Archive for the 'Site Features' Category

Here's a tutorial video on how to use our new Share Tool:

B-R User Survey

Most all of the good ideas on Baseball-Reference.com have come from user suggestions or comments. It's been awhile since we ran a survey to get user feedback on what you think of the site and what things you would like to see added. So I would like to take this time to ask you for your feedback. The survey should take 5-10 minutes, and you should feel free to leave anything you want blank.

Users with a sponsorship account will get a $2 bonus upon the completion of a survey.

With the World Series rapidly approaching, now seems like a good time to give a tour of the expansive Postseason Section we have here at Baseball-Reference. In some ways, our postseason record is more complete than the regular-season one -- our regular-season boxscores only go back to 1954, but we have complete boxscores and play-by-play records for every postseason game ever played (if you don't believe me, check out the first World Series game ever). The play-by-play accounts even feature Win Probability! From 1903!

But that's not all. Beyond the box scores, you can take a broader view of each playoff matchup in history using our series pages, which contain basic linescores for each game of the series, as well as aggregate series pitching and batting stats. These pages are current as of the previous day's action, so feel free to check out an ongoing series or two. Also, take a trip around our leaderboards to learn about all-time postseason records:

• Batting and Pitching Leaders for World Series Career and Single-Series
• Batting and Pitching Leaders for LCS Career and Single-Series
• Batting and Pitching Leaders for Division Series Career and Single-Series
• Batting and Pitching Leaders for Playoffs Career and Single-Year

Finally, our Play Index Batting and Pitching Event Finders let you search through every play in postseason history, up to and including the previous day's games. And as always, let us know your questions or comments, so that we can continue to be your go-to baseball website all year long.

Wikipedia defines a "Cup of Coffee" as,  "a short time spent by a minor league player at the major league level. The idea behind the term is that the player was only in the big leagues long enough to have a cup of coffee before being returned to the minors."

All of you have heard this term before, of course, but maybe you haven't seen the Cups of Coffee page here at Baseball-Reference. If you've ever wondered about players who played just one major-league game in their career and were never seen again at the big-league level, that page is your one-stop source -- it contains every instance in history of a player suiting up for only 1 career MLB outing. Yes, that includes Moonlight Graham, who was a real person and really did play just 1 game (0 AB) for the Giants in 1905 before becoming a doctor in Chisholm, MN.

So for more people who may be just as interesting (if not a famous) as Graham, check out the Cups of Coffee and think about some otherwise-forgotten players who never got a second chance at The Show.

Monday, October 12, 2009 Game Previews - Baseball-Reference.com

There are a lot of balls in the air behind the scenes at Baseball-Reference.com and one of the places they tend to hit the ground is at the interface between regular and postseason stats.

I've fixed a couple of issues with the regular and postseason stats. The game previews for postseason games now combine regular and postseason stats in (what I think) is a sensible way.

The batter vs. pitcher tools now include an option for including postseason stats as well. For example, here is Cliff Lee vs. the Rockies including postseason stats or just with regular season stats. Please let me know whatever issues you find.

Recently, we've been discussing how to maximize your use of our individual batting and pitching gamelogs, so the next logical step is to apply what we've learned so far to the team batting and pitching logs.

To access the logs at the team level, go to any team page, and hover your mouse over the "Batting [+]" section of the navigation bar under the banner ad. In the drop-down menu, click "Game Logs":

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/tgl.cgi?t=b&team=MIN&year=2009

What you see should look familiar from our individual batting gamelogs... As always, the ultra-cool row-summing feature works here, allowing you to get totals and averages over any span of games you desire, The usual batting categories are present as well, and if you click on the blue text in the  "Date" column, you can go to the boxscore of the specific game in that row. Furthermore, recall that clicking the red text in the Gtm column will pop up a small box containing the team's stats through the game in question, as was the case in our indivdual logs.

Turn your attention to the far right side of the table, and you'll see a column for runners left on base, plus the number of batters used by the team in each game, and the opposing starter faced (including his handedness and the Bill James game score he posted vs. the team in that particular game). Above each table is another place for interesting data -- there you will find the team's situational record vs. righty and lefty starters, as well as the longest team streaks of the season with and without a home run.

Now, on to the pitching side:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/tgl.cgi?team=MIN&t=p&year=2009

The same lessons learned on our individual pitching gamelogs will serves you well on these team pages, because you'll be able to sum rows, access game-by-game boxscores (blue text), and call up the year-to-date info via the red text in the Gtm column. The only difference you'll notice will be on the far right side of the table, where you'll see a column for the number of pitchers used, as well as another column identifying exactly who those pitchers were (in order of appearance), the number of rest days they pitched on, their game score for the outing, and which decision (if any) they were tagged with. And last but not least, below the table on these team pitching log pages is the familiar run support table, which lists how often the team helped its pitchers with each number of runs per game.

Enjoy these team features as a companion to the player-based logs we've already discussed, and as always, let us know about any questions or comments you may have.

Baseball-Reference Blog » All-Time Tiebreaker Playoff Games

Neil just went through and created a list of all of the tiebreaker games in MLB history.

Today, I thought it would be a good idea to follow up on Monday's post about individual batting gamelogs with a few words about our gamelogs for individual pitchers.

Pitching gamelogs boast the same row-summing features and career/season-to-date red text tooltips as their batting counterparts, of course, and the amount of data we show for each of the pitcher's games is really going to help you know everything you need to about his performance. We have the standard box score line -- Dec, IP, H, BB, K, ER, etc. -- but we also show how many days of rest he pitched on, how many batters he faced, his pitch count (along with detailed numbers on his strikes and batted balls allowed), SB/CS data, the opposing batting line, his Win Probability Added and the Leverage Index for his appearance, plus the circumstances under which he entered and exited the game. I should also point out that above the gamelog table, you can find the team's record in the pitcher's appearances/starts, and at the bottom of the page you will see a table containing his usage by days of rest, as well as a table showing the distribution of his run support over the season in question.

And if that wasn't enough, you can also click on various items in the logs to pull up even more in-depth information. By clicking on the pitcher's red text in the innings pitched column, you'll see an inning-by-inning breakdown of his outing, including hits and runs allowed, as well as batters faced, pitches, and strikes thrown. If you click the red tooltip under the "Entered" column, you'll see a box pop up with a graphical representation of the situation when he came in, including the men on base and the fielders behind him.

But perhaps the most mind-blowing feature is what happens when you click the link in the pitch count column. Go ahead, try it... The link will take you to BrooksBaseball.net's PitchFX Tool, which gives you an amazing assortment of tables and graphs culled from MLBAM's Pitchf/x system (you know, that thing with the cameras that tracks pitches). You can see velocities, inches of break, etc. from the game in question, courtesy of BrooksBaseball's pages, and all of it links up directly with our gamelogs to give you a very visible connection between the player's results (H, ER, BB, K) and the pitches that led to those results. (Note: Currently, this feature is only available for the 2009 season.)

So go over and check out our pitching gamelogs, I know you'll get a lot of use out of them, especially with the playoffs on the horizon.

Today we're going to talk a little about the individual batting gamelogs, which are by no means new here at Baseball Reference, but at the same time are tools that I think we can continually stand to learn new things about. To access a batter's gamelogs, go to his main page, point to "Game Logs [+]" under the "Standard Batting" table, and select the logs you want to look at.

Read the rest of this entry »

Babe Ruth Postseason Batting Gamelogs and Postseason Pitching Gamelogs

They went missing when we redesigned the site, but I just got them updated and back on the. If you look at the gamelog drop down on the player pages, there is now a postseason option (where relevant) along with the years and if you look at the postseason sections on the player pages you will see links to Postseason Gamelogs. Enjoy.