Archive for the 'Tutorials' Category

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Sadly, the 2009 MLB season is over, but that doesn't mean the world of baseball has gone quiet. The hot stove is warming up, of course, and over the past month we've also had a chance to take in the major-league award announcements, as well as the annual Hall of Fame ballot. Thanks to our Awards Section here at B-R, you can keep track of these developments and look back at past recipients of the game's highest honors.

First, there's the long-awaited addition of Hall of Fame balloting summaries. From the Awards Section, scroll down to the area marked "Hall of Fame Ballot and Voting Summaries" and you'll find links that lead to Hall of Fame voting results for every season since the HoF began bestowing its honors in 1936. On any of those pages, you'll see every player who was on the official ballot in that year, along with the number of years they had been on the ballot, the number of votes they garnered, what percentage of the total ballots cast contained their name, several of Bill James' HoF monitor stats, and of course, their traditional career batting and pitching statistics. Notice also that players who were voted in by special non-BBWAA committees, including the Veterans Committee and the Negro Leagues Committee, are included in separate tables to denote their different enshrinement circumstances. Also take note of the fact that you can navigate from any year's HoF voting results to the results of any other year by using the dropdown menu near the top of the page.

And for those not just interested in historical Hall of Fame elections, but also current and upcoming ones, we have projected ballots for each of the next 5 years (through 2014). And of course, you can sort the lists by each of the column headers -- for instance, clicking on "YoB" twice will allow you to sort in ascending order by the number of years on the ballot, giving you the players in their first year of eligibility at the top of the list. Barry Bonds in 2013, anybody?

The Awards Section contains more than just Hall of Fame data, though. We also have lists of (and voting summaries for) every major regular-season and postseason award, including the MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year, Gold Gloves, Silver Sluggers, and more. At the bottom of the main awards page, you'll find an area called "Baseball Award Voting Summaries", with a series of years -- and similar to our Hall of Fame area, just click any year, and you'll be taken to the voting summaries for every major award in that season.

As always, the Hall of Fame and Awards data is updated through the most current season, so be sure to spend some quality time with the freshly-minted results from a few weeks ago, and check out the first-timers on next year's HoF ballot while you're at it. And don't worry, just like the awards information you're used to being able to find on indivdual player pages, you'll also be able to see a player's history of Hall of Fame voting results on his page now -- take Bert Blyleven's, for instance.

Now, I do have to say that because this HoF data is brand new, there are likely still bugs in the vote totals. So please report any issues that you come across, and together we can continue to make Baseball-Reference your one stop for baseball information from the past and the present. Enjoy the new data!

One of the interesting new features of the PI is the sortable summary provided when using the game finder. This summation provides the total statistics of the games found can be ranked by a variety of different stats. I find this very exciting because it represents the first step in searching splits. Let me explain with an example.

Suppose we wanted to find the player with the most hits on the road in a single season.

1. Use the Game Finder called Player Batting.
2. select "Find Players with Most Matching Games in a Season"
3. Limit your search to Visitor
4. Search for H>=1

That will provide you with this list:

Until now we had to stop at this point and say that "Lou Brock had the most road games with a hit in a season (since 1954)". However, the new version of PI lets us take this a step further. Assuming that it is logical that the player with the most hits on the road in a season would be among the top 300 in games with a hit, we can find that player by sorting for hits. After completing the above search, simply click on the column heading "H" and you will be presented with this list:

Brock drops down to #22 and Ichiro now tops the leader board!
Let's do the same thing for hits at home:

Clearly, this technique is limited. It can't be used for stats that usually occur in bunches (most pitching stats). It also can't be used for rate stats like batting average. However, for a lot of hitting stats it can be a fun and useful new tool.

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

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.

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.

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 »

For the 4th tutorial video here at Baseball-Reference, I show you how to use our amazing Player Linking Tool:

Last week, I gave a little tour of the splits pages we offer for individual players, so today we thought it would be a good idea to go through the same run-down with regard to team splits.

Read the rest of this entry »