Sports Reference Blog

Archive for the 'Features' Category

2010s All-Decade Team + HOF Monitor Updates

12th May 2020

The Pro Football Hall of Fame 2010s All-Decade Team was announced a while back, and Pro Football Reference now lists the team in its Awards section, as well as in the Awards table on player pages for those who were selected. This year's All-Decade team had the peculiarity of being released without a first-team/second-team distinction, the first time that's happened since the 1960s All-Decade team. With that, our Hall of Fame Monitor also made a small change to its methodology to accommodate this; you can read the formula used for that here.

Here's a look at some of the more interesting impacts All-Decade selections might have on Hall of Fame cases:

Running Backs: Adrian Peterson and Frank Gore were already on their way to Canton, but All-Decade selections greatly help LeSean McCoy, Marshawn Lynch and Darren Sproles' future cases. McCoy's HOFm score is now at 80.76, moving him ahead of current top eligible RB Roger Craig. Lynch's score is now 68.94, which puts him just below the lowest-scoring HOFers who played in the 1980s or later. Sproles took a major jump to 64.4 thanks to making the All-Decade team on offense and special teams, and now finds himself in the range of borderliners Ricky Watters and Shaun Alexander.

Wide Receiver: This position is a little more scattered in terms of predicting who ends up making it in, but Calvin Johnson, Julio Jones and Antonio Brown will appreciate having their names in here. Considering his off-the-field meltdown, Brown is the strangest HOF case, but on paper his HOFm score is now at 89.12, which puts him right next to HOFer Art Monk and within sniffing distance of Michael Irvin.

Offensive Line: Jason Peters gets a healthy boost as he approaches the end of his career, his new HOFm score putting him inbetween HOFers Rayfield Wright and Orlando Pace, as well as right next to perennial finalist Tony Boselli. Jahri Evans and Marshal Yanda also got elevated into the mix of HOF guards with this selection.

Defensive Line: Calais Campbell gets some help for his HOF case with this selection, putting himself in the range of the highest borderline defensive ends like L.C. Greenwood and Neil Smith.

We hope you enjoy this addition and use it as a reference in friendly debates to come. Please let us know if you have any comments, questions or concerns.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Features, Hall of Fame, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on 2010s All-Decade Team + HOF Monitor Updates

2020 KBO Stats on Baseball-Reference

7th May 2020

The Korea Baseball Organization had their Opening Day this week, and Baseball Reference will be tracking 2020 KBO stats as the season moves forward. In addition to the current season, we have filled in our site's KBO history. Now we have individual and team batting and pitching statistics back to the league's founding in 1982, as well as fielding statistics back to 2001.

You can now back and look at MLB players who made a stop in KBO, such as Julio Franco's 22-HR, 110-RBI season in 2000 (at age 41!), or Eric Thames' 3 seasons with the NC Dinos before making his MLB return with the Milwaukee Brewers.

As for current players to look out for, you have former Minnesota Twin ByungHo Park, who already hit a home run on Opening Day this week and is hoping to notch another 30-HR KBO campaign under his belt. Keep an eye on veteran Kia Tigers pitcher Hyeon-jong Yang, who had one of his best years in 2019. Recent MLB players who are making their KBO debuts in 2020 include White Sox/Brewers infielder Tyler Saladino and journeyman starting pitcher Dan Straily, his last MLB appearance coming with the Baltimore Orioles.

We're excited to keep track of another active baseball league (check out our 2020 CPBL statistics as well!). Please let us know if you have any comments, questions or concerns.

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Data, Features, History | 1 Comment »

Game-Level BPM In Play Index + Box Score Mouseovers

4th May 2020

In February, Basketball Reference made a major update in incorporating Daniel Myers' BPM 2.0, which aims to estimate a player's performance relative to league average by using a player's box score information and his team's overall performance. This statistic is also calculable at the game level, and we've made it easier to look through this by making BPM searchable in Basketball Reference's Game Finder, one of the many tools you can find in the site's Play Index.

BPM 2.0 is searchable back to the 1984-85 season, when we first have 100% coverage of all the statistical components needed to calculate this. It's important to note that BPM is a rate stat, so setting a minutes played threshold will be important. Here's a look at the top games in our system using a couple of different thresholds:

Minimum 10 MP

Query Results Table
Player Date Tm MP TRB AST PTS BPM
James Robinson 1996-12-30 * MIN 10 1 1 23 74.6
Henry James 1997-04-15 * ATL 10 2 1 24 63.9
Jrue Holiday 2009-11-24 * PHI 10 6 1 11 61.1
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/5/2020.

Minimum 20 MP

Query Results Table
Player Date Tm MP TRB AST PTS BPM
Brent Barry 2006-03-24 * SAS 20 2 4 23 45.5
Manu Ginóbili 2009-01-20 * SAS 21 8 3 26 41.9
Victor Oladipo 2018-01-06 * IND 24 6 9 23 40.6
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/5/2020.

Minimum 30 MP

Query Results Table
Player Date Tm MP TRB AST PTS BPM
Nikola Jokić 2018-10-20 * DEN 31 11 11 35 44.4
Gilbert Arenas 2006-02-25 * WAS 30 1 2 46 40.5
Damian Lillard 2016-02-19 * POR 31 0 7 51 38.1
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/5/2020.

Minimum 40 MP

Query Results Table
Player Date Tm MP TRB AST PTS BPM
Damian Lillard 2017-04-08 * POR 42 6 5 59 35.7
Manu Ginóbili 2008-02-13 * SAS 41 5 8 46 34.2
Vince Carter 2001-05-11 * TOR 45 6 7 50 34.0
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/5/2020.

In addition to the Game Finder addition, Basketball Reference now has mouseovers in the advanced section of box scores that display the offensive and defensive BPM breakdowns, as well as Value Over Replacement Player prorated to 82 games. For more information on how BPM 2.0 is calculated, please consult Daniel Myers' explainer. Stay tuned to the Sports Reference Blog for the latest additions to Basketball Reference!

Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Features, History, Play Index, Statgeekery | 1 Comment »

Introducing Baseball’s Premier Research Tool: Stathead

27th April 2020

Today Baseball Reference is excited to announce the debut of most powerful set of publicly available research tools in the game. We're calling it Stathead and you can sign up for a free month of access here. These tools may be familiar to some of our users from the Play Index. If you're a current Play Index subscriber, your Play Index login will also work on Stathead. You can try it out here. For some background on this project, please see this blog post from Sports Reference president Sean Forman.

Stathead subscriptions provide access to a suite of tools that allow users to run customized searches through 100+ years of career statistics, season statistics, game statistics, splits and play-by-play. These tools are omnipresent in every press box, broadcast booth, agency and front office in Major League Baseball. We're happy to offer access to these professional tools for the low cost of $8/month. Even better, for a limited time we're offering the first month FREE. For more info on Stathead subscriptions, please click here.

Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Features, Stathead, Uncategorized | 13 Comments »

NCAA Season Averages Table on College Basketball Reference

27th April 2020

On the Sports Reference sites that cover professional leagues, we have tables that track team averages in various statistics over the league's history so people can get a sense of how stats have gradually changed as their respective sports evolved. You can see examples of this on Basketball Reference and Pro Football Reference.

We've added this feature to College Basketball Reference so you can see the averages for all Division I schools since 1947-48. The Teams column shows the growth of Division I from less than 150 teams in 1950 to 350 teams in 2020. You can also see the gradual rise in teams' usage of the three-pointer, mirroring its growth in the NBA, as well as the gradual decline in turnovers committed over the past three decades.

Please check out the new game averages table at College Basketball Reference, accessible from the site's Seasons Index. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, CBB at Sports Reference, Features, History, Statgeekery | Comments Off on NCAA Season Averages Table on College Basketball Reference

NBA Play-By-Play, Lineup and Shooting Stats Added Back to 1996-97

18th April 2020

Last August Basketball Reference extended its coverage of play-by-play all the way back to 1996-97 (the earliest season for which comprehensive, digitized NBA play-by-play data is available). As we teased at the time, we hoped to use the play-by-play to build out other features. In October we added the ability to break down our box scores since '96-97 by the quarter or half. Today we're happy to announce that many features that we've had available back to 2000-01 for many years have now been extended back to 1996-97.

Read the rest of this entry

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

WNBA Draft History Added to Basketball Reference

17th April 2020

The 2020 WNBA Draft will take place tonight, with the New York Liberty owning the first overall pick. Basketball Reference continues to gradually expand its WNBA coverage, and in honor of the occasion we've added the league's draft history. In addition to the rookie draft held yearly, we also have the various dispersal, allocation and expansion drafts performed over the league's history, as well as the Elite draft of 1997. As you can see in the 2019 rookie draft table, we also include college or former international team, as well as their career WNBA stats.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

 

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Draft, Features, History | 1 Comment »

Goal Creation, Possession, Passing and More Advanced Stats on FBref

14th April 2020

FBref carries a wide array of advanced stats powered by Statsbomb to help give you all the needed context and analyze a player's performance from as many angles as possible. You can look through our blog's FBref tag for a look at the most recent additions we've made to the site, and today we have another mass addition of advanced stats you can now access on player pages. Here's the list:

Passing

- Total distance of completed passes
- Progressive distance of completed passes (distance toward goal)
- Progressive Passes

Pass Types

- live-ball, dead-ball, under pressure
- corner kick types (in-swinging, out-swinging, straight)
- pass height (ground, low, high)
- by body part (left/right foot, head, throw-ins, other)
- pass outcomes (completed, offsides, out of bounds, intercepted, blocked)

Goal and Shot Creation

- Goal Creating Actions (GCA) and Shot Creating Actions (SCA), meaning the two offensive leading to a shot or goal. This includes live-ball passes, dead-ball passes, successful dribbles, shots which lead to another shot, and being fouled

Defensive Actions

- tackles by location on pitch
- pressures, successful pressures, pressures by location on pitch
- blocks (shots, shots saved, and passes)
- clearances
- errors leading to an opponent's shot

Possession

- touches, touches by location on pitch
- carries (total and progressive distance)
- pass receiving (targets and completions)
- miscontrols and dispossessions

Miscellaneous

- Aerials won/lost

From league pages, these stats can be accessed by using the Squad & Player Stats tab between Scores/Fixtures and Nationalities. Of course, you can also see this on player pages if they've played in competitions we have xG data for.

We're excited to see what analysis people can derive from this new information, which is available thanks to the hard work of Statsbomb. You can keep up with the latest additions of statistical coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.

Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Data, FBref, Features, Statgeekery | Comments Off on Goal Creation, Possession, Passing and More Advanced Stats on FBref

2020 CPBL Stats on Baseball-Reference

14th April 2020

With the current state of sports being mostly halted due to coronavirus concerns, the Chinese Professional Baseball League is in a rare position as they had their Opening Day and are planning to fill a regular schedule, albeit without spectators. Baseball Reference tracks various foreign leagues already, and we're happy to report that we will be receiving 2020 CPBL statistics as the season moves along.

The first game of the season was a win for the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions over the Chinatrust Brothers. The Lions' Opening Day starter on the mound was Ryan Feierabend, who pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2019. Former Seattle Mariner Ariel Miranda was the Brothers' starting pitcher. The only homer of the game was launched by Kai-Wen Zheng, who's been with the Lions since 2016.

We've also filled in CPBL history so now we have player stats for the league since 1990. For example, on Manny Ramirez's page we finally show his .352/.422/.555 campaign in 2013 with the EDA Rhinos (at age 41, no less).

2020 CPBL statistics will be updating daily so keep up with the league on Baseball-Reference! Please let us know if you have any comments, questions or concerns.

 

 

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

Advanced Player Game Logs on Pro Football Reference

10th April 2020

In 2019 Pro-Football-Reference added advanced statistics provided by Sportradar such as air yards, yards after contact, drops, and passer rating allowed among others. We have those available at the season level on player pages, as well as on the game level within box scores. We have now added advanced game logs, accessible from player pages, so you can see an individual's advanced stats at the single-game level.

Here are links to some examples:

Aaron Rodgers

Christian McCaffrey

Richard Sherman

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form or Pro Football Reference's official Twitter account. Thanks for following us!

Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Features, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Advanced Player Game Logs on Pro Football Reference