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Archive for the 'Tutorials' Category

No Zeros in the Box Score

6th July 2011

In Andy's "Every starter has 2 or more hits" thread last night, Statboy asked the following question:

"Has there been a game where one team had no zeros in the box score (every player with at least one hit, run, and RBI)?"

While finding all of the games that meet this criteria is quite a challenge, there is a subset of these games that make an interesting PI exercise. The difficulty in a search like the one that Statboy is proposing is that generally we do not know how many players appeared in each game. Therefore, even if we find the games with the most players with at least one run, hit and rbi, there still can be many players who appeared in that game that did not meet the criteria. That being said,  it is possible to limit a PI game finder search to games in which there were only nine players, by searching for players who both started and finished a game.

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Posted in Game Finders, Play Index, Tutorials | 17 Comments »

How Do I … With PI?

19th June 2010

There seems to be a recent  increase in the number of how to questions regarding PI usage. Since there are constantly new users, I thought that it might be good to have a single place for people to posts questions and answers regarding PI searches. This way people can read up on old questions and the answers to new questions won't  risk being lost in the comments of another post.

I can't stick this to the top of any page or even tag it, but a search for "PI help"  should help find this thread. If comments on the thread ever closes, please send me an email and I'll reopen it. You can find my contact information (along with all the other bloggers) on the right bar of this page.

Anyway, here is the thread. Ask away.

Posted in Tutorials | 32 Comments »

Site Features: Draft Tools, Part III

9th June 2010

As the last installment of this series, here are a few more things you can do with Baseball-Reference's draft search tool:

Posted in Announcements, Draft, Tutorials | Comments Off on Site Features: Draft Tools, Part III

Site Features: Draft Tools, Part II

8th June 2010

Picking up where yesterday's post left off, here are some more features of Baseball-Reference's draft search tool:

Posted in Announcements, Draft, Site Features, Tutorials | 2 Comments »

Site Features: Draft Tools, Part I

7th June 2010

In honor of the 2010 MLB Amateur Draft starting today, here are some things you can do with Baseball-Reference's Draft Search Tool:

Posted in Announcements, Draft, Site Features, Tutorials | 3 Comments »

Sabermetric Fielding: Adam Everett’s Legendary 2006

12th May 2010

(Note: All of the data in this post was obtained from the new Baseball-Reference Fielding Stats.)

Sometimes a player has a season so magnificent that it becomes truly legendary. A batting example would be Babe Ruth's 1920, when he had more home runs by himself than any other team in the American League. For basestealers, Rickey Henderson's 130-steal 1982 campaign has gone down in history as the most prolific in modern history. And for pitchers, you have Pedro Martinez's 2000, when he posted a 1.74 ERA in a league where the average was 4.91. All of these feats have been justifiably lionized over the years for their brilliance, but where's the love for the greatest fielding performance of the postwar era?

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Posted in Fielding Stats, Sabermetrics, Site Features, Tutorials | 9 Comments »

Sabermetric Fielding: 2010 Los Angeles Dodgers

11th May 2010

(Note: All of the data in this post was obtained from the new Baseball-Reference Fielding Stats.)

A month and a half into the 2010 season, the L.A. Dodgers' defense has been one of the biggest disappointments in baseball. Among NL teams, they current rank a distant last in both Fielding +/- and TotalZone Runs Above Average, and they're quite a bit below average in Defensive Efficiency as well:

Tm #Fld DefEff G Inn Rtot Rdrs
SDP 30 .720 31 2550.0 14 25
COL 30 .695 32 2595.0 -4 22
STL 28 .711 32 2625.0 11 21
ARI 31 .676 33 2628.0 -5 18
PHI 29 .694 32 2574.0 4 16
SFG 28 .728 30 2478.0 14 14
CIN 28 .676 32 2595.0 -8 13
WSN 32 .695 32 2595.0 1 11
HOU 29 .663 31 2484.0 -11 3
NYM 30 .691 32 2649.0 6 3
ATL 28 .696 32 2499.0 3 1
FLA 30 .680 32 2583.0 1 0
PIT 31 .668 32 2547.0 -21 -10
CHC 28 .670 33 2583.0 -12 -11
MIL 26 .662 32 2568.0 -14 -14
LAD 32 .673 32 2571.0 -31 -21
470 .687 510 41124.0 -53
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/11/2010.

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Posted in Fielding Stats, Sabermetrics, Site Features, Tutorials | 9 Comments »

Tutorial Videos: WPA Graphs

24th March 2010

Today, I show you how to use the Win Probability graphs in box scores:

Posted in Site Features, Tutorial Videos, Tutorials | 3 Comments »

Feature Watch: Updated Bio Section

25th February 2010

If you haven't had a chance to look at it yet, the Bio section of the site (which is tucked away under the "more [+]" drop-down menu) got a little bigger when we updated the site last week.

In case you're unfamiliar, on that page we break down every player by their place of birth, and using the links at the top of the page, you can sort the batting, pitching, and managing totals for those born in every U.S. state and every country. You can also see more detailed breakdowns for each state/foreign country/territory, including a sortable list of every player born there and his career MLB stats.

In addition, we still provide the same tools/breakdowns for each player's place of death -- and since you may have noticed that deceased MLB players now have burial data on their profile pages, we've also added a new section to the Bio page that gives the breakdowns described above for players based on their place of burial. So if you ever wanted to know which players were laid to rest in Wyoming (hint: there's only 4 of them), this is the feature for you.

Also, I should note that the death and burial data is not complete, so if you come across someone with missing data and you have citable documentation regarding their correct info, please let us know via email.

1) What is the birth state of the most Hall of Famers?
2) Who has the most career HR among Rhode-Island-born players?
3) Name the 2 Hall of Famers who died in Canada.
4) Who is the only MLB player buried in Alaska?
5) Pitchers born in which country have the lowest combined ERA?
1) New York
2) Paul Konerko
3) Ed Delahanty and Don Drysdale
4) Charlie Fisher
5) Scotland

(See more Baseball-Reference Tutorials here.)

Posted in Announcements, Site Features, Tutorials | Comments Off on Feature Watch: Updated Bio Section

Tutorials: Fielding Stats

3rd February 2010

We get a lot of requests for fielding leaderboards, but not many people realize they can actually create their own using tools we already have on the site. With that in mind, today we're going to take a look at some questions you can answer using the fielding stats pages we have for each league.

To get to a fielding stats page, first start at a league's main page. Underneath the banner ad, there's a navbar with tabs that will drop down to give you more options when you roll your mouse over them (denoted by "[+]"). One of them is for fielding, so roll over "Fielding [+]" and click on "Standard Fielding". This page has traditional fielding stats for every team and player in the league across all positions, and you can sort the tables by clicking on the header of the column you want to order the teams/players by. If you want to see a breakdown of games by position for the league, mouse over Fielding [+] again and click "Appearances". And if you want to break down player and team fielding stats by position, mouse over Fielding [+], then click the position you'd like to see. There you'll find traditional stats again, but also advanced categories that use play-by-play to dig into a deeper level of detail.

Now that you're armed with this knowledge, here's a quick quiz to test your ability to find specific pieces of information on the fielding pages:

1) Which team led the AL in defensive efficiency in 1976?
2) Which team led the 1995 NL in 6-4-3 double plays?
3) Who led the majors in appearances at SS in 1943?
4) Who led all AL second basemen in assists in 1954?
5) Who was the NL's best center fielder by TotalZone Runs Above Avg. in 1961?
1) New York Yankees
2) Philadelphia Phillies
3) Luke Appling
4) Bobby Avila
5) Vada Pinson

(See more Baseball-Reference Tutorials here.)

Posted in Tutorials | 9 Comments »