BR.com's Sports Reference Blog

As of right now with the Albany steroid ring case making its way into the press.

Google News Hits
Gary Matthews Steroids: 298
Pittsburgh Steelers Steroids: 266
Evander Holyfield Steroids: 9

Didn’t the Steelers win a Super Bowl just a year ago?

Stories on ESPN.com
Front Page, #1 ESPNews item: Report: Angels’ Matthews linked to illicit ‘roid ring
NFL Page, #3 ESPNews item: Steroids raid might implicate pro, college athletes
MLB Page, #1 ESPNews item: Report: Angels’ Matthews linked to illicit steroid ring

Yahoo!News

MLB #1 Story is Matthews
NFL No mention of report

I feel sorry for the NFL being such a two bit sport. I mean even Gary Matthews using steroids is bigger news than a Steelers’ team doctor buying $150,000 in steroids on his personal credit card.

Pedro Martinez Statistics - Baseball-Reference.com

Pat Burrell Statistics - Baseball-Reference.com

I’ve been working on some special projects for a paying client and one of the things that I did as part of that was generate a database with all 5 million pitches thrown in the last 7 years (yes, RetroSheet has that data). This has allowed me to calculate some really interesting (and in some cases esoteric) data for pitchers and batters. This data appears below the pitcher lines for the pitchers and below the special batting for the batters. Here is the data included for the batters.

Pit - total pitches seen
Pit/PA - average pitches / plate appearance
Str - strikes total
Str% - percentage of pitches seen that were strikes (includes pitches swung at out of the zone)
Bll - balls total
StL - strikes looking
StS - strikes swinging (this includes 3rd strike foul tip strikes and foul tip bunts)
StF - strikes foul (includes foul bunts)
StI - strikes in play (any ball put into play fair)
BlI - intentional balls
SOc - strikeouts called
SOs - strikeouts swinging (note foul bunts are not included)
Swng% - Percentage of strikes swung at (StS + StI + StF)/Str
SwgA% - Percentage of all pitches swung at (StS + StI + StF)/Str
Cntc% - Percentage of times contact made when swinging (StI+StF)/(StS + StI + StF)
1st% - Percentage of times swung at the first pitch of PA
30c - 3-0 counts seen
30s - Plate Appearances Swinging 3-0
20c - 2-0 counts seen
20s - Plate Appearances Swinging 2-0
31c - 3-1 counts seen
31s - Plate Appearances Swinging 3-1
PiU - pitches unknown (may be balls or strikes)
StU - strikes unknown (may be balls or strikes)

Here is the data for the pitchers

Glossary
Pit - total pitches thrown
PA - batters faced
Pit/PA - average pitches / plate appearance
Str - strikes total
Str% - percentage of pitches that were strikes (includes pitches swung at out of the zone)
Bll - balls total
StL - strikes looking
StS - strikes swinging (this includes 3rd strike foul tip strikes and foul tip bunts)
StF - strikes foul (includes foul bunts)
StI - strikes in play (any ball put into play fair)
BlI - intentional balls
SOc - strikeouts called
SOs - strikeouts swinging (note foul bunts are not included)
SO3 - 3-pitch strikeouts
BB4 - 4-pitch walks not listed as intentional
Swng% - Percentage of strikes swung at (StS + StI + StF)/Str
SwgA% - Percentage of all pitches swung at (StS + StI + StF)/Str
Cntc% - Percentage of times contact made when batter swung (StI+StF)/(StS + StI + StF)
1st% - Percentage of first pitch strikes (includes balls put into play)
30c - 3-0 counts seen
30s - Strikes thrown in 3-0 counts
02c - 0-2 counts seen
02s - Strikes Thrown in 0-2 counts
02h - Hits allowed on 0-2 pitches
PiU - pitches unknown (may be balls or strikes)
StU - strikes unknown (may be balls or strikes)

Team Inning Scoring 2003 LAD - Baseball-Reference PI

This is a little tool that allows you to find how a team did inning-by-inning. Currently, I only have one output available. Given a team was behind, tied, or ahead at the start of the inning, you can if that changed at the end of the inning.

Other possible outputs: runs scored and allowed by inning. Relative run scoring by inning. Walk off wins and losses, records leading or behing at the end of an inning. For example, record when ahead after 8 innings or behind after 8 innings.

Biggest comeback? Biggest comeback against?

Long term, I should allow you to click on any number and find all of the games making up that entry.

SportsBusinessJournal.com - 20 Most Influential in Online Media

Bowman at MLBAM #1 and Kosner at ESPN.com #2.

Sorry for the silence the last two weeks. I’ve been sick and Carl was sick and daycare was closed, so it hasn’t been the most productive couple of weeks, but I should be back at it full-time this week.

ANA: 89 Home Runs Allowed in 2006, vs. LHB - Baseball-Reference PI

I’ve updated the Batting and Pitching event finders to allow you to search for events by team. You can get all of the events for a particular team year back to 1957. Want to see all of the grand slams allowed or hit by the Red Sox in 2004. Can do it. Want to see all of the IBB offered by Bobby Cox in 1996. Yup, we can do that as well.

Any red text in the output will allow you to further filter the result. Using this you can also create multiple splits for individual teams. For instance, search for all PA’s by a team and then click on as 1B and 6th inning and run the report and you’ll get just the results for the first basemen in the sixth inning.

Pitching Seasonlog Finder - Baseball-Reference PI

I think I’ve added all of the functionality I’m going to add for now to the pitching season finder. I’ve added some additional reporting options and also greatly improved the minimal output to show filtering criteria as well as what you are sorting on.

Sabernomics » Blog Archive » New Arrival

Congrats to JC and his family!

Philadelphia Will Do - Jon Lieber’s Truck

Boys and their toys.

Pitching Seasonlog Finder - Baseball-Reference PI

I got a little farther along with the pitching finder. There are still some problems with the filtering criteria, but the sorting options are all working.

I need to add some common things like SO/9, BB/9, whip, K/BB, others?

Most Games in a Career without a start - Baseball-Reference PI

I got at least a semi-working prototype up on the PI. A lot of the advanced sorting and criteria options don’t work, but thinks like Quality starts and the like to work.

Here is an example with Best OPS+ for a Starter

The queries requiring play-by-play results are good only past 1957. Pitch count materials are 2000 and after.

Most HR in a season by a player not born in the U.S. - Baseball-Reference PI

I managed to add a filter on place of birth or place of death. You also have the option of choosing the players not matching the criteria. For example, in the above link I chose place of birth is not USA.

Here is the Batting Season Finder.

Next up in the Pitching Season Finder. I expect to have something up (perhaps a rough version this week).

Free preview through February 26th for our new custom leaderboard tool.

I’m proud to launch the Batting Season Finder, a new addition to the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index. This tool looks at full-season totals from 1871 through the current season.

This tool is full of features that you might not notice at first, so we’ve provided a list of demos below to show you what it can do. These demos all deal with home runs, but you can do the exact same thing with statistics like OPS, OPS+, BA, OBP, Runs Created, most common batting stats, and other information like age, year of retirement, handedness, height, weight, etc.

• Most Home Runs in a Career
• Most Home Runs in a Season
• By a Shortstop, in a single year year
• From age 33 to 36
• During First Three Seasons, any of first three seasons
• During Last Four Seasons (retired only), any of last four seasons (retired)
• From 2002-2006, full layout
• From 2002-2006, minimal layout (good for e-mail and forums)
• For a switch-hitter, in a single year
• For a Player with a Last Season of 2003
• By an Indian Right Fielder, in a single year
• By a Player with no stolen bases or a Slugging Percentage ≤ .400
• Teams with the most players with 20 or more HR
• Player with the most seasons of 20 or more HR
• Most Career At Bats without a Home Run
• Youngest to Hit 30 Home Runs
• Shortest to Hit 30 Home Runs
• Heaviest to hit no home runs while qualifying for the Batting Title since 1947
• and on and on and on

You can save and share a result you find using the “Save or Share It!” button. Win friends! And impress your boss!

TRY the Batting Season Finder for yourself.

This tool joins the Game Finder, Streak Finder and several other tools in the B-R PI.

Subscriptions to the Play Index are $29 for a year $5 for a month.

Coming soon is the pitching season finder.

Q&A with Scott Boras - Red Sox & MLB - BostonHerald.com

Q. Can you talk more about resources you have here?
A. Upstairs, we’ve got about 30, 40 people, their job all year around is information, data. We keep track of every pitch in baseball.

For those who think that Scott Boras doesn’t earn his player’s fees. By my count, he must have 60-80 people working for him.

BTW, if you are an agent who doesn’t yet have Mr Boras’s resources, SR has a substantial database (not quite this big) that we can mine for your purposes.

SI.com - Writers - John Donovan: Baseball’s definitive stats Web site - Tuesday February 6, 2007 3:54PM

I spoke with John Donovan and couple of days ago, and the interview is already up. The PhD. comment comes off as a little glib (I apologize). I just wanted to admit that I am in fact a stats geek.

Franchises with the greatest number of players with 1,000 hits playing for that franchise - Baseball-Reference PI

An extension of the earlier questions. Apologies to fans of the Expos and Browns.

Franchises with the most Hall Of Fame Members during the 1960’s - Baseball-Reference PI

I extended the previous question to allow you to find players matching the criteria for a span of seasons.

Here is each franchises all-time HOFer list.

Mariano Rivera 2004 Pitching Gamelogs - Baseball-Reference PI

You have to go to the very bottom of the page to see this improvement. I have added column and row totals to the bottom of the pitcher gamelogs. You can now see quickly that Rivera entered only four games with the Yankees behind.

Enjoy.

From 1901 to 2006, Teams with the Greatest Number of Hall of Famers - Baseball-Reference PI

Like a bolt from the blue, tonight I realized that I could pretty easily add a new features to the Batting Season Log Finder (catchy name, huh?). Under “Sorted By” is now an option “Tms w/ most players matching”. You set up your criteria and select this and it will then locate the teams with the most players matching that criteria. You can also restrict it to franchises by selecting a franchise from the league-> team selection area.

There are lots of things you can do with this. Teams with most first year players to get 100 hits in a season. Teams with the most players to play first base. Teams with the most 30 HR batters. Teams with the fewest players to score 80 runs, etc. etc.

May 14, 1990 Montreal Expos at Los Angeles Dodgers Play by Play and Box Score - Baseball-Reference.com

Another interesting game in the box scores.

paidContent.org: SI buys FanNation.com

The sale went through for it looks like $30m, a bit below what we thought in December.

Spring (training) fever - Sports Scope - USATODAY.com

Earlier this year I was interviewed by Devin Clancy of the Sports Weekly.

Survey - Baseball-Reference.com

It has been a little while since I ran a site survey to gauge user interest, so let me have it. I’ve got 17 potential projects listed and I’m open for any suggestions you might have otherwise.

Also, everyone completing the survey can get a $2 credit towards a page sponsorship (coincidentally, the cheapest page sponsorship level we have).

The survey has two stages, one just for BR and then a demographic survey run by our ad network Federated Media. I hope you will consider doing both parts as it will benefit Baseball-Reference.com.