Sports Reference Blog

We’re Listening: Immaculate Grid No Longer Requires Qualification for Rate Stats

Posted by Adam Darowski on August 3, 2023

When we re-launched Immaculate Grid under the Sports Reference umbrella, we completely changed the underlying data source for the game. A few small changes were made when updating this API, one of them being that rate stats (such as batting average) would require qualification for the batting title.

Made sense, right? When people talk about (or used to talk about) player’s past batting averages they often do so in the context of the batting title. And to get a batting title, you need to qualify. Qualification means you need at least 3.1 plate appearances per team game (which comes out to 502 plate appearances per 162 game season).

But Immaculate Grid is different. When some people see “.300 Batting Average Season” they think of players like Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs, Albert Pujols, or Ichiro. But more than a few of you enjoyed playing with former “.300 hitters” like 1930s pitcher Wes Ferrell (a .300 hitter three times, never in more than 179 times up), infielder Jeff Treadway (.320 in 336 plate appearances in 1991), or even Jacob deGrom (.364 in 33 PA in 2021).

Part of the fun of Immaculate Grid is pulling those really unique (or “sicko”) names out of your head and the leaderboard requirements made that a little harder. So we’ve removed them starting today. Go forth and use your Ferrells, Treadways, and deGroms as .300 hitters. I know I’ll be waiting to use John Paciorek.

Related posts:

  1. Senior National Team Data Now on FBref
  2. B-R: HoF Candidate – Jeff Bagwell
  3. B-R: HoF Candidate – Brian Jordan
  4. B-R: HoF Candidate – Juan Gonzalez
  5. B-R: HoF Candidate – Vinny Castilla

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 3rd, 2023 at 9:00 am and is filed under Announcement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “We’re Listening: Immaculate Grid No Longer Requires Qualification for Rate Stats”

  1. Pete Ridges Says: August 3rd, 2023 at 9:44 am

    Here's a suggestion for Immaculate Grid, but feel free to ignore it.

    For a category, how about a year [or span of years]?

    So, if you put "2002-2005" as a category, then we would have to think of a player who played for Team X in at least one of those years, or who won a certain award during those years.

    Just a thought!

    Anyway, great work you're doing there.

    Pete Ridges