Sports Reference Blog

Thanks to the efforts of our friends at Retrosheet, we have added box scores back to the 1904 season to Baseball Reference. Previously, our game log coverage was back to 1908. Additionally, we have added partial play-by-play coverage for games games as far back as 1918. Previously, our oldest play-by-plays were from 1925. Since our last major Retrosheet update, the final two missing full play-by-plays of 1973 were added which means we now have complete PBP data back to that season now. In addition to the boxes and PBPs themselves, this update allows for a variety of new information searchable in the play index, as well as new rows of information in team/player/league statistics tables.

Here are some examples of the new information/searches available on the site.

• With box scores back to 1904, we now have game logs for the full careers of Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson.
• We now have partial play-by-play coverage in all of Babe Ruth's seasons with the Yankees plus his final two with the Red Sox. This can be used in a lot of ways like seeing how well he did against various pitchers.
• Additionally, incomplete splits have been generated for player seasons from 1918 to 1924. In Babe Ruth's 1923 MVP season, from the play-by-play we have available he recorded a 1.554 OPS with runners in scoring position, a mark only Barry Bonds has reached since (min. 100 PA in this situation). Splits determined by play-by-play are searchable back to 1918 and more basic split data (home/away, month, etc) are searchable back to 1904 now.
• League-wide batting splits and pitching splits have been fleshed out with the new play-by-play data back for the years 1918-24.
• Batting Game Finder and Pitching Game Finder searches are now opened up back to 1904.
• Batting and Pitching Event Finder searches have also been opened up back to 1918. Of the games we have PBP for in 1918, Wally Pipp leads with 3 walkoff hits that season, for instance.
• Searches in the player and team streak finders now go back to 1904
• Win Probability, Baserunning, Situational and Batting Against tables are all available back to 1918 now.

If you have any questions about our data coverage, you can always see it here.

We're very excited about these new additions and hope you enjoy them, as well. Please let us know if you have any comments, questions or concerns.

And thanks again to Retrosheet!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 20th, 2020 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Data, Features, General, History, Play Index. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.