We like to think of it as slow and incremental, but change tends to happen pretty fast. The game may have been shifting over the last few years, but it's hard not to have whiplash from the events of the last seven days. In rapid succession, Mark Teixeira and Prince Fielder announced their retirement from baseball, while the Yankees cut Alex Rodriguez, in a transaction that also seemed like it could signal the end of A-Rod's career.

In their prime, all three players were superstars who came to define their era. And it's hard not to see this moment as something of a paradigm shift. Over the last few years, there's been a dramatic shift in our understanding of the game, and you'd have a hard time finding three players closer to the center of it than Fielder, Teixeira, and A-Rod. Read the rest of this entry

There's a few days that every baseball fan has saved in her Google Calendar. Opening Day, the All-Star Game, and Game 1 of the World Series all loom large, but another highlight of every year is the Trade Deadline.

This year's Trade Deadline looks like it could be a little slower and less star-packed than last year's, when stars like David Price, Cole Hamels, and Troy Tulowitzki were on the move. However, four of the six division leaders have a team within 4 games of them, and both Wild Card races are still wide opening, meaning a lot of teams are incentivized to make a deal. Read the rest of this entry

With the announcement of Mike Piazza's induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame, everyone's attention turned to one question: What logo would appear on Piazza's cap on his plaque? Would he select the team that famously drafted him in the 62nd round, the Los Angeles Dodgers? Or would it be the team he went to in 1998 and led to the 2000 World Series, the New York Mets?

One team that likely did not receive consideration: the then-Florida Marlins. While the idea of Piazza wearing a Marlins logo in the Hall may seem as outlandish as him in a Braves or Phillies cap, it wasn't totally out of the realm of possibility. That's because, for eight glorious days in 1998, Mike Piazza was a member of the Marlins, playing 5 games before moving on to the Mets. Though it's now a largely forgotten mini-chapter in his Hall of Fame career, Piazza may never have been a Met were it not for the Marlins.  Read the rest of this entry

If you follow me on twitter, you know that this work has been a long time coming. Starting last summer, Adam Wodon, Adam Darowski, and I started throwing around ideas for a more mobile-friendly version of our sites. Our mobile experience is probably charitably described as limited and functional and with now over 2/3rd's of our visits coming from handheld devices, we clearly needed to up our game there.

This led to complete review of what we have on our sites and how we present that data on desktop and how we can make that usable on a small screen. It's not easy and after months of design, user testing and work, we have an approach that we believe will serve both desktop and mobile users better than they are now. This is the first in a series of posts we'll publish about our redesign.
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If you are a friend of Sports Reference, you'll know that sponsorships, which launched in July of 2002, were our second revenue generator (the first being just asking for money). For those who want to know, Charles Saeger sponsored Scott Erickson on July 21, 2002 to kick things off. For a number of years, sponsorships were our main revenue generator and paid all of the bills. Since 2006, however, sponsorships have become less and less of our overall revenue, now representing less than 4% of our annual revenue.
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See SportsLogos.net for historical and current sports logos

Chris Creamer does amazing work at SportsLogos.net and I've been wanting to work with him for quite a while to put examples of past and current logos on our sites.  So when our 2016 redesign got underway, we worked out an agreement that we could use copies of his aggregated logos on our site.

We also realize that many historical logos show offensive representations of various ethnic groups and peoples that were commonplace in their time and in American society. These representations are wrong now and were wrong then. We present them, as we do all of our facts, to educate and illuminate, and these prejudices have been an unfortunate part of the history of the sports we all enjoy and love.

Obviously, we do not own these logos and cannot give you permission to use them. We use them under a fair use argument. We use small resolution images, which do not impact the economic viability of the logos for their owners. And we provide them for educational purposes only. It's up to you to know the relevant intellectual property law and, since I'm not a lawyer, this is clearly not legal advice.

Enough with the disclaimers. Check out some old-time teams for some old-time logo goodness.

Update: on March 23, 2017, we decided to remove logos prior to the seasons for which we have logos. For example if no logo was shown for 1892 Beaneaters we displayed their 1900 logo. This is mostly an issue for MLB, but could also arise elsewhere.

The 2016 MLB Draft will be held from June 9-11, so here are some tools to get you ready:

• Baseball-Reference.com Draft section - Search through every pick in the history of the draft, with multiple ways to slice & dice.
• 2016 MLB Draft Preview - Draft order for the first 3 rounds & best players selected in those slots over the years.

We have decided to remove the team and player Elo Rating pages. We had high hopes for the raters when we launched them but over the years they have too often become a test tube for online campaigns to elevate Dallas Cowboys or push down Los Angeles Lakers to a degree that we don't have any faith that they represent actual general user opinions on the relative quality of players or teams.

These pages will be removed as we launch our redesigned sites this summer beginning with hockey in a week or two.

Two years ago, if you asked a stranger "Who is the best player in baseball," their reaction would likely have been stunned silence. Now maybe that would have been because they had no idea who you were or why you were so passionate about baseball, but the more likely reason is that the answer was extremely obvious. Mike Trout is the best player in baseball, you weirdo.

One year ago, you'd get a slightly different response. Best Player in Baseball became a two man race thanks to the Bryce Harper's epic 2015. The Trout-Harper debate is a natural one, given the contrast they provide. Harper's game is loud, obvious, and a lot of fun, befitting his brash personality. Trout, on the other hand, is more low-key, both in terms of his off-the-field image and his on-the-field greatness. Harper is rated higher by defensive metrics, but Trout has the better reputation and plays a more important position. Trout is more known for his speed, but Harper was actually more valuable running the bases in 2015. You can go back and forth without getting any closer to answer.

There's just one problem with this debate. It may be leaving out the guy who's the actual best player in the baseball. As of this writing, Manny Machado is third in the Majors in WAR, ahead of both Trout or Harper. At 23 years old, Machado is as young as Harper and a year younger than Trout. And while early season WAR can be a little flukey (he's joined in the Top 10 by players like Adam Eaton and Dexter Fowler), there are reasons to think that Machado's success may be more than just a hot April. The Orioles' third baseman has really earned himself a seat at the table. Read the rest of this entry

The results have been announced for the Fourth Annual Greg Spira Award, which is given annually in recognition of the best published article, paper, or book containing original baseball research by a person 30 years old or younger.

This year's winner is Jeff Long, for his piece "Every Player in Its Right Place" for Baseball Prospectus (follow the link to read the winning submission).

Long’s winning piece featured the comparison of players using proprietary information through an arrangement with Ayasdi, an analytics company that uses machine intelligence software to analyze data sets. Looking at all 311 players with at least 250 plate appearances in 2014, Long analyzed the resulting topological maps, providing a new look at “the old ballgame,” those who play it at the highest level, and how many have more similar skill sets than would otherwise.

Second Prize went to Jon Feyen for "Analytics: The New Currency of Major League Baseball," the capstone project in his Sports Management graduate degree program at Cardinal Stritch University in Fox Point, Wisconsin.

Third Prize was awarded to Ben Diamond for "What is the Success Rate of Shoulder Surgery." At 18 years of age, Diamond is the youngest person to receive a prize in this competition.

The award is named after Greg Spira, a longtime member of the Society for American Baseball Research, who was the founder of the annual Internet Baseball Awards (IBA) in 1991. A graduate of Harvard University, Spira was also an early adopter and a pioneer in using the Internet to advance baseball analysis, particularly via Usenet’s groundbreaking rec.sport.baseball group and via BaseballProspectus.com.

Spira later contributed to many sports books as a researcher, writer, and editor, including the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia, Total Baseball, and annual periodicals about the Mets. A lifelong and passionate Mets fan, Spira passed away on December 28, 2011 in his native New York City.

For remembrances of and more information about Greg, visit GregSpira.com. For more information about the award, visit SpiraAward.org. Thanks to everyone who submitted a piece in the 2016 competition and congratulations to all three prize winners!