Sports Reference Blog

Archive for October, 2018

Multiple Positions Now Searchable in PFR’s Player Game Finder

31st October 2018

Pro-Football-Reference's set of Play Index tools includes a Player Game Finder that is able to do many kinds of searches for single-game performances. One of the filters you're able to use in the Player Game Finder is position, which is available at the single-game level back to 1999. Previously you were only able to search for one position at a time, but now we've instituted the same checkbox system used by the Player Season Finder so that you can search across multiple positions at a time.

An example of a search that is now possible is games in which an offensive lineman or defensive player got a receiving touchdown. Leonard Wester in Week 14 of 2017 was the most recent player, and frequent end zone visitors like Donald Penn and J.J. Watt also show up in the search.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Multiple Positions Now Searchable in PFR’s Player Game Finder

Introducing the Hockey-Reference Goal Finder

30th October 2018

Hockey-Reference's Play Index already has a variety of tools at your disposal, such as our Game Finders, our Advanced Stats Finders and our Player Comparison Finder. We have now added a Player Goal Finder to our Play Index section.

The Goal Finder can search through goals scored with a wide selection of filters for analysis. Some examples of how the goals can be searched include home or away, even strength, power play or short-handed, and unassisted or assisted. You can also specify searches limited to a franchise, to an individual scorer, and to an individual goalie.

For example, let's say you want all Alex Ovechkin regular season goals scored on Cam Ward. The ensuing result will show each of those goals, when in the game it was scored, what the game situation was and the players who assisted if applicable.

The Goal Finder also works for searching for total goals in a certain situation. For example, if you were interested in Roberto Luongo and who scored the most playoff goals on him during his career, the Goal Finder will find that for you. (Spoiler alert: Blackhawks occupy the top two spots.)

You can also search specifically for go-ahead or game-tying goals. No surprise to hockey fans that Claude Lemieux, an ordinary regular-season performer, is tied for the most go-ahead playoff goals in the 3rd Period or OT.

You can also search for goals by time. Mark Messier's 13 goals in the opening minute of play are the most. Wayne Gretzky's 70 goals in the final minute of the 3rd period are the most. But only two of The Great One's goals in the final minute of the 3rd put his team in the lead. Mark Recchi has the most of those, with 5.

And just for fun, the most frivolous search possible: Wayne Gretzky has the record with 10 goals scored on his birthday.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Features, Hockey-Reference.com, Play Index | 3 Comments »

FBref Is Now Updating Daily!

30th October 2018

FBref has taken a huge step this week, as we are now updating the site with current-season statistics. For example, Manchester City's victory yesterday over Tottenham Hotspur is today reflected on the 2018-19 Premier League table, and Riyad Mahrez's 4th goal of the season appears on his profile page today.

Daily updates will be done for all the leagues we have currently added, and you can take a look at what that list looks like here. We are currently running updates twice a day, once to catch European league results and once for results from the Americas.

You can keep up with the latest FBref features and new country additions by signing up to our FBref mailing list. And if you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to send us a message through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.

Posted in Announcement, Data, FBref, Features | 2 Comments »

Game-Level Forced Fumbles/Fumble Recovery Data Added

25th October 2018

We recently announced an addition of a variety of defensive statistics to Pro-Football-Reference. Now, we have also added game-level forced fumble and fumble recovery data to the site. These statistics are from the same source as the other recently added defensive statistics and are available back to 1999 as well. Forced fumbles and fumbles recovered can be found in player game logs, box scores and are searchable in the Player Game Finder and Player Season Finder in the Play Index.

Since 1999, Charles Tillman is the single-game record holder with 4 forced fumbles on November 4, 2012. In that same time span, Rod Woodson in 2002 and Brian Young in 2003 are the only defensive players to recover 3 fumbles in a game.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

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

Ejection Totals and In-Game Tendencies Added to Manager Pages

24th October 2018

For manager pages on Baseball-Reference, we have added a column for ejections to their primary Managerial Stats table. Bobby Cox's career 162 ejections make for a nice finishing piece on his collection of accolades. We have ejections data for managers all the way back to the 1889 season, so even classics like John McGraw are fully accounted for. We'll also take the opportunity to mention that if you want to dig into what the cause for these ejections were, Retrosheet's Managers section will have that for you.

We have also added a new Managerial Tendencies table to managers' pages, showing how often their teams employed certain strategies and how their rate compared to the league they were managing in. We show a manager's tendencies in stolen base attempts at 2nd and 3rd, as well as how often their teams attempted sacrifice bunts, issued intentional walks, or made player substitutions.

Using one recent example, in Dusty Baker's final year with the Washington Nationals, his players attempted to steal 3rd base on 2.9% of the chances they had. Using 100 as the league average, Baker in 2017 had a league-adjusted rate of 180, meaning that Baker's team was attempting this almost twice as much as the average NL squad that season.

We have intentional walk tendencies back to 1955, while the other managerial tendencies are available since 1925. If you have any questions about this new feature or any other section of Baseball-Reference, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Data, Features, History, Statgeekery, Trivia | 3 Comments »

Offensive Line Penalties on Pro Football Reference

22nd October 2018

Offensive linemen stat pages are usually barren due to the lack of official individual statistics for that positional group. One of the few objective ways we have for evaluating offensive lineman is to look at penalties committed, and for that reason we've added a special section on offensive line player pages to break down holding, false start, and total penalties committed in a season. This penalty data is available back to 1994 when we first have play-by-play data.

We have also added a section to our season pages with a full table of offensive linemen sorted by penalties committed. Going to the 2017 season page, we can see that Seahawks tackle Germain Ifedi "led" the league with 16 accepted penalties. So far this season, Julie'n Davenport of the Houston Texans and Desmond Harrison of the Cleveland Browns are at the top with 6 accepted penalties, in addition to 2 declined/offset penalties. Jason Peters of the Eagles leads the league in just accepted penalties, with 7 of them this year.

Also, this is a reminder that we have penalty data since 1994 for all players, regardless of position, in the More tab of a player's page. So if you want to look at Jadeveon Clowney's 6 accepted penalties this season, you can go to his Career Penalties page.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Data, Features, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Offensive Line Penalties on Pro Football Reference

New Defensive Stats Added to Pro Football Reference

17th October 2018

NOTE: THIS POST WAS EDITED ON 12/11/18 TO REFLECT THAT WE ARE ONLY CARRYING QB HITS BACK TO 2006 NOW

Officially tracked statistics in football often do a poor job of describing or summarizing events on the field. This can be especially true for defensive players. To help rectify this, we've added some new defensive statistics to the site. Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Data, Features, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 8 Comments »

The NBA Season Tips Off! Check Out Basketball-Reference’s New Features

16th October 2018

Today is one of the greatest days of the sports year: the return of the NBA! As you get ready to watch the Philadelphia 76ers look for revenge against the healthy and improved Boston Celtics, or the latest round of Kevin Durant vs Russell Westbrook, we wanted to remind you of everything we've been up to this offseason.

It's been a very productive summer at Basketball-Reference, and we've rolled out a whole host of new features and stat updates. Since it can be easy to miss during the offseason, we wanted to take this opportunity to update you on all the new stuff you'll find on our site. Read the rest of this entry

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

Kenny Jackelen Joins Sports Reference

11th October 2018

Kenny Jackelen has joined Sports Reference as a web developer. Kenny will be working on our baseball site and elsewhere. He brings a long history of software development to Sports Reference. He previously worked as a software developer at Epic, and lives with his family in Minnesota where he cheers on the Twins and will be leading the Joe Mauer for Hall of Fame election bandwagon. He's on twitter at @kennyjackelen.

This brings us to eleven full-time employees. We don't have any open positions at this moment, but any future opportunities will be advertised both here and on social media accounts.

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, expire10d, FBref, Hockey-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 3 Comments »

Postseason WPA Added to Baseball-Reference

1st October 2018

On Baseball-Reference, we include a statistic called WPA (Win Probability Added) in our boxscores. The basic definition of this statistic is the "sum of the differences in win expectancies for each play the player is credited with". You can find a deeper explanation on our Win Expectancy glossary page.

Given we're entering the 2018 postseason, we've decided to add postseason WPA calculations to player pages, postseason series summaries and postseason leaderboards. For an individual player, you will find this in the final column of the player's Postseason Batting and/or Postseason Pitching table. For example, here's a link to Mariano Rivera's table, breaking down his career 11.69 WPA in the postseason. If you go to our MLB Playoffs section, all series summaries will now include WPA in the series stats tables.

Our playoffs section also has career and single-season leaderboards which now have sections for WPA. The aforementioned Mariano Rivera leads all pitchers in career postseason WPA, while David Ortiz occupies the top of the career leaderboard for batting WPA in the postseason.

As a reminder, you can also find more detailed regular season win expectancy and win probability stats for players in their Advanced Stats pages, accessible from the Finders & Advanced Stats tab on player pages. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

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