With Major League Baseball making a mad dash to complete the 2020 season, a number of norms and standards have gone by the wayside this season. Due to postponements, cancellations, and Canada's need for a quarantine of those playing America's Pastime, MLB has been forced to schedule what they've considered home games to be played on the road. In these games, the host team bats first and they often go through the charade of wearing their road unis while the traveling team wears their home whites. We handle these games in a certain way and this has led to confusion as to what the home and road records and splits represent on Baseball-Reference.com.

Our policy has been and remains that a team playing in their home park is the home team regardless of whether they bat first or second (we call these Home Team Batted First or HTBF). We feel that home and visitor refers to location and not batting order. In a neutral site game (of which there have been very, very few), the home team would be the team to bat last. Since 2007, there have been 19 games where the home team batted first, those are listed below.

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Today would have been Opening Day across Major League Baseball, with all 30 teams scheduled to start their seasons.  With the season on hold, we don’t get to find out how those games would have turned out. Or do we?

To help our users get their fix of new baseball, we are simulating the 2020 season using Out of the Park Baseball 21 and posting the results on Baseball-Reference.com.  Starting today, we’ll update the site each day around noon ET with the results of that day’s games. Check out player pages across the site to see their simulated stats update as the season progresses.  Additionally, we’ve set up a daily digest page where you can see each day’s scores and the current standings, as well as team and league pages with all the simulated statistics pulled together into one place.

OOTP is a full-featured simulation with a lot of settings, and we asked for your help on Twitter with a few decisions we needed to make.  Your feedback was overwhelming that you wanted to see free agents like Yasiel Puig sign with teams and that you want to see the game’s AI make trades throughout the season.  We have disabled injuries in the simulation, though, since no one wants to risk having a superstar player suffer a major injury and end up missing from the simulation.

I've been at this for 18 years now. Baseball-Reference.com launched in early April of 2000, and 18 years is a long time. We've gone from pre-formatted plain text tables to html tables, through various logos, and several redesigns involving mobile designs. Along the way, the only consideration has been what would work best for the user. That's why, after months of extensive research, I'm very pleased to announce:
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As you may have noticed, we recently made a massive update to the site, adding thousands of player pages back to the 1947-48 season. As we handled the update, we couldn't help but notice the wide variety of new payers in the database, who in the years (often decades) since they hung up their basketball sneakers, have become famous for things besides basketball. Below is a sampling of some of those players. We're sure there's others we're yet to notice, so please leave any discoveries that you make in the comments!

• America's new favorite father, LaVar Ball
• A trio of Baseball Hall of Famers: Bob Gibson, Tony Gwynn and Dave Winfield
• Another baseball player who certainly belongs in the Hall of Fame: Ken(ny) Lofton
• A pair of Pro Football Hall of Famers: Michael Ditka and Jim Brown
• A former Secretary of Education: Arne Duncan
• A couple of gigantic professional wrestlers: Paul Wight and Kevin Nash
• Former SportsCenter anchor, talk show host and actor, Craig Kilborn
• A very large actor, Michael Clarke Duncan
• Best-selling author Michael Crichton
• Oprah's longtime boyfriend, Stedman Graham
• The actor and singer you now know as simply Leon
• Former Red Sox president Larry Lucchino
• And the one, and only, Sinbad

We all know Oscar Robertson became the only player in NBA history to average a triple-double when he averaged 30.8 PPG, 12.5 RPG and 11.4 APG in 1961-62. Though he didn't have the benefit of first-class air travel, modern nutrition and training techniques, he did have the benefit of playing for a team that averaged an estimated 124.9 possessions per game, while playing over 44 minutes per game. Though I don't want to diminish the stamina required to perform at a high level at such a frenetic pace, the point stands that there were more opportunities for a player to accumulate counting stats in 1962 than there are in 2017, where the average game has about 96 possessions.

Still, even if we adjust statistics to a Per 100 Possessions basis, few have ever matched Oscar's production. Robertson averaged an estimated 26.7 Pts, 10.8 Reb & 9.9 Ast per 100 possessions in 1961-62. At Basketball-Reference, we have estimated per 100 possessions statistics for every player back to 1973-74 (when the advent of tracking of offensive rebounds, among other stats, made the estimates more reliable). From 1973-74 to 2015-16, a total of just four player seasons (by three players) matched The Big O's Per 100 Possession statistics. They were by do-it-all forwards Grant Hill & LeBron James (twice) and then Russell Westbrook, last season. But, now, the 2016-17 NBA season has TWO players doing that. Russell Westbrook, in his most ridiculous form yet, and James Harden, who has emerged as the perfect player for Mike D'Antoni's relentless attack. But it's not that these guys are matching Robertson's production. They're obliterating it.

Let's first consider Westbrook's numbers.

• 44.1 Points Per 100 Possessions: This is a number that Michael Jordan only topped once!
• 15.0 Rebounds Per 100 Possessions: This is a number which matches Karl Malone's best!
• 14.9 Assists Per 100 Possessions: This is more than Jason Kidd ever averaged!

And yet, saying that Westbrook is like a combination of peak Jordan's scoring with peak Malone's rebounding and peak Kidd's passing doesn't even do justice to how breathtaking his level of activity on the floor is.

As for Harden, the numbers aren't as eye-popping as Westbrook's, but his scoring and rebounding are roughly equivalent to peak LeBron James, except with 50% more assists thrown in. So, I guess that's pretty decent.

One of the things I pride myself on at Sports Reference is that our sites are fast and not annoying. We want to connect you with the data you want, as quickly as possible, every single time. We spend a lot of time trying to make this happen.

We have another important goal with our site, which is to make money. We have seven full-time employees maintaining our sites on a daily basis, so if we don't generate a significant amount of revenue, things will start to go south for us reasonably quickly. We spend a lot of time thinking about that as well, and for a small-to-medium-sized publisher like us, that means running advertisements on our site.

Unfortunately, sometimes the ads that come through our site cause serious problems for users. This is a constant source of frustration for us, so I wanted to take this moment to explain how this happens. I realize we are 100% responsible for what we put on our pages, and so any ad that is served on our page is ultimately our responsibility and the fault lies with us for any negative impacts from an ad.
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Sunday night, I will be taking a brief break from sports to watch the Academy Awards. And while my favorite film of 2015, It Follows, won't be competing, there are plenty of excellent films to root for (and some very bad ones to root against).

As someone who loves both the Oscars and sports, I've been thinking about ways in which we can combine the two. Sure, there are the ESPYs, but those categories aren't exactly equivalent to the Academy Awards. So, I decided to make my own!

Using stats that you can find across all of the Sports-Reference sites, I've created the Sports Oscars, adapting (and, admittedly in some cases, stretching) categories that we'll see on Sunday to fit with sports teams. For our purposes, we'll be using the stats from the 2015 MLB season and 2015 NFL season, which are complete, as well as the 2015-16 NBA season and 2015-16 NHL season, still in progress. Unlike the actual Oscars, these awards are determined by stats, although I'm sure you'll still find plenty to argue with.

Don't worry, I won't subject you to my terrible singing voice in an elaborate musical number. Instead, let's get to the awards! Read the rest of this entry

UPDATE (Feb. 25, 2016): MLB has informed us that they will be updating Brach's 2015 holds total to 15 (matching us). MLB's Cory Schwartz commented: "We do credit Holds whenever the pitcher enters in a Save situation and leaves with the lead intact, so this was an oversight on our part."

It recently came to our attention that for the 2015 season, we credited Brad Brach with 15 holds. MLB, meanwhile, credited Brach with just 14 holds (NOTE: After reading this post, MLB has agreed that 15 is the correct number of holds for Brach in 2015). It was discovered that the difference was in the handling of the Orioles 5-4 win over the Mariners on May 21. Before we jump into the details, let's examine MLB's definition of a hold (bolding is ours, for emphasis):

"The hold is not an official statistic, but it was created as a way to credit middle relief pitchers for a job well done. Starting pitchers get wins, and closers -- the relief pitchers who come in at the end of the game -- get saves, but the guys who pitch in between the two rarely get either statistic. So what's the most important thing one of these middle relievers can do? "Hold" a lead. If a reliever comes into a game to protect a lead, gets at least one out and leaves without giving up that lead, he gets a hold. But you can't get a save and a hold at the same time."

UPDATE (Feb. 26, 2016): Please see MLB's updated Holds definition here

As you can see, this isn't really much of a definition at all. There's little in the way of criteria here, and it's also pointed out that the statistic isn't even official, anyways. In fact, there's enough confusion that MLB.com credits Cory Rasmus with 2 holds in 2015, but Elias (MLB's official statistician) credits him with 1 hold in 2015. We credit him with 2, for what it's worth. This "definition" provides enough room for interpretation that variance in recorded totals is not uncommon.

Being that the statistic is unofficial, explaining all of this might be a pointless exercise, but in an effort to be transparent, we at least want to point out what standard we are using to assign holds.

Our standard is to give a pitcher a hold any time they protect a lead in a save situation (meaning they could have been eligible for a save if they finished the game). Brach presents an interesting study in that May 21 game. Starter Chris Tillman pitched 3 innings and left with a 4-1 lead. Obviously, he was not eligible for the win due to Rule 10.17(b), as he did not complete 5 innings. Tillman was relieved by Brian Matusz, who allowed 2 runs in the 4th, but completed the inning of work and left the game leading 4-3, when Brach took the mound for the 5th inning. Brach completed 2 scoreless innings, but the Mariners tied it up in the 7th after Brach left the game. The Orioles eventually won the game.

With the benefit of hindsight, you could say that Brach would have been in line for the win (not the save) if he had finished the game, since he ended up being more "effective" than Matusz, which would make it nearly a lock that the official scorer would have given him the win. But, hypothetically, Brach could have given up 20 runs in relief, but maintained the lead, and earned the save (with Matusz getting the win). As unlikely as that scenario is, the point here is that we're not using hindsight in assigning holds. In our opinion, the opportunity for a hold is defined when you enter the game and is only removed retroactively if you are given the win.

To be as clear as possible: our policy is to credit a hold when a pitcher enters the game in a save situation and leaves with the lead (and is not later given the win by the official scorer).

As we bolded in MLB's definition of a hold, "If a reliever comes into a game to protect a lead, gets at least one out and leaves without giving up that lead, he gets a hold." It would sure seem to us that Brach's May 21st appearance fits that criteria.

2019-07-09 Update on Long Holds

We were silent on this issue earlier, but we do not give a hold in the situation where a reliever is only in line for a "long save". A long save would be the type where they pitch three innings with the lead to end the game. For example, on June 29th in London Yankee Nester Cortes entered a 14-6 game in the bottom of the 4th with two outs, and a runner on first. This is not a standard save situation. He then pitched three innings in relief and did not relinquish the lead. If he'd gone on to complete the game he would have received a save, but his appearance did not begin as a save situation as the save is dependent on him pitching three innings. We do not include these situations as save situations and do not credit holds in these cases. This is true of most record keepers, but we are aware that MLB gameday did give Cortes a hold in this situation.

This wonderful Hardball Times article spells out the many differences in how holds and blown saves are calculated. It turns out no two sources agree on any of the league totals for holds or blown saves.

Today is the 8th anniversary of the Kevin Garnett trade. Of course, there have now been 3 Kevin Garnett trades, but you know the one I'm talking about. In 2007, the Minnesota Timberwolves changed NBA history by sending KG to Boston in exchange for Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair, Theo Ratliff, and the picks that would be come Wayne Ellington and Jonny Flynn.

As you know, that trade went much better for Boston and KG than it did for the Timberwolves, who haven't been to the playoffs since. It's easy to criticize this trade, but Minnesota was in a difficult position for two reasons. First, Kevin Garnett is a once-in-a-generation talent, so almost no trade could have brought back a fair return. And, second, they couldn't build a Voltron out of the players they received in the trade.

While there's nothing we can do about the former, we decided to celebrate the anniversary of the trade by doing the latter. I give you, the Kevin Garnett Trade Voltron: Read the rest of this entry