On Baseball-Reference.com we have begun the process of evaluating the identifying names and nicknames for historical players. The genesis of this process is the long overdue reckoning on our part with a substantial number of the names we use to identify players (identifying names). In many cases, they are based on a player's real or perceived ethnicity, a player's disability, or a trait the media decided to call attention to.

As a first step, we are discontinuing the use of nicknames that are racially or ethnically influenced, such as "Chief," "Jap," or "Darkie," and names based upon a player's disability, such as "Dummy." They will no longer appear as identifying names, page titles, on team pages, or on leaderboards across the site, but will be noted for completeness of records on the player’s main page. This figures most prominently for baseball, but we will likely have some changes on our other sites as well.

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The wait is over!

We've been listening to requests for new features from our users and we're happy to announce that we have launched two new tools for Stathead Baseball: The Player Pitching and Batting Span Finders.

The Player Span Finder is a powerful research tool that allows you to search and compare player stats based on spans of games. You can further refine the search and specify the span to be either the start/end of a season, career, or stint with franchise.

Here's a few examples of each type of search to get you started (please note that some searches may take up to 90 seconds):

Fewest strikeouts for any player who hit at least 30 homers in a 162-game span
Most RBI in a player's final 10 games of the season
Lowest ERA in first 30 games of a career
Most complete games in a pitcher's first 50 games with the Red Sox

We hope you really enjoy this addition to Stathead. If you're interested in a subscription to the service, you can sign up for a free trial here!

The WNBA will be entering its 25th season of existence this summer and plans to celebrate the league's storied history. In preparation for this, Basketball-Reference is happy to announce a series of new upgrades to our site's coverage of the WNBA in the past and present.

One of the biggest additions is that we now have play-by-play data for WNBA games back to 2018. This allows for a lot of new features such as:

Quarter and half boxes in box scores
The play-by-play itself, along with a summary of lead changes, scoring droughts and scoring runs
Shot charts for the game, which includes filters by quarter and player
Shooting tables on player pages and league season pages that break down shots attempted and made by distance
Play-by-play tables on player pages and league season pages that detail on/off, turnover types, fouls committed and drawn and more

Other additions include:

A playoffs section: We now have a central playoffs table so you can quickly go through each season's Finals participants as well as postseason top performers in points, rebounds and assists. We also now have playoff summaries for each season that show all the series played in that postseason as well as team playoff stats and postseason individual leaderboards.

Expanded playoff statistics on player pages, including presentation of stats in per-36 minute and per-100 possession formats as well as advanced stats

Improved franchise history pages: Headshots displayed for top-12 in Win Shares in franchise history, additions to season history table such as SRS, pace, and top player in Win Shares. Links added for franchise leaderboards, all players in franchise history, franchise All-Star history, draft history and all-time head-to-head records

Team game logs and team splits pages

Game Highs table on player pages highlighting a player's best single-game performances in each statistic

We're constantly working to improve our coverage of the WNBA and the other leagues we track on Basketball-Reference. If you have any suggestions or feedback, send us your thoughts via our feedback form.