Sports Reference Blog

How to Find Postseason Stats and Records on Baseball Reference

Posted by Jonah Gardner on September 29, 2017

Even though the temperature has been in the 80s here in Philadelphia this week, the calendar insists it's nearly October, which means it's nearly time for glorious postseason baseball! Following last year's World Series will be a tall order, but there are plenty of intriguing matchups lined up and no clear frontrunner to win it all.

To help you get ready, Baseball-Reference has plenty of postseason data. However, we've found that some users aren't quite sure where to find it or don't know quite how deep our postseason dataset goes. So, here's a quick primer on how to get all the information you need on MLB Postseason History.

For starters, clicking on the MLB Playoffs tab on the top menu bar of the site will take you to our Postseason section.

Once there, you can follow the links to see every series in postseason history, from last year's single-game Wild Card rounds to the very first exhibition World Series in 1884. We have box scores and play-by-play for every (official) postseason game ever played, and each series has a page with full stat totals for the series.

Chicago Cubs Batting Table
Play Play Play Play Play Play Play Play Play Play Play Play Play Play
Name G AB R H
2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS
Ben Zobrist 7 28 5 10 2 1 0 2 3 4 .357 .419 .500 .919
Anthony Rizzo 7 25 7 9 3 0 1 5 4 3 .360 .484 .600 1.084
Kris Bryant 7 26 6 7 0 0 2 2 5 8 .269 .387 .500 .887
Dexter Fowler 7 30 3 7 1 0 2 2 0 7 .233 .258 .467 .725
Kyle Schwarber 5 17 2 7 1 0 0 2 3 4 .412 .500 .471 .971
Addison Russell 7 27 1 6 1 0 1 9 2 6 .222 .267 .370 .637
Javier Baez 7 30 1 5 0 0 1 1 0 13 .167 .167 .267 .433
Jason Heyward 6 20 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 5 .150 .150 .150 .300
Willson Contreras 7 19 0 2 2 0 0 1 3 4 .105 .227 .211 .438
David Ross 3 5 1 2 0 0 1 2 1 1 .400 .429 1.000 1.429
Jorge Soler 2 5 0 2 0 1 0 0 1 1 .400 .500 .800 1.300
Miguel Montero 4 4 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 2 .250 .250 .250 .500
Totals 108 245 27 61 10 2 8 27 22 64 .249 .316 .404 .720
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/29/2017.

On the top of the postseason page, there's also links to all our postseason leaderboards. We have hitting and pitching records by round, as well as total postseason records.

Those leaderboards display the top ten in each stat category, but we often get requests for longer leaderboards or ones covering only a certain period in time (such as 1995-today). This is where the Play Index comes in! While we don't have postseason options in the Season Finder, there's a "hack" that you can use in the Game Finder to get what you need.

In the Game Finder, switch the "Game Type" to "Postseason" and decide if you need to look at single-season or multi-season stats. If you want to see single-season leaders, switch the query type on top to "Find Players with Most Matching Games in a Season." If you're looking for career/multi-year totals, opt for "Find Players with Most Matching Games in Multiple Years" instead. Either way, run the query. You'll get a table like this:

Results
Rk Player #Matching PA AB R H 2B 3B HR
1 Manny Ramirez 26 Ind. Games 118 98 37 47 3 0 29
2 Bernie Williams 20 Ind. Games 94 84 27 37 3 0 22
3 Derek Jeter 20 Ind. Games 98 86 32 41 2 1 20
4 Albert Pujols 17 Ind. Games 79 70 29 36 4 0 19
5 David Ortiz 16 Ind. Games 76 64 21 29 3 0 17
6 Mickey Mantle 16 Ind. Games 71 58 23 24 2 0 18
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 9/28/2017.

In this case, I searched for Most Postseason Games with a HR. However, note that there's a column a little bit to the right showing the total number of HRs hit by the player. If you click on that column header, the table will re-sort by HRs, giving you a list of the postseason HR leaders:

Results
Rk Player #Matching PA AB R H 2B 3B HR
1 Manny Ramirez 26 Ind. Games 118 98 37 47 3 0 29
2 Bernie Williams 20 Ind. Games 94 84 27 37 3 0 22
3 Derek Jeter 20 Ind. Games 98 86 32 41 2 1 20
4 Albert Pujols 17 Ind. Games 79 70 29 36 4 0 19
5 Mickey Mantle 16 Ind. Games 71 58 23 24 2 0 18
6 Reggie Jackson 15 Ind. Games 63 55 25 31 2 0 18
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 9/28/2017.

This usually works best with counting stats, as opposed to rate stats.

Beyond that hack, there's a lot more that you can find in the Game Finder, from the best starting pitching performances in postseason history to the most runs scored in a game by a team. Note that the Game Finder has filters for round (WS/LDS/etc) as well as Game in Series (Game 1, Game 7, elimination games). There are also options to limit results by team outcome (World Series Champ, Pennant Winner, etc).

In addition to the Game Finder, the other major tool I use often in the postseason is the Event Finder. This Play Index tool allows you to search our extensive play-by-play database (which, remember, is complete for the postseason all the way back to the first official World Series in 1903). You can use this to call up specific plays (like Home Runs, Runs Batted In, or Strikeouts) in order to research stats like this one (Yes, I'm aware the number is now four):

In addition to these resources, don't forget that all the player pages have tables with postseason stats. And we also have extensive data on managers, and their postseason success, as well as the full history of all postseason awards. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us or hit us up on social media! And for more information on how to use the Event Finder and Game Finder, check out our Play Index 101 videos.

7 Responses to “How to Find Postseason Stats and Records on Baseball Reference”

  1. Shuki Says:

    Is there a way to run leaderboards out of the Play Index combining postseason/regular season stats?

    I'm interested to know if it would be possible to see both career and single season combined leaderboards, and if there was a simpler way to see combined rate states for individual players (i.e. total OPS for Justin Turner's career when considering his playoff success).

    Thanks for the really informative post above.

  2. Jonah Gardner Says:

    Hi Shuki,

    I'm afraid there's no way to pull combined postseason and regular season stats in one query. What you'd need to do is run separate queries for regular season and postseason stats, either using the Game Finder hack or just by going to player pages, export the tables you need to Excel, and combine them in there.

    Also, keep in mind that gamelog summing works for postseason gamelogs, so you can get postseason stats over a range of time that way as well

  3. Shuki Says:

    I figured that might be the case. 

    Any thoughts at ever bringing the two datasets together in the play index?  You already have three options for regular/post/all star in the game finder. I wish I could just select all or two of three.   I've always found it odd that we define category leaders based on regular season and just ignore playoffs. 

    I'm also an admitted coding troglodyte, so I definitely don't know how much work that is, even if it's something that seems simple to a laymen. 

  4. Jonah Gardner Says:

    We've definitely talked about it, it's a mix of the challenge of coding and whether it's worth investing the time and resources in figuring out. However, we hope to revisit it again in the offseason

  5. Gerry Says:

    On the SABR mailing list, it was noted that Stephen Strasburg has an ERA of 0.47 in 19 innings of playoff games, and it was asked, how does this compare with other starting pitchers in playoff games? The best I could find was that Joe McGinnity had a career postseason ERA of 0.00 over 17 innings – better ERA, but fewer innings. I couldn't see how to use the tools here to see whether there was anything better. 

  6. Jonah Gardner Says:

    Hi Gerry,

    Apologies for the delay in replying! You can find this in the Game Finder, using a Most Matching Games in Multiple Years search. After running the query for starters, you'll want to sort by innings, X out everyone with fewer innings pitched than Strasburg, and then re-sort by ERA. Here's what it looks like in the end: https://bbref.com/pi/shareit/S3vuo

  7. Jonah Gardner Says:

    I should also note that when a Game Finder search returns that many results, you'll want to go to the second page to see anyone who did not make it onto the first page. In this instance, no one on the second page had a lower ERA than Strasburg https://bbref.com/pi/shareit/uw6ug