Sports Reference Blog

Today we released two fairly substantial updates for Stathead. These updates are early steps in our internal “Stathead Unification” project. While Stathead is the most powerful research tool in sports, we knew that spending some time on the organization and consistency of these amazing features would make it even better. This is the first of many updates related to this effort.

Filter by Player

For a long time, many of our Finders have allowed you to filter by player. For example, if you’d like to search for all multi-home run games in Barry Bonds’ career (sorted by date) or games in which Wilt Chamberlain did NOT score 20 points (sorted by minutes), you can.

Previously, you could only get to those filtered views from the player’s page on their respective Reference site.

Now you can filter by player right from Stathead.

This functionality is new for the following Finders:

• Baseball
  • Player Game Finder
  • Player Split Finder
  • Player Streak Finder
  • Player Span Finder
• Basketball
  • Player Game Finder
  • Player Streak Finder
  • Player Span Finder
  • Player Quarter Finder
  • Event Finder
  • Lineup Finder
  • Plus-Minus Finder
  • WNBA Player Game Finder
• Football
  • Player Streak Finder
  • Touchdown Finder
  • Player Split Finder
  • Field Goal Finder
• Hockey
  • Player Game Finder
  • Player Streak Finder
  • Player Advanced Stats Finder

Filter Movement

These filters all can be found in new locations. We reorganized these filters to be much more consistent from tool to tool but also from sport to sport. Now when you’re looking for the “Opponent” filter in any Finder, you’ll always go to “Game Filters”. Previously, it was sometimes a top-level filter. Sometimes it was a Team Filter. Sometimes it was a Player Filter. Now it’s always a Game Filter. There are many more examples below, itemized so you’ll know exactly where to find the filter you’re looking for.

This new organization also sets us up well for the next phase of this project—adding even more filters so our tools have more similar features across all sports.

Player Season Finder

• Baseball
  • No. Franchises Played For: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • Height: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • Weight (lbs.): Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • Year of Debut: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • Final year: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • Year of Birth: Combined with other filters into a new “Date of Birth/Death” filter and moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • Month of Birth: Combined with other filters into a new “Date of Birth/Death” filter and moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • Day of Birth: Combined with other filters into a new “Date of Birth/Death” filter and moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • Year of Death: Combined with other filters into a new “Date of Birth/Death” filter and moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
• Basketball
  • Team: Moved from “Biographical Filters” to top-level
  • League: Moved from “Biographical Filters” to top-level
  • Position: Moved from “Biographical Filters” to top-level
  • Birth Country: Combined with “Birth State” into a new “Place of Birth” filter
  • Birth State: Combined with “Birth Country” into a new “Place of Birth” filter
  • Year (of Player’s Career): Moved from “Status Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • College: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Biographical Filters”
  • All Star Selection: Combined with “All Star Selections” (“Number of Years Selected” option appears when running a multiple season search)
  • All Star Selections: Combined with “All Star Selection” (“Number of Years Selected” option appears when running a multiple season search)
• Football
  • Position: Moved from “Biographical Filters” to top-level
  • Draft Filters: Moved to “Biographical Filters”
  • Pro-Bowl: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Status Filters”
  • All-Pro: Moved from “Statistical Filters” to “Status Filters”

Player Game Finder

• Baseball
  • Opponent: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters”
  • Opponent’s League: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters”
  • Game Result: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters”
• Basketball
  • League: Moved from top-level to “Player Filters”
• Football
  • League: Moved from top-level to “Player Filters”
  • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • Status Filters: Moved to “Player Filters”
  • QB Credited With: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”
• Hockey
  • Playoff Round: Moved from “Game Filters” to only appear when “Playoffs” selected from “Game Type"
  • Opponent: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”

Team Game Filter

• Baseball
  • Opponent: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”
  • Opponent’s League: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”
• Basketball
  • League: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
  • Game Number: Renamed “Span of Games” and moved from “Game Filters” to top-level
• Football
  • League: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
  • All Opponent-based Filters: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters” (for example, Opponent, Opponent Conference, Opp was a playoff team, Opp played in Super Bowl, etc.
• Hockey
  • Team: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
  • Opponent: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
  • Playoffs: Moved from “Game Filters” to only appear when “Playoffs” selected from “Game Type"

Player Split Finder

• Football
  • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”

Player Streak Finder

• Baseball
  • Streak Start or End: Moved from “Player Filters” to top level.
  • Opponent: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”
  • Opponent’s League: Moved from “Player Filters” to “Game Filters”
• Basketball
  • League: Moved from top-level to “Biographical Filters”
  • Had Double-Double: Moved from top-level to “Biographical Filters”
  • Had Triple-Double: Moved from top-level to “Biographical Filters”
  • Role: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”
• Football
  • Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to “Player Filters”
• Hockey
  • Position: Moved from top-level to “Player Filters”
  • Playoff Round: Moved from “Game Filters” to only appear when “Playoffs” selected from “Game Type"

Team Streak Finder

• Baseball
  • Team: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
  • League: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
  • Opponent: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
  • Opponent’s League: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
  • Streak Won-Loss Events: Moved from “Streak Stat Events” to top-level.
• Basketball
  • Game Type: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level
  • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
  • Team: Moved from “Situation Filters” to “Team Filters”
  • League: Moved from “Situation Filters” to “Team Filters”
• Football
  • Team: Moved from top-level to “Team Filters”
  • Opponent: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
  • Overtime Game: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”
  • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
• Hockey
  • Playoff Round: Moved from “Game Filters” to only appear when “Playoffs” selected from “Game Type"
  • Situational Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
  • Opponent: Moved from “Team Filters” to “Game Filters”

Player Span Finder

• Baseball
  • Active: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • Hall of Fame: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
• Basketball
  • Year (of Player’s Career): Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • College: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • Active: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • Hall of Fame: Moved from “Status Filters” to “Player Filters”
  • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”

Team Span Finder

• Baseball
  • Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”

Basketball Team Score Finder

• Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Basketball: Shot Finder

• Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Basketball: Lineup Finder

• Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Basketball: NBA Draft Finder

• Biographical Filters: Renamed “Player Filters”

Football: Play Finder

• Playoff Round: Now only appears when “Playoffs” is selected from “Game Type”
• Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Football: Drive Finder

• Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Football: Field Goal Finder

• Kicking Team: Moved from “Game Filters” to top-level

Football: Draft Finder

• Round: Moved from “Pick Filters” to top-level
• Pick: Moved from “Pick Filters” to top-level
• Draft Type: Moved from “Pick Filters” to top-level
• Draft League: Moved from “Pick Filters” to top-level
• Draft Team: Moved from “Pick Filters” to “Player Filters”

Football: NFL Combine Results

• Statistical Filters: Renamed “Result Filters”

Hockey: Goal Finder

• Situation Filters: Renamed “Game Filters”
• Opponent: Moved from top-level to “Game Filters”

Hockey: Player Advanced Stats Finder

• Year (of player’s career): Moved from top-level to “Player Filters”

Hockey: NHL Draft Finder

• Status Filters: Moved to “Player Filters”

In addition to moving filters, the order of filters is now much more consistent across different Finders and sports. For example, Status Filters will always be in the order “Rookie, Active, All Star (or All-Pro, Pro-Bowl, etc.), Hall of Fame” when those filters are available. Similarly, “Seasons” will always come before “Game Type”. There were many minor inconsistencies here that we rectified (too many to list).

While Basketball Reference has been creating unique player pages for everyone selected in the NBA draft for the past couple of years, many people who never played in the NBA but were selected in the draft could only find their names in our draft tables. We have decided to rectify this by creating player pages for every draftee in NBA history, dating back to the inaugural 1947 BAA Draft. Due to historical drafts being much longer than the current two-round format, this has led to almost 4000 new player pages. These player pages include biographical information, links to relevant college/international pages and family connections where available.

Some notable people that are getting pages as a result of this addition:

- Len Bias, 2nd overall pick in the 1986 draft who tragically passed away days later
- Lusia Harris, 137th overall pick in the 1977 draft and the first woman ever selected
- Terry Stotts, 38th overall pick in the 1980 draft who went on to coach the Portland Trail Blazers
- Carl Lewis, 208th overall pick in the 1984 draft who had set Olympic track and field records
- Phil Elderkin, 205th overall pick in the 1973 draft who was a reporter selected as a joke by the Cavaliers' Bill Fitch
- Dave Winfield, 79th overall pick in the 1973 draft who went on to have a Hall of Fame career in Major League Baseball.
- Jay Bilas, 108th overall pick in the 1986 draft who went on to be a successful college basketball broadcaster

We give big thanks to data developer Charlotte Eisenberg for her time organizing and collecting data for this project.

Please let us know via our feedback form if you have any questions or comments.

We've created a page to describe our hiring process.

We post our jobs through our page on breezy. Visit https://sports-reference-llc.breezy.hr/ to apply.

• Test Engineer
• Engineering Support Coordinator
• SEO Specialist
• Digital Marketing Manager
• Customer Success Coordinator, Reference
• Social Media Coordinator

We will be starting the phone interview process October 25th through November 12th.

Today we released an update to how we calculate one-year park factors for 2020 and three-year park factors that include 2020. In short, we are giving the observed effects of ballparks in 2020 less weight, impacting context-adjusted stats like ERA+, OPS+, Rbat+, and WAR for 2019 through 2021.

There are two reasons for this change. First, the shortened 60-game season decreases the sample of games we have data from, which naturally reduces the significance of the data collected. Second, since teams only played within their own divisions in 2020, comparing scoring in home games vs. scoring in away games does not tell an accurate story of how a park impacted scoring relative to league average, since most of the parks in the league are not included in either set of games (e.g. when computing the park factor for Wrigley Field, games played at Coors Field or Citizens Bank Park are not included in the calculation anywhere, since the Cubs did not play away games at those parks in 2020).

The issue with the way we had been handling 2020 park factors became more apparent as the 2021 season went on, particularly because the Cincinnati Reds’ 2020 park factor of 119 was raising the 2021 three-year park factor, resulting in worse-than-expected adjusted stats for hitters like Joey Votto, and better-than-expected adjusted stats for pitchers like Wade Miley.

Now, when you look at a 2020 team page, the one-year park factors have been diluted so that they include an average of 60 games’ worth of 2020 data, and 51 games each of 2019 and 2021 data. If there is no corresponding 2019 or 2021 data (e.g. new ballpark in Texas, different mix of parks for Toronto), those parts are replaced with a league-average park factor of 100. These new one-year park factors are used in the three-year averages like usual, so the effect is reflected there as well.

With this change, here are some of the most notable movers in Wins Above Replacement:

Zack Wheeler (+0.5) and Aaron Nola (+0.3) each saw a bump up in their 2021 pitching WAR as the 3-year park factor for Philadelphia rose from 96 to 98 (frequent opponent Washington also had their 3-year park factor increase from 93 to 96). Wheeler’s 0.5 is the largest change resulting from this update.

Wade Miley, Tyler Mahle, and Luis Castillo (-0.4 each) saw their 2021 pitching WAR fall. As mentioned above, Cincinnati saw some of the most anomalous park factors in 2020, and mitigating their impact here lowers the expected run environment for these and other Reds pitchers.

On the hitting side, the changes are more modest. Justin Upton and Isiah Kiner-Falefa each saw their 2021 batting WAR rise by 0.3, while Maikel Franco and J.T. Realmuto lost -0.3 from their 2021 WAR.

In 2021, Shohei Ohtani is notably untouched by this update, with changes to his batting WAR and pitching WAR canceling each other out and his 7.9 total WAR remaining the same.

Here is a full list of changes to park factors, rate stats, and Wins Above Replacement from before and after this change.

At the beginning of the WNBA's 25th season, we detailed a huge expansion of the advanced stats and features available in our WNBA coverage on Basketball Reference. This week we are proud to announce two new additions to our suite of Basketball Stathead search tools available for the WNBA, the Player Game Finder and Player Comparison Finder.

The Player Game Finder allows you to search through our entire database of regular season and playoff game logs for every player in every game in WNBA history. You can search by statistical criteria (i.e. points, rebounds, etc.), player characteristics (age, team, etc.) and game filters (location, result, etc).

Here's a few examples to get you started:

Most games with at least 10 assists in a season
All regular season and playoff triple-doubles in WNBA history
Most career 25-point games

The Player Comparison Finder allows you to compare the regular season and playoff statistics of up to six WNBA players for a single season or combined seasons. You can view statistical totals, per game, per 100 possessions and per 36 minutes; you can also view advanced stats (PER, Win Shares, etc.) for each of the players.

For example, here’s a comparison of Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi in their first WNBA season.

We hope you enjoy this addition to our WNBA coverage and Stathead. If you're interested in a subscription to the product, you can sign up for a free trial here!

Sports Reference is pleased to announce the hiring of three web developers, Zoe Surma, Frankie Ottomanelli, and Chris Wong.

Zoe is a recent graduate of Notre Dame with a degree in computer engineering. She is a Cubs, Fighting Irish and Formula One fan.

Frankie joins Sports Reference from Rockstar Games. He was the creator of the sunsetted Baseball Reference Alexa app. He is a Mets, Jets, and Knicks fan.

Chris is a recent graduate from Brown University with multiple degrees in computer science. He is a St. Louis native and a Blues and Cardinals fan.

Ryan Passmore has joined Sports Reference as VP of Engineering. Ryan was previously the Sr. Director of Product Development at Cleo. He will manage the engineering team at Sports Reference. A Chicago-area native Ryan cheers for the Cubs, Bulls and Bears.

In a huge addition, we at Hockey-Reference are glad to announce that we now have all NHL regular season box scores available back to the beginning of the NHL, the 1917-18 season. With this, we can now fill out the gamelogs section of many great players' careers. For example, you could now find Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito's excellent 1970-71 seasons when Orr finished with a career high 139 points and Esposito set the then-record of 76 goals in one season. Bernie Parent's 1973-74 season of 12 shutouts can now be examined easily. Gordie Howe's extensive NHL career, beginning with his rookie season in 1946-47, has game logs now.

All of these game logs are also searchable on Stathead now, which is also a great new asset to have. Looking for most goals by a player in a game will now lead you to Joe Malone's record day in 1920, when he scored seven for Quebec in what ended up being a 10-6 victory over the Toronto St. Patricks. While the top of the list of most saves in a shutout doesn't change, Jacques Plante's 52-save shutout in 1955 now properly appears in the top 5 thanks to this addition. We should put a reminder that there are some categories, such as saves and shots against, that were not recorded in the earlier days of the league.

So now there's a lot more history to dig through, and we hope you enjoy our presentation of the "new" box scores! Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.

One important piece to interpreting a sport's history is looking at who the media of the time selected as the top players to award, but you can also get some important context by looking at the other players who were in serious consideration for those awards. With that in mind, we're happy to announce the addition of voting breakdown data for the Associated Press' Most Valuable Player, Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year, Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year and Coach of the Year awards. You can find this information in the Football Award Voting Summaries section of our Awards index. Just taking a random example of 1982, you can see Mark Moseley's narrow win over Dan Fouts in the MVP race, as well as Marcus Allen's unanimous OROY win and the runners-up to Lawrence Taylor in the DPOY race.

Having this data also allows us to calculate career Award Shares. For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is the sum of the percentage of maximum votes they received over the course of their career. For example, a unanimous MVP like Lamar Jackson in 2019 gets 1.0 Award Share for that award, while 2016 Matt Ryan got 25 out of the possible 50 votes, so that's 0.5 Award Shares for that win. We have links to the career MVP, OPOY and DPOY award shares leaderboards on our Leaders index. Award shares and rank for each season they received votes will also be available in the Awards and Honors table on player pages, so you can more quickly see that in addition to Aaron Donald's 3 DPOY awards so far, he's also received at least a vote in every DPOY ballot since his sophomore season.

Some coverage notes:

• MVP voting breakdowns available since 1957. 100% complete back to 1986. 1961 and 1975 MVP vote totals still missing. AP did not give out awards in 1960.
• OPOY voting breakdowns available since 1972. 100% complete back to 1986. 1975 and 1985 OPOY vote totals still missing.
• DPOY voting breakdowns available since 1971. 100% complete back to 1988. 1985 DPOY vote totals still missing.

We want to give a big thanks to John Turney who compiled this historical voting data. Turney was also a contributor on the pre-1982 sacks data we announced recently.

If you have any questions, suggestions or even a lead on some of the still-waiting-to-be-discovered vote totals, feel free to contact us via our feedback form.

The NFL has only officially counted player sacks since 1982, which means sack records and leaderboards present an incomplete history of pass rushing. In many cases we accept these holes in the official record and move on. After all, we don't know how many rushing yards Jim Thorpe had, passing yards Paddy Driscoll had or even how many blocked shots Wilt Chamberlain had. Heck, we don't even "officially" know how many tackles anyone had in 2020 (or any other season). However, thanks to Official Gamebooks, 'unofficial' tackle totals get published in many places (including here). In the case of sacks, thanks to decades of research by John Turney and Nick Webster, we have a very thorough accounting of the statistic all the way back to 1960. Given that accounting for these 'unofficial' statistics allows us to paint a richer picture of the history of the game, we think it is a no-brainer to present them on Pro Football Reference, allowing fans to gain a deeper appreciation of some of football's biggest stars in the 1960s and 1970s. This isn't terribly different from presenting RBI totals for baseball players from before 1920 (the first season the statistic was "official"). These additions allow us to print year-by-year and career sacks totals for not just legends such as Deacon Jones (173.5), Jack Youngblood (151.5), Alan Page (148.5), Carl Eller (133.5) and Joe Greene (77.5), but also for less recognized stars like Coy Bacon (130.5), Cedrick Hardman (122.5) and Jack Gregory (106.0) whose greatness and impact can now be more readily quantified.
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