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.

In April, May, and June, we launched the Versus Finder on Stathead for Hockey, Basketball, and Football. Last but not least, we’re excited to announce that we’ve launched the Versus Finder on Stathead Baseball!

The Baseball Versus Finder has many of the same powerful tools as the Versus Finders across our other Stathead sports, as well as a couple of new ones that are specific to baseball. Here’s a primer on what it offers and how to use it.

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Thanks to the tireless efforts of the fine folks over at the SABR Biographical Research Committee, we have recently made some biographical updates to players on Baseball Reference. Most of the changes are added birthplaces, birth locations and deaths. A few of the updates feature changes to player names and/or moving statistics from one player record to another. Some highlights:

• A player who made one appearance for the 1889 Louisville Colonels of the American Association has been identified as Walter Fisher. He was previously listed as Charles Fisher due to some confusion in contemporary newspapers. Thank you to Justin McKinney for tracking down this correction.
• A player who played two games for the 1884 Washington Nationals of the Union Association has been identified as George Pierce. He was previously believed to be Maurice Pierce.
• A player who played six games for the 1884 St. Paul White Caps of the Union Association has been identified as Ed Brown, who previously played for the St. Louis Brown Stockings and the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association. This record has previously been associated with Jim Brown, who pitched for Altoona Mountain City (UA), New York Gothams (NL) and Philadelphia Athletics (AA).
• A player for the 1875 Brooklyn Atlantics who was previously identified as Thomas N. Smith is now identified as D. Smith.

We're excited to announce that we've brought one of the most commonly requested features to Stathead! All Team Game Finders on all sports now have filters for scoring and margin by quarter/inning/period. Read the rest of this entry

Exciting news from your friends at Stathead! We've rolled out a new set of filters to the Season Finders on all of our sports. These filters allow you to explore the history of the draft in some exciting new ways! Read the rest of this entry

Sports Reference LLC has acquired the online baseball-themed trivia game, Immaculate Grid. 

This unique opportunity and acquisition for Sports Reference is the company’s first venture into expanding its websites to have playable content. With over one million users a day, Baseball Reference hopes to drive new traffic to the game, and vice versa. 

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Thanks to the research of Ken Pullis, Pro Football Reference has added game-by-game coverage of player fumbles for the 1989 season. For instance, you can now see which games all of Randall Cunningham's career-high 17 fumbles occurred in in the 1989 season via his 1989 gamelogs.

Last fall Pro Football Reference added a suite of new punting statistics going back to 1976. We have recently extended many of these statistics back to the 1970 merger thanks to the work of Pete Palmer and Ken Pullis.

This means that we now have coverage for return yards against, net punting yards, net yards per punt, touchbacks and touchback% for all punters back to 1970. Punts inside the 20 coverage, however, still only extends back t0 1976. Bobby Walden's page is a good example of the variable statistical coverage for punters since he punted from 1964 to 1977. You'll notice 1976 and 1977 have the broadest statistical coverage but that 1970-75 is now nearly on par with 1976 and beyond. Pre-merger punting stats, however, remain limited to punts, punt yards, long punts, etc.

Thanks to the work of researcher and former NFL official scorer Pete Palmer and fellow research Ken Pullis, Pro Football Reference has made slight fixes to 150 player single-game passing, rushing or receiving totals in the 1960s. For NFL games, these were generally changes that we made after the fact and impacted some single-game totals for teammates. Most of the fixes were in the AFL from 1960-1965. No team or season NFL statistics were changed.

The Hockey Season Finder just got a massive upgrade.

We merged the Advanced Stats Finders into the Player and Team Season Finders. Now you can combine your traditional stats and advanced stats. For example:

• Dustin Brown of the 2007-08 Kings had the most hits (311) among 30-goal scorers since 2007-08.
• Justin Williams of the 2018-19 Hurricanes had the highest expected +/- (+24.8) among players with a negative actual +/- (-4) since 2014-15.

We added a bunch of new stats while we were at it! For example:

• Expected Goals: Since 2014-15, MacKenzie Weegar had the highest single-season xGF (Expected Goals For, or expected goals for the team while the player was on the ice at even strength) with 88.8. Cam Fowler of the 2022-23 Ducks had the highest xGA (Expected Goals Against, or expected goals against the team in the same situations) with 85.3. The single season leader in E+/- (Expected Plus-Minus) is Charlie McAvoy’s +29.6 for the 2021-22 Bruins.
• Scoring Chances: With scoring chances, you can see which player’s teams generated (or conceded) the most scoring chances when they were on the ice (Erik Karlsson’s 884 last year are the highest created since 2014-15). You can also see which player individually contributed the most scoring chances (Timo Meier barely edged Auston Matthews for the NHL lead last season).
• High Danger Scoring Chances: Over the last three seasons, Auston Matthews generated the most individual high-danger scoring chances with 187. We can also see that last season, the Sabres conceded 282 high-danger scoring chances when Owen Power was on the ice, the most in the league.

We hope that you enjoy these updates to the Hockey Season Finder. If you're not subscribed to Stathead Hockey, now is a great time to try it out (and get your first month free!).