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Archive for the 'Features' Category

Pitch Framing Measures Added to Baseball Reference

8th March 2018

Our friends at Sports Info Solutions (formerly known as Baseball Info Solutions) have provided us with a pitch framing measure back to 2011, which we have added to Baseball Reference. Before I explain any further, if you're unfamiliar with the concept of pitch framing please read Mike Fast's 2011 article on the topic and Ben Lindbergh's 2013 follow up.

The stat that we have added is called Strike Zone Runs Saved. It represents the runs saved by catcher framing. In our tables, it's labeled RszC and it's available from 2011 to the present. While this statistic is a potential component of Defensive Runs Saved (and therefore WAR), please note that we have elected to not integrate this number into DRS (or WAR) at this time. We may elect to do so in the future, but for now we agree with Bill James's stance that waiting for further research is a good idea.

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Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Data, Features, Statgeekery, WAR | 3 Comments »

NCAA Tournament Player Game Finder Added to CBB Reference

28th February 2018

With March Madness right around the corner, we're very excited to announce the latest addition to the Play Index: The NCAA Tournament Player Game Finder! This tool allows users to make custom searches through every individual box score line in NCAA Tournament history, all the way back to the inaugural tournament in 1939. This tool is powered by the most robust, complete collection of NCAA Tournament box scores available online and allows for all sorts of searches for single-game leaders, single-tournament leaders and career tournament leaders.

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Posted in Announcement, CBB at Sports Reference, Data, Features, History, Play Index, Uncategorized | Comments Off on NCAA Tournament Player Game Finder Added to CBB Reference

Box Scores Back to 1908 & Play-by-Play Back to 1925 Added to Baseball Reference

16th February 2018

Thanks to the efforts of our friends at Retrosheet, we have added box scores back to the 1908 season to Baseball Reference (previously, our coverage went back to 1913). Additionally, we have added play-by-play coverage for games games as far back as 1925. Previously, our oldest play-by-plays were from 1930. 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.

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Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Data, Features, History, Play Index | 3 Comments »

LeBron James Passes Michael Jordan on All-Time Win Shares List

13th February 2018

Two years ago, LeBron James passed Michael Jordan to become the NBA's all-time leader in Value Over Replacement Player (which is calculated back to 1973-74). Now, LeBron has passed Jordan on the NBA's All-Time Win Shares list. Both players still trail Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Karl Malone, however.

For more nuanced perspective on how these five players stack up, please visit this detailed comparison from our Player Comparison Finder tool.

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features, History, Play Index, Statgeekery | Comments Off on LeBron James Passes Michael Jordan on All-Time Win Shares List

NFL Player of the Week Leaderboard Added to Pro Football Reference

12th February 2018

To enhance our coverage of NFL Players of the Week, we have also added an NFL Player of the Week leaderboard. As you can see, Tom Brady is the all-time leader in this honor, which dates back to 1984.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Data, Features, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on NFL Player of the Week Leaderboard Added to Pro Football Reference

Active Streak Option Added to Team Streak Finder

5th February 2018

We've made a small addition to the Basketball Reference Team Streak Finder. You can now restrict your searches to active streaks. So you can now search for things like longest active win streak or longest active streaks with a 3-pointer made.

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features, Play Index | 5 Comments »

Enhancements to NCAA Tournament Game Finder

25th January 2018

If you're like me, you were a bit annoyed when the NCAA made the decision to re-name several of the early rounds of the 2011 NCAA Tournament. All of a sudden, the First Round had become the Second Round and the Second Round had become the Third Round. The First Round, meanwhile, had become what we'd previously derided as play-in games (or what been officially known as the Opening Round). Talking about the tournament with friends somehow became a frustrating exercise, as the common nomenclature had been ruined. It was impossible to clearly communicate with people what round you were actually referring to. Notes like "Team X has won Y straight First Round games" now didn't make much sense. This also made it very difficult to run searches as intended in our NCAA Tournament Game Finder tool.

Fortunately, the NCAA corrected its mistake by returning to the original round names in 2016, but the damage was done. From 2011-2015, the Round of 64 and Round of 32 had different names than they'd had for all other years.

However, we've now upgraded our round search in the NCAA Tournament Game Finder to make it possible to run the searches that NCAA Tournament buffs actually want to run.

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Posted in Announcement, CBB at Sports Reference, Data, Features, History, Play Index | Comments Off on Enhancements to NCAA Tournament Game Finder

2018 Player Projections on Baseball Reference

17th January 2018

You may have noticed that we added projections for 2018 to player and team pages last month. We have now added a register with all 2018 projections. See the batting projections here and the pitching projections here. These projections are very simple and are done in an automated way using Tom Tango's Marcels forecasting system, which you can read about here.

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Data, Features | 2 Comments »

Era-Adjusted Stats Added to Hockey Reference Player Season Finder

15th January 2018

At Hockey Reference, we calculate adjusted stats in order to more accurately compare players from different eras and different goal scoring environments. With Alex Ovechkin approaching his 600th career goal, there has been some chatter about Ovi being the greatest goal scorer in NHL history.

So we thought this made for a good time to introduce the adjusted scoring statistics into the Player Season Finder tool in order to test this hypothesis. As it turns out, Ovechkin is easily the NHL leader in "adjusted goals" through 13 seasons of play. If you click on the link, you'll see he has 691 adjusted goals (through 1/15/18), while Wayne Gretzky had 607 adjusted goals through 13 seasons.

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Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Data, Features, History, Hockey-Reference.com, Play Index, Statgeekery | Comments Off on Era-Adjusted Stats Added to Hockey Reference Player Season Finder

Player Comparison Finders Added to Baseball Reference

20th December 2017

Users, your voices have been heard! After much clamoring, we have added a Player Batting Comparison Finder and a Player Pitching Comparison Finder to the Baseball Reference Play Index. With these new tools, you can compare the statistics for any season or set of seasons for up to six players at a time. For instance, here's the top six vote getters in the 2017 AL MVP race.

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Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Features, Play Index | Comments Off on Player Comparison Finders Added to Baseball Reference