Sports Reference Blog

Cool Play Index Event Finder Tricks

Posted by Neil on May 23, 2012

The Event Finders are an underrated set of Play Index tools:

Batting by Team / Pitching by Team
All-Star Batting / All-Star Pitching
Postseason Batting / Postseason Pitching

You might know that they allow you to search for individual plays matching certain criteria, but there are some tricks that even experienced PI users aren't aware of.

For instance, say I wanted to find the all-time career leaders in HR at Chase Field. You could get that using the Game Finder:

Rk Player #Matching PA AB H 2B 3B HR ? RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS SH SF IBB HBP GDP
1 Luis Gonzalez 87 Ind. Games 394 341 150 18 0 95 177 44 40 .440 .501 1.328 1.830 1 5 7 3 9
2 Steve Finley 75 Ind. Games 321 279 140 15 5 84 163 36 28 .502 .558 1.495 2.052 0 3 6 3 3
3 Chris Young 63 Ind. Games 282 255 101 12 0 67 114 23 52 .396 .445 1.231 1.676 1 2 2 1 3
4 Mark Reynolds 55 Ind. Games 230 203 97 11 2 60 114 25 54 .478 .539 1.438 1.978 0 0 2 2 2
5 Justin Upton 56 Ind. Games 243 216 108 12 3 57 108 21 38 .500 .539 1.375 1.914 0 4 2 2 2
6 Matt Williams 46 Ind. Games 207 193 86 8 1 48 94 13 23 .446 .478 1.244 1.722 0 1 3 0 2
7 Jay Bell 45 Ind. Games 207 178 89 10 3 47 93 23 25 .500 .559 1.382 1.941 3 1 0 2 1
8 Tony Clark 38 Ind. Games 142 129 65 4 2 43 73 13 26 .504 .549 1.566 2.115 0 0 5 0 1
9 Chad Tracy 41 Ind. Games 166 146 70 7 1 42 82 14 17 .479 .521 1.404 1.925 1 3 2 2 4
10 Shawn Green 29 Ind. Games 126 114 56 7 0 33 70 9 17 .491 .524 1.421 1.945 0 2 1 1 5
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/23/2012.

But you can also get that using the Event Finder, searching for HR by all teams from 1998-2012 at Chase Field:

Luis Gonzalez	95
Steve Finley	84
Chris Young	67
Mark Reynolds	60
Justin Upton	57
Matt Williams	48
Jay Bell	47
Tony Clark	43
Chad Tracy	42
Shawn Green	33

And unlike the Game Finder method, you can also break it down into HR against lefties and righties:

vs RHP
Luis Gonzalez	74
Steve Finley	56
Chris Young	52
Mark Reynolds	44
Justin Upton	39
Jay Bell	36
Chad Tracy	36
Tony Clark	33
Matt Williams	27
Stephen Drew	24

vs LHP
Steve Finley	28
Luis Gonzalez	21
Matt Williams	21
Justin Upton	18
Mark Reynolds	16
Chris Young	15
Shawn Green	13
Junior Spivey	12
Eric Byrnes	12
Conor Jackson	11

Basically, you can split out the stats based on any of the red text items you see in the box on the page, including hit locations, bases occupied, score margin, and a lot more.

You can even get a composite stat line for all of the plays, so you can use this to find incredibly obscure splits like what left-handed DHs have hit in high-leverage situations at Jacobs Field over the past 3 seasons:

PA H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS
263 59 14 0 11 28 0.260 0.342 0.467 0.809

Remember, you can do thins not only with teams in the regular season, but also the postseason, the All-Star Game, and for individual players as well.

Related posts:

  1. Free Play Index Trial & 34 PI Searches You Need to Know
  2. Find Interleague Records and Head-to-Head Histories Using the Play Index
  3. B-R: HoF Candidate – Juan Gonzalez

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 at 11:59 am and is filed under Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Features, Play Index. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Cool Play Index Event Finder Tricks”

  1. Matt Says: May 23rd, 2012 at 10:16 pm

    Neil- this is great, and I'd love to be able to do this. But I must be missing something. When I click the "View Play Index Tool Used" I get a table of most HR in a single game. Ie., the first 14 entries are of all the players who have hit 14 HR in a game. Then the next few hundred are for 3 HR in a game, etc.

    Are you sure you linked the right table, or am I doing something wrong?

  2. Matt Says: May 23rd, 2012 at 10:17 pm

    I meant... all the players who have hit 4 home runs in a game. But you probably caught that typo...

  3. Neil Says: May 24th, 2012 at 9:32 am

    Clicking "View Play Index Tool Used" under the table I listed should just take you to the main Game Finder page:

    http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/game_finder.cgi?utm_source=direct&utm_medium=Share&utm_campaign=ShareTool

    You're saying it's taking you to a list of players who hit the most HR in a game?

  4. Matt Says: May 25th, 2012 at 12:55 pm

    Ahh, there are two links. The one right above the table, anchored with "using the Game Finder:" sent me to the table you show.

    You're right... the link right under (View Play Index Tool Used) just took me to the Batting Game Finder search page, with no variables selected.

    I see where I went wrong. Thanks for the clarification!