Archive for the 'Announcements' Category

Wharton Sports Innovation Conference

I'll be on a panel on Innovations in Analytics at the first Wharton Sports Innovation Conference.  They have a pretty nice lineup of sports business professionals, Chuck Greenberg, Stan Kasten, and Ted Leonsis are set to speak.  If you think the Sloan Conference this weekend looks interesting this might be up your alley.

Congratulations are in order for John Thorn today, after he was named the Official Historian of Major League Baseball by Commissioner Selig:

John Thorn Named Official Baseball Historian | MLB.com: Official Info

John has always been a wonderful friend and supporter of Baseball-Reference.com, and we can't imagine anyone more qualified for this position.

Sponsoring a page is fun, fast, and easy way to support what we're doing here at Baseball-Reference. With a sponsorship, you can:

• Show your support for your favorite player or team.
• Drum up traffic for your own site & draw in fans with a common interest.
• Get some well-deserved recognition for your support of B-R.
• Make your voice heard by the tens of thousands of people who visit Baseball-Reference every day.

Here's all you have to do to get involved:

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2. Find the page(s) you'd like to support, and click "sponsor" (available pages).
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And who knows, if you're clever enough, your message might end up on lists like these.

SABR : SABR Announces 2011 Chadwick Award Recipients

I am deeply honored to be included in a group with such giants in baseball research and history as David Neft, Pete Palmer, Bill James, and J.G. Spink.  Their books line the walls of my office and without them none of what we've done would be possible.

Baseball-Reference.com is now more than 11 years old, so there are many, many people who have had a hand in its success, but I'd especially like to thank Sean Lahman, Gary Gillette, the RetroSheet gang (Dave, David, Tom, Clem, and the remarkable volunteers), SABR (and my many partners, contributors, and friends there), my friends and early collaborators Don Malcolm, Jim Furtado and Greg Spira, Justin, Doug, Neil and Jay at S-R, and also Tim Berners-Lee, Michael Widenius, and Larry Wall (I'll let you look them up).  And of course, my wife Sylvia who I know spent many nights wondering, "What on earth is he doing staying up until 2am again?" and "Will he ever finish his dissertation?", but never stopped being supportive or encouraging of this unusual course we've charted together.

Automatic Player Linker / Add your site to our newsfeeds

Just a reminder that you can request for your site to be added to our player newsfeeds. To get started, all you have to do is write a post as you normally would and use our linker tool, causing baseball-reference player links to be automatically added. Then let us know you want to be included by sending us the following information:

• The name of your site to appear in the feed (at most 25 characters)
• The url for your rss feed (must be a full feed)
• A contact e-mail address
• The url of an example page with our links in place

We'll review your request, and try to get your content added as soon as we can. It's a great way to get your content out there, and it gives your readers quick access to player stats and information.

Another friendly reminder that our Super Bowl Squares mobile app is available for $0.99 at the iTunes store and the Android Marketplace.

If you're playing Super Bowl squares this weekend, this app will tell you which squares have the best chance of winning (based on game data from 1994-2010). For more information about features, as well as links to posts about Super Bowl squares theory, click here.

Just in time for the big game, our Super Bowl Squares mobile app is now available at the iTunes store and the Android Marketplace.

If you're at a Super Bowl party this weekend and there's a game of squares set up, this app will tell you which squares have the best chance of winning based on game data from 1994-2010. Also, if you're new to the game, there's a page devoted to basic rules that will help you navigate your first SB squares experience. The app costs $0.99, but will pay for itself many times over if you win the pool.

For more information about its features, as well as links to posts about Super Bowl squares theory, click here.

With the 2011 season rapidly approaching, you don't want to miss Baseball-Reference's Play Index . In case you don't already know about the PI, it's a set of research tools that allow you to create customizable queries on our database, save the results, and share them with others. Using the PI, you can:

• Search full-season or multi-year totals to find your own custom leaderboards - Look at the entire history of baseball from 1871-2010 with every year, team, and position available, or filter the results in a vast number of ways: by specific years, by age, by first six seasons or last ten seasons, by American League only, by Cubs only, by switch-hitters, by catchers, by outfielder or infielder, by year of debut, but active or retired, by Hall of Famer, by height and weight, by living or deceased, or by a range of common statistical categories. Then sort the results by any common statistic, by the teams with the most players matching that category, by players with the most seasons matching that category, or by most recent, youngest, oldest, final year, or year of debut, and others. You can now isolate 2010-11 free agents and 2011 Hall of Fame candidates in your searches as well.
• Search player game totals - Filtering on any of a dozen or more choices, search for games on a single player level, or on any batter from 1920-2010, or on any pitcher. The same can be done for Team Batting or Team Pitching Totals.
• Search player games looking for the most consecutive games matching a particular set of criteria - This can be done either on a single player level or on any batter in the last ninety years or on any pitcher. The same can be done for Team Batting or Team Pitching Streaks.
• Search the records of a specific player - Output a detailed summary and play-by-play list of all events of a specific type from a single year or an entire career. For example, you can see all of Harmon Killebrew's triples or even his outs to the second baseman.
• Search Batter vs. Pitcher Matchups - This tool presents a complete sortable list of batter or pitcher with totals for every opponent they faced by career or by year. Clicking on the player's name will lead you to a detailed output of their head-to-head plate appearances.
• ...And more!

Personal Subscriptions to the Play Index cost $36 for a year, $6 for a month, or $2 for 24 hours. Subscriptions may only be used by a single user, and there are discounts for users sponsoring at least $35 in pages.

Organizational Subscriptions can be set up for either an unlimited number of users ($600/year, this includes three hours of custom programming and reporting to be used at your discretion), or for up to five users ($125/year, this includes one hour of custom programming and reporting to be used at your discretion).

There are Two Steps to Subscribe to the Play Index:

1. Login to or create a Sports-Reference.com account (the same account used to sponsor pages).
2. Already logged in (or just created an account)? Go to our subscription page to sign up.

Our Always-Available Free Trial: Non-subscribers can use the PI's features as much as you like. However, your outputs will be restricted to a limited number of results.

The Play Index comes with a money back guarantee. We will gladly return the unused portion of any Play Index Subscription should you be dissatisfied with the Play Index.

So go ahead, give the Play Index a try -- we're confident that once you start using it, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.

Just a friendly reminder that you can follow us at your favorite social media sites:

• Baseball-Reference at Twitter
• Baseball-Reference at Facebook

Also, be sure to check out the Play Index, baseball's most powerful search tool...

Sponsoring a page is fun, fast, and easy way to support what we're doing here at Baseball-Reference. With a sponsorship, you can:

• Show your support for your favorite player or team.
• Drum up traffic for your own site & draw in fans with a common interest.
• Get some well-deserved recognition for your support of B-R.
• Make your voice heard by the tens of thousands of people who visit Baseball-Reference every day.

Here's all you have to do to get involved:

1. Create a membership account.
2. Find the page(s) you'd like to support, and click "sponsor" (available pages).
3. If the page you want is already sponsored, click "Alert Me!" to be informed when the current sponsorship expires.
4. Follow the instructions to create your message and make your payment.
5. Your message and links will be visible on the page after we approve them (usually in less than 24 hours).

And who knows, if you're clever enough, your message might end up on lists like these.