Sports Reference Blog

Archive for October, 2016

You Can Now See Jim Brown’s Full Career Game Log on PFR

31st October 2016

You may have noticed that we recently expanded much of our player game logs coverage back to 1950. Previously, this data only went back to 1960 on our site. Below is a complete breakdown of the added material:

  • Passing statistics (pass attempts, completions, yards, pass touchdowns and interceptions) are complete for all players from 1950-59
  • Rushing/Receiving statistics (rush attempts, rush yards, rush TD, receptions, receiving yards, receiving TD) are 95% complete from 1953-59. 25 games over these seven seasons are missing some data (though all HOFers and All-Pros are complete). From 1950-52, this data is 100% complete for HOFers/All-Pros and for the Packers, 49ers, Lions, Rams and Browns. The Bears, Giants, Eagles, Steelers, Redskins and Cardinals are 90% complete. The Colts, Yanks and Texans are 75% complete.

That fine print is not particularly exciting to read, so below I'll highlight just some of the cool data this now adds to our site:

In addition to the play index searches, you can also view the fleshed out box scores of the games of from the 1950s.

We hope you enjoy this addition. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Posted in Announcement, Data, History, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

How the Cubs and Indians Will Try to Win It All

25th October 2016

Two teams, united by 176 seasons of heartbreak and disappointment, sit four games away from a title. Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com | 1 Comment »

The Five Most Interesting NBA Players Who Don’t Play for the Warriors or Cavs

21st October 2016

What are we doing here? It's been four months since the Cleveland Cavaliers pulled off a miraculous comeback, winning three straight games against the team with the best regular season record in NBA history and ending the city's 52-year, 147-season title drought. And eight months from now, we'll be doing it again.

No Eastern Conference team has constructed a squad that's anything other than a heavy underdog to stop LeBron James from making his seventh straight NBA Finals. Out West, the picture is even bleaker for fans who don't live in the Bay Area, where Kevin Durant now resides as a member of the 73-win Golden State Warriors. What is this regular season, then, besides a long march to LeBron-Steph III?

While it's true that the probability overwhelmingly favors a Warriors-Cavaliers rematch, a chart in this excellent Howard Beck piece on the Warriors points out that, just two years ago, the Dubs didn't even place among the top six most likely champions, according to their Vegas odds.

More to the point, there's 28 other teams and, even though they have a dramatically worse shot at the title than Cleveland and Golden State, there's still plenty of reasons to be intrigued by them. So here's a look at five players who may not win a title, but could emerge to have fascinating seasons in their own right. Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com | Comments Off on The Five Most Interesting NBA Players Who Don’t Play for the Warriors or Cavs

Enhancement to Pro Football Reference Player Game Logs

20th October 2016

We've added a new feature to our player game logs. As you may (or may not) know, when you're looking at a player's game logs, you can click on any two rows in order to sum the statistics for all games in that span. For instance, here's the summed statistics for Ezekiel Elliott's last four games. If you've used this feature before, you'll now notice that an additional row has been added to the summary, featuring per 16-game stats. So you can now easily see that Elliott's last four games have been played at a pace for 2,272 yards over the course of a full season. Alternatively, you can sum his first six games and see that he's on pace for 1,872 rushing yards this season when considering all games.

We hope you enjoy this new feature and please let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Posted in Announcement, Data, Features, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Enhancement to Pro Football Reference Player Game Logs

Links to Stats.NBA.com Added to Basketball Reference Player Pages

20th October 2016

At Sports Reference, we pride ourselves on having user-friendly search and navigation. We've heard a lot of frustration from Stats.NBA.com users unable to find what they're looking for in recent weeks. To that end, we've added links to Stats.NBA.com pages on our player pages. So you can now easily navigate to pages with features we're unable to provide, such as SportVU tracking stats for LeBron James, directly from Basketball Reference. These links now appear between our player Per Game stats tables and the player newsfeeds.

lebron-stats

We hope this new addition makes for easier browsing of a wide range of basketball statistics.

Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features | Comments Off on Links to Stats.NBA.com Added to Basketball Reference Player Pages

2016-17 NBA Player Projections Added to Basketball Reference

18th October 2016

We have added 2016-17 NBA player projections, using our Simple Projection System, adapted from Tom Tango's Marcel the Monkey Forecasting System.

Please bear in mind that these projections are being published because (1) they were easy and (2) they were fun. That said, we do believe these results will hold up quite well when compared at the end of the season to other (and much more sophisticated) projection systems.

Since we're not controlling substitution patterns, all projections are for per-36 minutes statistics. Please use these responsibly and enjoy!

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features, Statgeekery | Comments Off on 2016-17 NBA Player Projections Added to Basketball Reference

What the Heck is Corsi? A Primer on Advanced Hockey Statistics

13th October 2016

Good news for fans of zambonis, fighting, and the greatest video game of the 1990s: the NHL has finally returned! After a wild season last year, there are all kinds of juicy storylines to follow this year. Can the Pittsburgh Penguins become the first back-to-back Stanley Cup winners since the Detroit Red Wings of the 1990s? How will the San Jose Sharks bounce back from coming so close and falling short. Will Alex Ovechkin reach 1,000 goals? Can Connor McDavid build upon a promising rookie year and live up to the hype? What round of the Eastern Conference Playoffs will the Washington Capitals be eliminated in this year (I kid, I kid)?

This blog post will seek to answer none of those. Instead, this week, I wanted to dig into one of the major trends that's been sweeping across the NHL the last few years, among fans and front offices alike. I'm talking, of course, about the rise of advanced statistics.

If you're a sports fan, you're probably at least vaguely familiar with Moneyball and the advanced stat wars in baseball. And you may have read articles about how thinkers in other sports, like basketball, have used similar principles to deepen their understanding of the game. This movement has reached hockey in recent years, as researchers have uncovered several new ways of understanding the game beyond the traditional stats like goals, assists, and plus/minus. These new analytics can help us understand why a team is over or under-performing, and whether that performance is sustainable. They can also help us appreciate unsung players who do more for their team than we may realize, because they don't put up flashy traditional numbers.

So, with that in mind, here's some of the basics to get you started in the world of advanced hockey stats. Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Hockey-Reference.com, Stat Questions, Statgeekery | 2 Comments »

A Completely Ignorable Post To Test Players Who Share Names with Other Players

10th October 2016

Jack Gibson

Jack Gibson

Rougned Odor

Eddie Johnson

Cam Newton

Adrian Peterson

Posted in Linker | Comments Off on A Completely Ignorable Post To Test Players Who Share Names with Other Players

Baseball-Reference’s Mega Postseason Blowout

6th October 2016

As Deadspin reminded us this week, there's only one October. In that spirit, let's jump right into a breakdown of the most exciting month of the year: the MLB Postseason. Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Playoffs | Comments Off on Baseball-Reference’s Mega Postseason Blowout

Games After Byes Added to Play Index Search

4th October 2016

We recently made a cool addition the Team Game Finder in the Pro Football Reference Play Index. You can now customize your game searches to isolate (or exclude) games played immediately after bye weeks.

Since the bye week was instituted in 1990, the Eagles and Broncos have the NFL's best records coming out of the bye (21-6 each). They've had 27 games in 26 seasons with a bye because in 1993, every team had two bye weeks. The link also shows that, since 1990, teams coming off their bye week have a 429-394-3 record, which is over .500, but perhaps not as strong as you might expect. Home records in general seem to be nearly identical to home records for teams coming off of byes, but the bye week really seems to help road teams. Through 2016 Week 4, road teams have a .421 win percentage since 1990. However, over that same span, road teams coming off of their bye week have a .461 win percentage.

You can add the "bye week" criteria to your searches by utilizing the "miscellaneous criteria" section of the search form.

We hope you enjoy this addition. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Posted in Announcement, Data, Features, History, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 1 Comment »