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ShareThisPlay Index Update and Free 10-Day Trial
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We did a major reworking of nearly the entire website last April. One area that remained unchanged was the Play Index. It took seven months, but the Play Index has finally been updated to match the rest of the site including features like in table sorting, the Share Tool, and pre-formatted and csv text. I have also reworked a number of the tools allowing for more types searches.
The main advantage to this update besides those listed above is that these changes will speed the development of new features dramatically. I've basically been on hold for new Play Index features for 18 months as I worked to move the entire site over to our new platform. Thankfully, that is essentially done now, and we can focus on improvements and additions rather than refactoring old code.
Some of the new features.
I've added a fifth criteria for the game and season finders allowing searches like seasons with "HR > SO" or "CS > SB". This is still pretty crude, but it is a first step toward full arithmetic searches.
The season and game finders now have more matching options at the top of the forms. Most of these options were already in the tools, but were buried in the sort options. These are for searches like "Most multi-hit games in career, 1954-2009" or "Most 20-HR seasons".
For the game finders there are additional new features. When doing a matching search (like "most games with a home run in first 50 games"), you also get a summary line for all of the games matching that search, which allows you to definitively say that Wally Joyner has the most home runs in a player's first 50 games since 1954. This also gives you a way to do a reasonable good split search ("Most wins against the Blue Jays in the last ten years"). There are also more matching options for things like most players with a multiple hits in a single game for one team or both teams.
I've also re-organized the front page and now show only the last 30 days of saved searches by default.
We are also going to add a few more photos to Play Index, so look for those later this week.
Special thanks to our team of bloggers who put these updated tools through their paces. They will be highlighting some of the new things you can do in upcoming blog posts. There are definitely still bugs in there to be ironed out. There are millions of potential searches to do, so we just can't test every possible combination. You can report issues you find through our bug system. Suggestions are also welcome there. Please be as specific as you can.
To celebrate the update, we are offering a free trial for the play index through November 20th. Give it a whirl for free and we hope you'll find it worth your while to subscribe after the 20th. Also, it has been three years since we launched the Play Index and our prices have held constant during that time. We have increased the prices with this update, so that a full year subscriptions has gone from $29 to $36/year.
If something isn't working as before and you really, really can't wait for it to get fixed, the old version is still available.
Thank you for your support of Baseball-Reference.com and your feedback is always appreciated.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Administration, Announcements, Site Features, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
November 10th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Sean:
Found one issue. check the note for this item
http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/shareit/VrsP5
November 10th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Dave, what were you trying to query?
November 10th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
I dont understand the "matching search". Where is the summary line?
November 10th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
click the red numbers,
there should be a total not a preview notice
November 10th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Ktsharp - In the old PI game finder - If you searched for hr>=1 it would just tell you which players had the most games with at least 1 home run and how many games that was. The new PI will also tell you the player's total stats in those games.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
The red link issue that Dave is reporting is not limited to the PI. If you check Joyner's 1986 game long, the red links in the Gcar/Gtm column are broken.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Is there a way to find the most home runs in a game by both teams combined (not players)...
November 10th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
#1 and #6, should be fixed now.
November 14th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Do you have anything posted in this domain about rules changes over the years, or do you know of a website that would have that? Like pitching rules in the 1880s, when the "sacrifice fly" was invented, etc.?
November 14th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/rulechng.shtml
November 16th, 2009 at 9:23 am
[...] mind telling you, my motivation to do this post is the free trial (through November 20) of Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index (yes, Sean Forman, I need to renew my paid subscription). That makes it possible to generate the [...]
November 18th, 2009 at 10:37 am
How come the play index season search for shutouts only goes back to 1954? They are in the individual players' stat tables for all-time. It's not in the "set year to > 1954" section of the drop down menu.