Zone Start %. You can find these on any player page after 2006 by clicking on Additional Stats at the top of their regular stats.

2) A Play Index Finder for Team Advanced Stats

Until we can add additional stats to all of the league and team pages, we've created a simple Finder that allows you to run queries against the team advanced stats. To find this tool, just go to the top-left menu and click play index, then Team Advanced Stats Finder. This report can be run on any or all teams from 2007-2014.

3) Finally, as a small addition to the play-by-play stats, we've included Faceoff Wins and Losses.

We hope you enjoy these new features and keep checking back often as we add more #FancyStat features as we approach the new season. As always, we appreciate any questions and feedback.

With the 2014 college football season upon, just a few reminders on where to find info for this season:

• The full 2014 FBS schedule (complete with TV info and links to purchase tickets) can be found here. This page also contains links to game previews, which will turn into box scores as the games are completed.
• Individual school schedules are available on that school's season page, which is accessible from this index. These pages will also track team/player statistics and contain links to box scores and previews. New for this season is an injury report that will appear at the top of the team pages.
• If you'd just like to see box scores for a given day, they are available here.
• Any information on the 2014 season can be accessed from the Season Summary page. This page features a comparison of the conferences, an AP Poll summary and also national statistical leaders. Furthermore, this page provides navigation to standings, ratings and every AP Poll. You can also access a larger selection of national statistical leaders.
• For deeper dives into our statistical offerings, we recommend utilizing out Play Index. This is a series of tools offering unique access to our database, which allows users to create custom leaderboards. For instance, the most TD passes in a game since 2000 or the most games in a season with 4+ TD passes since 2000, which can be found via the Player Game Finder. The School Game Finder can tell you things like the most bowl wins since 2002 or most points in a conference championship game since 2000. The School Streak Finder can give you the longest losing streaks in major bowl games since 1869 or the most consecutive 40-point games. Finally, the Rivalry Finder will provide you with a detailed series history between any two schools you choose.

If you have any questions about where to find something or if you encounter any issues, please let us know here.