* Search for great single-game or multigame player/team performances using the Game Finders. This lets you find trivia like the all-time winningest career pitchers in interleague play.

* Use the Streak Finders to look for long streaks in interleague games.

* Query franchise head-to-head records using the Head to Head Finder. This allows you to search for lists like the Mets' records vs. each opponent since 1997, which includes all of their interleague games.

* The Situational Finder can search teams' records in interleague games and find items like the teams who had the best interleague records in a single season.

Give them a try, and learn something new about interleague play.

Starting today, we will be updating statistics for Nippon Pro Baseball and American independent leagues, like the Atlantic League, on a daily basis. Hope you enjoy this one of a kind feature on Baseball-Reference.com. Because you know you want to follow Lastings Milledge of the 2012 Yakult Swallows.

All 2012 Leagues Covered

Colin Wyers was kind enough to fill this out for WARP, so I've added WARP to the comparison chart and also split it off onto its own page for easy linking. If you want to know why numbers are different from one site to the next, this explains why.

As some noticed in our last update to WAR. Pitchers were being significantly bumped up in value. This was due primarily to a change in our runs to win calculation. After some consultation with noted, anonymous sabermetricians Tom Tango and Patriot, we worked out a more sophisticated approach that still accounts for the player's effect on the run environment, but doesn't overvalue the contribution of stellar pitchers. We've added a new page to run through the changes we've made when converting from runs to wins. Converting Runs to Wins.

There are a few other changes that have been made as well.

Version 2.1, May 2012

• A major change to runs to win calculation. See our Runs to Wins Page for a full explanation. We now handle runs to wins calculations in an exact rather than an estimated way.
• With the change in runs to wins calculation we can now display Wins Above Average, a related win-loss % and a related win-loss% for 162 games played. We've cleaned up some of the presentation in other ways as well.
• Leverage Index adjustment is now only applied to relief pitchers.
• Leverage Index used is now the LI at the time the reliever entered the game rather than the average LI for all of their plate appearances. This is weighted by number of batters faced.
• Renamed Offensive WAR from afWAR back to oWAR. Note that oWAR + dWAR now double counts position, so adding them will not give WAR.
• Added columns for Wins Above Average (WAA), waaW-L% (effectively a rate stat for WAR), and 162waaWL%. The first W-L% is the W-L% of an otherwise average facing an average team would have in games this player played in. 162waaWL% adds enough .500 record to account for a full 162 game season (which is most applicable to pitchers).
• The adjustment for the difference in league starter and reliever ERA has been moved to the calculation of league average rather than the league replacement level.
• BUG: Fixed a park factor bug. Pitcher opponent strength was not neutralized, so a park factor was being applied to a non-park adjusted number. Now the pitcher opponent strength is converted to a neutral environment, averaged for all opponents and then park adjusted based on a custom park factor for each pitcher based on the exact parks they pitched in.
• Some feedback of version 2.0 we incorporated: Inside the Book and its readers helped immensely with the runs to wins issue.

This change has been rolled out to all of the pages. As always, your feedback is welcomed.

A group of distinguished baseball writers and researchers have collaborated to create a new award as a memorial to the late baseball researcher Greg Spira. The new Greg Spira Baseball Research Award (www.SpiraAward.org) will be given annually in recognition of the best published article or paper containing original baseball research by a person 30 years old or younger. The winning entry must display innovative analysis or reasoning.

Greg Spira founded the annual Internet Baseball Awards (IBA) in 1991 and announced the 2011 winners a month before his death. The IBA are now maintained by Baseball Prospectus at www.baseballprospectus.com/iba. Spira was an early adopter and a pioneer in using the Internet to advance baseball analysis, particularly via Usenet’s groundbreaking rec.sport.baseball as well as via BaseballProspectus.com.

Spira later contributed to many sports books as a researcher, writer, and editor, including the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia, Total Baseball, and several annual periodicals about the Mets. A lifelong and passionate Mets fan, Spira died on December 28, 2011 in his native New York City.

Working with the Spira family, the creators of the Greg Spira Award include Sean Forman of Baseball- Reference.com, Joe Hamrahi and Dave Pease of Baseball Prospectus, Sean Lahman of Baseball1.com, and Gary Gillette of 24-7 Baseball, L.L.C.

The winner of the Greg Spira Baseball Research Award will receive a cash prize of $1,000. The program will also recognize two additional writers with awards of $200 for second place and $100 for third place.

Articles or papers eligible for consideration include those published on the World Wide Web, in e-books, and in print, as well as academic dissertations and presentations at conferences. Winners of the Greg Spira Award will not be eligible for consideration for future awards.

The inaugural Greg Spira Baseball Research Award winner will be announced on April 27, 2013--the 46th anniversary of Greg’s birthday. Future awards will be announced on April 27 of succeeding years.

A seven-person panel of judges will determine the winner. Greg’s brother Jonathan Spira has agreed to serve as one of the initial judges for the Award. Deadlines and procedures for submissions will be announced on June 1, 2012.

Remembrances, tributes, and other information about Greg Spira can also be found on these Web sites:

• www.GregSpira.com
• www.BaseballProspectus.com
• www.Baseball-Reference.com
• www.Baseball1.com
• www.247Baseball.com

For more information, please go to www.SpiraAward.org or contact Gary Gillette (GilletteAT247Baseball.com).

afWAR => Average-Fielding-WAR. The player's WAR if they were a league average fielder, or what you should use if you trust no fielding metrics.
dWAR => Defensive WAR thanks to fielding and position.

afWAR = batting + baserunning + DP's + replacement + position
dWAR = fielding + position

(NOTE POSITION IS IN BOTH OF THEM!)

afWAR + dWAR does not equal WAR as you'll be double counting the position adjustment. And on a team level you shouldn't be using WAR anyway to determine what your team is good or bad at.

I'll start adding version numbers as I make tweaks to the system. This one changes no numbers, so it really is just a naming convention.

As many have noticed, we have not been updating the 2012 WAR data in-season. The reason for this is that we have been working on a major upgrade to our WAR framework. The link above gives a very detailed rundown including: how to compute each part of our WAR formula, our reasoning on making the changes, downloads for historical WAR data, charts of the various constants and factors we use, and a chart of differences between the new B-R WAR, the old B-R WAR and FanGraphs WAR.

We also have pages describing the details of the components as well.
WAR for Position Players
WAR for Pitchers
How we compute wRAA for WAR

All in all, these are major improvements to the system and while there are dozens of details, here are the main points of difference between our old framework and the new one.

• Switch from BaseRuns for batting to an advanced wRAA metric.
• Folding ROE, infield singles, SO vs. Non-SO into wRAA.
• Excluding pitchers' hitting and averaging by league rather than year from the league averages for wOBA and wRAA.
• Estimation of CS numbers for leagues they are missing.
• Use of Baseball Info Solutions Defensive Runs Saved from 2003-present (in our view the most advanced defensive metric).
• Use of a player-influenced runs to win conversion for both batters and pitchers based on PythagenPat.
• Use of a player-specific park factor for pitchers weighted by actual appearances in each park.
• After a preliminary WAR calculation, we fine-tune the replacement level on a playing time basis, so the total WAR in each league is very consistent year-to-year.
• I've changed the oWAR and dWAR formulations. oWAR is now called ndWAR for (no-defense WAR), but is the same otherwise. dWAR now contains the position component of WAR, so the Career Leaderboard is now dominated by SS, C and other great defensive players.

As always our goal is accuracy and we think this gives us a more accurate system. As suggestions, tweaks, and more data comes in we'll continue to adjust the system.

One other thing we are doing is providing a daily updated download of our WAR totals for every major league player. Batters and Pitchers. Feel free to use it how you wish so long as you cite us. If you prefer the old numbers they are available for download from About index.

I owe a big thanks to many people, but wanted to single out the following.
Sean Smith, who provided us with the original WAR incarnation on the site and provided much of the methodology used including, but not limited to TZR (pre-2003), GIDP runs, Baserunning Runs, Replacement Level, and Pitcher WAR.
Baseball Info Solutions licenses up their tremendous defensive metrics.
Tom Tango, who provided us with a great deal of feedback related to modifying and improving on wRAA and runs-to-wins calculations.
Neil Paine, who walked through each step of this rethinking with me.
RetroSheet and Pete Palmer for the raw batting, pitching, and fielding numbers that go into the system.

Just a reminder that you can access this season's boxscores in calendar form using the 2012 boxscores page.

Just a reminder that the minor leagues got underway yesterday as well. Linked is our 2012 Minor League directory. Enjoy.

Linked is 2011, but if you change the year this is now available for every year back to 1918. It is linked from the main league-year pages under the Other tab.

This goes along with our Team Opening Day Histories.