Sports Reference Blog

Archive for the 'Play Index' Category

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

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

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

Full Points and Rebounds for Every Wilt vs Russell Matchup

19th December 2017

Thanks to recent additions to our historical box scores, we now have full points and rebounds for every career meeting between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. See all of them here, via our Head2Head Finder.

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Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, History, Play Index | 2 Comments »

Team Season Finders Added to Baseball Reference

19th December 2017

We are thrilled to announce the addition of two incredible new tools to the Baseball Reference Play Index:

The Team Batting Season Finder and the Team Season Pitching Finder.

These new tools will allow Play Index subscribers to create customized leaderboards for all team pitching/batting stats in Major League history.  In addition to standard team stats, we've also opened up searches for value stats, advanced stats, win probability stats, ratio stats, baserunning stats, situational stats, and stats in various pitch counts.

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Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Data, Features, Play Index | Comments Off on Team Season Finders Added to Baseball Reference

Every Championship Round Game 7

1st November 2017

With tonight's World Series Game 7, we thought we'd post quick links to Play Index searches showing every championship round Game 7 in MLB, NBA and NHL history. The lists are searches for home teams in Game 7s, sorted by date. If you click the date, you can see the box score for the game (when available). Enjoy!
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Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, History, Hockey-Reference.com, Play Index, Playoffs | 1 Comment »

New Search Criteria Added to Basketball Reference Player Season Finder

1st August 2017

We have added a few new search options to the Basketball Reference Player Season Finder

These additions can be found in the "Search Award/Honor" dropdown on the search form. Previously, you could run searches for major award winners and All-NBA or All-Rookie players. We've now added the ability to search for All-Defensive Players. Additionally, rather than searching for just First or Second team players separately, you can can now search for both First and Second team in the same search. Here are a few examples of new searches you can run:

---Worst Defensive BPM by a First-Team All Defense Player

---Fewest Win Shares by an All-Rookie player (1st or 2nd team)

---Youngest players to make an All-NBA team

We hope you enjoy these additions. Please let us know if you have any questions

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features, History, Play Index, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »