Sports Reference Blog

With the release of the full 2014 NFL schedule, we've gone ahead and updated team pages for 2014, featuring current rosters, 2014 team schedules, and 2014 team travel maps. In addition, the 2014 preseason schedule is up. Only 2 weeks till the draft!

A user made the suggestion that since we had service time data why don't we add it to the player pages, so we did. It's now in the salary tables at the bottom of the player pages. This data is their service time at the start of the season and is mostly complete since 2010 opening day.

GM's may wish to double-check the numbers before entering contract negotiations. Also, if you haven't seen this area of the player page before note that you can do era adjustments to salaries and we list player contract status here.

Example: Andrew McCutchen Statistics and History - Baseball-Reference.com.

Pitching Season Finder -- - Baseball-Reference.com.

Note that we only compute blown saves for games in which we have play-by-play which is mostly complete back to 1954, but only 100% back to 1973. See our Coverage Page for all of the gaps in the data.

Save percentage is Saves / (Blown Saves + Saves).

I had wanted to put FIP next to ERA since there is often a lot of reason to want to compare them, but it's causing too much confusion for folks wanting to use ERA, so we are moving it rightward near WHIP. One thing if I have done is that if you hold your mouse over an ERA or FIP value we'll show you a little tooltip with the row's ERA, FIP and Difference all in the same output as shown below. We'll mark the difference Green when the FIP is less than ERA and red otherwise.

This will roll out sitewide over the next hour or two.

2014 Major League Baseball Rookie Players - Baseball-Reference.com.

As you know year of debut and the last year of rookie status are two different things. We have attempted to track who was a rookie in what season using the current standards and have produced a seasonal page showing those players' career stats. This data is also included in the play index, so you can search based on rookie status there as well. If you find any errors or omissions let us know.

Also on player pages we will now show the season in which we believe the player lost his rookie status.

Just in time for the playoffs we've added some new functionality to our Team Game Finder search tool. In particular, you can search for playoff games by team and opponent seed, and also series best-of format.

Search for all Game 1 opening-round 8-seed wins vs. top-seeded opponents in the modern playoff era, or find out how well 1-seeds have fared in decisive game 7s during that same period (26-4!)

We have seeds going back to the BAA playoffs, and also for the ABA. The NBA has employed several playoff formats in its history - including some complex ones with divisional seeds and re-seeding schemes, though it's been pretty stable since 1984 when it inaugurated the 16-team format. Nonetheless, if you know what you're searching for, we have all games and all seeds going back to 1947.

As always, you can get to our Team Game Finder by clicking on Play Index in the top left corner of any page on our site, and then Team Game Finder. Here's what's new...

Last night, I added FIP (short for Fielding Independent Pitching) to the site. This is a sabermetric stat for pitchers that approximates ERA without the effect of their team's fielding ability. FIP actually correlates to future ERA better than ERA itself making it a superior indicator of future performance.

The idea is that the pitcher most directly controls the number of walks, home runs and strikeouts that occur and that the batters and fielders have a bigger say on whether balls in play are turned into outs and that most pitchers' Batting Average on Balls in Play (BAbip) reverts to a league average from one year to the next.

FIP is (13*HR + 3*(BB+HBP) - 2*SO)/IP + Constant(year). The constant is set so the yearly avg FIP equals the yearly avg ERA.

FIP can be looked at exactly like ERA and is scaled to exactly the same league average as ERA, but it's range will be slightly smaller.

Often a player with a low FIP and high ERA will improve, while a low ERA and high FIP indicates a likely regression as more hits start falling. I've placed FIP next to ERA to make this comparison more obvious, but if it begins making the ERA lookup too hard, I may move it further right on the pitching tables.

I've also added FIP and K% to the Play Index Season Finder. Right now, I don't believe we will add xFIP given the inconsistency in batted ball data, but that could change.

Player with big gap in FIP and ERA: Ricky Nolasco.

While we sit around and wait for the 2014 NFL draft (only 3 more weeks!), I've gotten the full 2014 college football schedule up for all games as well as the individual team and conference schedules.

Baseball-Reference.com Front Page

We've been running transactions and injuries on the site for quite awhile now, but I've added a small module to the very bottom of the front page highlighting recent ones. Clicking on the full report links will send you to, surprise, the full report.

Example: Jesse Biddle Minor League Statistics & History - Baseball-Reference.com.

We've had the league ages available for a long time now, but a user feature request pointed out to me that it would be useful to have this on the actual player pages as age is probably a prospect's most important stat.

You'll see the difference between their age and the league avg right next to the column with their age.