Sports Reference Blog

Just a small add to the player pages, but we now show a flag on the player pages representing the country of birth for the players.

2014 Official Hall of Fame Ballot w/ Stats & JAWS Measures.

Just a one-stop area for your HOF ballot needs. Thanks to Jay Jaffe of SI.com for the use of his JAWS numbers on our site.

Rolled out a quick update - now every single season leader page has a box on the right, with which you can select a year & rewind back to see what the single season leaders were for that stat at that time. For instance, Drew Brees currently holds the single season pass completion record with 468, but if we go back 25 years to 1988 you can see that at that time, Dan Marino held the record of 378 (a mark that is currently the 26th best, highlighting just how much passing has blown up recently).

For the 2013-14 College Basketball season, we've added a few new features:

• Seasonal Coaching Lists - These pages list every coach who was active during the season in question along with their record that season, plus their career record (both overall and at the school they coached) through the season in question. This means, for instance, that you'll see Bob Knight as the 4th-winningest active coach through, say, 1994, but he'll be #1 through 2002. This list can be accessed from the "Seasons" dropdown on any page, as well as the individual season pages themselves.
• 2-Point Shooting Stats - Just like we did for Basketball-Reference, we added 2-point shooting numbers (2P/2PA/2P%) to the player stat tables. These are also now on team pages and are searchable in the Play Index Season Finder for years since 1998.

With today's updates, we've pushed out a new addition to the site -- Favorites. If you are logged in, you'll now see a Favorites button in the top right corner of most pages. If you have favorite pages, mousing over this button will show you recent statistics or bookmarks to favorite pages and Play Index searches. To add a page to your favorites, simply click the + symbol on that button (and to remove a favorite, click the -). Active players will show fantasy points for the current week, active teams will show you their most recent game and their record so you can get access to your favorites' stats instantly. Click on the Favorites button to get a more detailed view of player stats and recent news items about your favorites players.

Sports Reference has hired two new web developers/engineers/programmers to their burgeoning staff of now five.

David Corby joined us the last week of October and thus far has been shepherding the NBA and College Basketball sites. (Yes, we did give him a lot of time to get settled.) He is a UVA grad who worked in commercial operations at JetBlue. He's a largely self-taught developer with a wide range of development work. David once played against David Wright in a HS baseball game, and he went 4-4 with 4 doubles (Wright did, that is). He is largely a New York fan -- especially a Yankees fan, which proves we stand by our company policy that we don't discriminate on the basis of sports franchise affinity.

Hans Van Slooten (@cantpitch) will be joining us in December, working out of our newly-established Minneapolis branch, coincidentally located in Hans' home (note we do not offer company tours at this branch). Hans will be working on the hockey site and number of new projects/items from our wish list that we previously haven't had the bandwidth to work on. He joins us from OLSON (where he was a technical director) and, previous to that, comScore. He's a Twins and Vikings fan and will also help me source locally produced lefse and lutefisk for the Sports-Reference Christmas party.

By now you've likely seen our win probability tweets or the graphs on box score pages. Today I've pushed out a win probability calculator into which you can put any game situation & get a corresponding win probability. For instance, say it's the 4th quarter and you're trailing by 2 with the ball on your own 20 at 2nd & 10 and 29 seconds remaining, the calculator says you have a 3.8% probability of winning (don't tell the Jets that, though).

Looking at this weekend's Bears-Packers game, we can figure out the risk the Bears took in going for it on 4th and 1 on their own 32 in the 4th quarter. If they fail and the Packers take over at that spot, Green Bay will have a 55.9% win probability (ignoring that our model knows nothing about Aaron Rodgers' injury, of course). However, by succeeding Chicago raised their own win probability to 80.6%.

A user wrote in asking how many games each team has played vs. every division since the 2002 expansion set up the NFL's current 8-division alignment. Since we don't currently have that function in the Team Game Finder (though we might someday), I figured I'd just run a quick database search on the subject...

First, records vs. the AFC divisions:

+---------+-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| team_id | division  |   AFC East   |  AFC North   |  AFC South   |   AFC West   |
+---------+-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| atl     | NFC South | 11 (6-5-0)   | 12 (7-4-1)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (10-2-0)  |
| buf     | AFC East  | 69 (23-46-0) | 23 (11-12-0) | 23 (8-15-0)  | 23 (11-12-0) |
| car     | NFC South |  9 (3-6-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   |
| chi     | NFC North | 12 (6-6-0)   | 10 (5-5-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   |
| cin     | AFC North | 22 (6-16-0)  | 68 (32-36-0) | 23 (10-13-0) | 23 (11-12-0) |
| cle     | AFC North | 22 (12-10-0) | 68 (17-51-0) | 23 (10-13-0) | 23 (9-14-0)  |
| clt     | AFC South | 24 (13-11-0) | 23 (18-5-0)  | 67 (49-18-0) | 23 (15-8-0)  |
| crd     | NFC West  | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   |  8 (3-5-0)   | 12 (2-10-0)  |
| dal     | NFC East  | 12 (7-5-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   | 11 (4-7-0)   |
| den     | AFC West  | 23 (12-11-0) | 24 (18-6-0)  | 22 (9-13-0)  | 67 (39-28-0) |
| det     | NFC North | 12 (2-10-0)  | 10 (4-6-0)   | 12 (2-10-0)  | 12 (8-4-0)   |
| gnb     | NFC North | 12 (6-6-0)   | 11 (4-7-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (10-2-0)  |
| htx     | AFC South | 23 (12-11-0) | 24 (10-14-0) | 67 (26-41-0) | 22 (11-11-0) |
| jax     | AFC South | 23 (9-14-0)  | 23 (9-14-0)  | 67 (26-41-0) | 24 (13-11-0) |
| kan     | AFC West  | 23 (8-15-0)  | 23 (9-14-0)  | 23 (11-12-0) | 67 (30-37-0) |
| mia     | AFC East  | 67 (26-41-0) | 22 (7-15-0)  | 24 (8-16-0)  | 23 (16-7-0)  |
| min     | NFC North | 12 (2-10-0)  | 10 (5-5-0)   | 12 (8-4-0)   | 12 (4-8-0)   |
| nor     | NFC South | 10 (7-3-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   |
| nwe     | AFC East  | 69 (55-14-0) | 21 (15-6-0)  | 23 (17-6-0)  | 23 (14-9-0)  |
| nyg     | NFC East  | 12 (8-4-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 10 (5-5-0)   |
| nyj     | AFC East  | 69 (33-36-0) | 21 (9-12-0)  | 24 (14-10-0) | 23 (12-11-0) |
| oti     | AFC South | 24 (13-11-0) | 24 (13-11-0) | 67 (33-34-0) | 22 (7-15-0)  |
| phi     | NFC East  | 12 (8-4-0)   | 12 (6-5-1)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 11 (5-6-0)   |
| pit     | AFC North | 21 (14-7-0)  | 68 (47-21-0) | 24 (12-12-0) | 23 (11-12-0) |
| rai     | AFC West  | 23 (8-15-0)  | 23 (9-14-0)  | 22 (7-15-0)  | 69 (24-45-0) |
| ram     | NFC West  | 12 (2-10-0)  | 12 (5-7-0)   | 10 (5-5-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   |
| rav     | AFC North | 22 (13-9-0)  | 68 (40-28-0) | 24 (12-12-0) | 24 (15-9-0)  |
| sdg     | AFC West  | 23 (11-12-0) | 23 (11-12-0) | 24 (18-6-0)  | 67 (42-25-0) |
| sea     | NFC West  | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   |
| sfo     | NFC West  | 12 (6-6-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 11 (4-7-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   |
| tam     | NFC South | 10 (2-8-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   | 12 (3-9-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   |
| was     | NFC East  | 12 (4-8-0)   | 12 (3-9-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   |  9 (3-6-0)   |
+---------+-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+

And the NFC divisions:

+---------+-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| team_id | division  |   NFC East   |  NFC North   |  NFC South   |   NFC West   |
+---------+-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| atl     | NFC South | 23 (12-11-0) | 23 (13-10-0) | 68 (34-34-0) | 21 (15-6-0)  |
| buf     | AFC East  | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   | 9 (3-6-0)    | 12 (7-5-0)   |
| car     | NFC South | 24 (8-16-0)  | 24 (12-12-0) | 66 (34-32-0) | 23 (15-8-0)  |
| chi     | NFC North | 22 (10-12-0) | 68 (37-31-0) | 24 (13-11-0) | 23 (12-11-0) |
| cin     | AFC North | 12 (8-3-1)   | 11 (9-2-0)   | 12 (4-8-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   |
| cle     | AFC North | 12 (2-10-0)  | 11 (3-8-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   |
| clt     | AFC South | 12 (7-5-0)   | 12 (9-3-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   | 10 (9-1-0)   |
| crd     | NFC West  | 23 (10-13-0) | 24 (10-14-0) | 23 (8-15-0)  | 69 (30-39-0) |
| dal     | NFC East  | 69 (35-34-0) | 20 (10-10-0) | 23 (15-8-0)  | 24 (14-10-0) |
| den     | AFC West  | 11 (8-3-0)   | 12 (4-8-0)   | 12 (9-3-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   |
| det     | NFC North | 21 (8-13-0)  | 69 (16-53-0) | 23 (8-15-0)  | 24 (7-17-0)  |
| gnb     | NFC North | 21 (12-9-0)  | 67 (48-19-0) | 23 (12-11-0) | 24 (17-7-0)  |
| htx     | AFC South | 12 (3-9-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   | 11 (4-7-0)   |
| jax     | AFC South | 12 (6-6-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (6-6-0)   | 10 (4-6-0)   |
| kan     | AFC West  | 11 (5-6-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   | 12 (3-9-0)   | 12 (10-2-0)  |
| mia     | AFC East  | 12 (4-8-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   | 10 (5-5-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   |
| min     | NFC North | 21 (10-11-0) | 68 (35-33-0) | 24 (9-15-0)  | 23 (15-8-0)  |
| nor     | NFC South | 23 (15-8-0)  | 24 (12-12-0) | 68 (37-31-0) | 21 (13-8-0)  |
| nwe     | AFC East  | 12 (10-2-0)  | 12 (11-1-0)  | 11 (9-2-0)   | 12 (9-3-0)   |
| nyg     | NFC East  | 68 (37-31-0) | 22 (11-11-0) | 24 (12-12-0) | 23 (15-8-0)  |
| nyj     | AFC East  | 12 (2-10-0)  | 12 (8-4-0)   | 10 (5-5-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   |
| oti     | AFC South | 12 (8-4-0)   | 12 (7-5-0)   | 12 (9-3-0)   | 10 (5-5-0)   |
| phi     | NFC East  | 69 (41-28-0) | 20 (12-8-0)  | 24 (15-9-0)  | 23 (14-9-0)  |
| pit     | AFC North | 12 (9-3-0)   | 10 (7-3-0)   | 12 (8-3-1)   | 12 (7-5-0)   |
| rai     | AFC West  | 9 (3-6-0)    | 12 (3-9-0)   | 12 (3-9-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   |
| ram     | NFC West  | 24 (7-17-0)  | 23 (8-15-0)  | 22 (8-14-0)  | 68 (25-42-1) |
| rav     | AFC North | 12 (8-4-0)   | 9 (4-5-0)    | 12 (6-6-0)   | 12 (9-3-0)   |
| sdg     | AFC West  | 10 (8-2-0)   | 12 (5-7-0)   | 12 (4-8-0)   | 12 (8-4-0)   |
| sea     | NFC West  | 23 (9-14-0)  | 23 (13-10-0) | 21 (12-9-0)  | 68 (42-26-0) |
| sfo     | NFC West  | 23 (8-15-0)  | 24 (12-12-0) | 20 (5-15-0)  | 69 (39-29-1) |
| tam     | NFC South | 24 (9-15-0)  | 23 (15-8-0)  | 68 (30-38-0) | 21 (10-11-0) |
| was     | NFC East  | 68 (24-44-0) | 23 (12-11-0) | 23 (8-15-0)  | 23 (16-7-0)  |
+---------+-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+

Read the rest of this entry

With the 2013-14 NBA season starting next week 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.

As Chase notes on Twitter:

Indianapolis-Denver is the first game in the 94 year history of the NFL to finish 39-33.

— Chase Stuart (@fbgchase) October 21, 2013

Since for some reason these always fascinate me, I found myself wondering just how often a unique score occurs. Obviously by definition, the number of them should decrease over the years as there are fewer unique scores to have, and the chart of scores per year (including the NFL, AAFC, and AFL since 1920) mostly bears that out (the blue line is the number of unique scores per year, the red line is the percentage of games resulting in a unique score in a given year):

1920 is the first year of the NFL so of course it has the highest number of unique scores at 46 (out of 90 total games played). There are spikes at 1946 and 1960 correlating to the starts of the AAFC and AFL, respectively, owing mostly to the much larger number of games. That spike you see after 1980 is the introduction of the two-point conversion in 1994, making possible a lot of scores that weren't seen previously. For example, there have been 167 times since 1940 that a game has ended with one team scoring 15 points.. and 101 of those have come since 1994.

What missing game scores are we unlikely to see any time soon? Well, according to our summary of all scores, we've only seen a team score 4 points one time ever, so it seems that it'll be a while before we remove any more X-4 scores from the list. Even a final score of 5 has been achieved a whopping 13 times since 1940, including this very unlikely 8-5 final score. Still, at nearly 15,000 games and counting, it's pretty impressive that every week brings the possibility of seeing something unique.