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Archive for the 'HowTo' Category

WNBA Player Game Finder and Player Comparison Finder added to Basketball Stathead

2nd August 2021

At the beginning of the WNBA's 25th season, we detailed a huge expansion of the advanced stats and features available in our WNBA coverage on Basketball Reference. This week we are proud to announce two new additions to our suite of Basketball Stathead search tools available for the WNBA, the Player Game Finder and Player Comparison Finder.

The Player Game Finder allows you to search through our entire database of regular season and playoff game logs for every player in every game in WNBA history. You can search by statistical criteria (i.e. points, rebounds, etc.), player characteristics (age, team, etc.) and game filters (location, result, etc).

Here's a few examples to get you started:

Most games with at least 10 assists in a season
All regular season and playoff triple-doubles in WNBA history
Most career 25-point games

The Player Comparison Finder allows you to compare the regular season and playoff statistics of up to six WNBA players for a single season or combined seasons. You can view statistical totals, per game, per 100 possessions and per 36 minutes; you can also view advanced stats (PER, Win Shares, etc.) for each of the players.

For example, here’s a comparison of Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi in their first WNBA season.

We hope you enjoy this addition to our WNBA coverage and Stathead. If you're interested in a subscription to the product, you can sign up for a free trial here!

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Features, HowTo, Stathead, Tips and Tricks | Comments Off on WNBA Player Game Finder and Player Comparison Finder added to Basketball Stathead

Team Batting and Pitching Span Finders Added to Stathead Baseball

1st July 2021

The wait is over!

We've been listening to requests for new features from our users and we're happy to announce that we have launched two new tools for Stathead Baseball: The Team Pitching and Batting Span Finders.

The Team Span Finder is a powerful research tool that allows you to search and compare team stats based on spans of games. You can further refine the search and specify the span to be either from the start or end of a season.

Here's a few examples of each type of search to get you started:

The biggest run differential in any 162-game span is +446, done by the 1901-02 Pirates and 1938-39 Yankees.

The most shutouts thrown by a team in its first 50 games of a season is 14, by the 1969 Cubs.

Did you know? Since 1901, 137 teams have lost at least 15 of their final 20 games of a season. Only one of them made the postseason: 2000 Yankees (and they won the World Series, too!).

We hope you really enjoy this addition to Stathead. If you're interested in a subscription to the service, you can sign up for a free trial here!

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Features, HowTo, Stathead, Tips and Tricks | Comments Off on Team Batting and Pitching Span Finders Added to Stathead Baseball

Player Pitching and Batting Span Finders Added to Stathead Baseball

19th April 2021

The wait is over!

We've been listening to requests for new features from our users and we're happy to announce that we have launched two new tools for Stathead Baseball: The Player Pitching and Batting Span Finders.

The Player Span Finder is a powerful research tool that allows you to search and compare player stats based on spans of games. You can further refine the search and specify the span to be either the start/end of a season, career, or stint with franchise.

Here's a few examples of each type of search to get you started (please note that some searches may take up to 90 seconds):

Fewest strikeouts for any player who hit at least 30 homers in a 162-game span
Most RBI in a player's final 10 games of the season
Lowest ERA in first 30 games of a career
Most complete games in a pitcher's first 50 games with the Red Sox

We hope you really enjoy this addition to Stathead. If you're interested in a subscription to the service, you can sign up for a free trial here!

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Features, HowTo, Stathead, Tips and Tricks | Comments Off on Player Pitching and Batting Span Finders Added to Stathead Baseball

Getting the Most out of Stathead’s Player Season & Career Finders

19th June 2020

The Player Season/Career Finders are a great starting place for a first-time Baseball Stathead user. Learning to use these tools will also provide invaluable indoctrination, as the search fundamentals you will utilize are applicable to our other tools, which drill down a little deeper, as well. The basic gist of these tools is that they’re the place to go when you’re looking to place a player’s season or career stats in perspective.

Here are some sample searches you can run using these tools. If you click "See how this search was built" after following the link, you can see how the search form was manipulated in order to achieve the desired results:

Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Features, HowTo, Stathead, Stathead Tutorial Series, Tips and Tricks | 3 Comments »

Add Your Blog Posts to FBref Player Pages

27th November 2018

All of our player pages on Sports-Reference have a newsfeed section where you can check up on player news and relevant blog posts that discuss the player. If you want your site to appear in those newsfeeds, you can follow the Add Your Blog Posts Here link next to every Player News section or click here to find instructions for the site you're interested in linking to.

We have now added this capability for FBref player pages as well, so if you're interested in appearing on FBref newsfeeds, you can read how to add the FBref Linker bookmarklet here. Once you've begun using the linker on your blog posts, contact us through our feedback form with the name of your site (at most 25 characters), the URL for your RSS feed (which must be a full text feed), a contact e-mail address and the URL of a page that uses the FBref linker.

We're happy for people to use FBref like their site's statistics partner, so if you help your readers find our content, we're glad to help our users find yours. If you have any other questions, you can also use the feedback form to get more information.

Posted in Announcement, FBref, HowTo, Linker, Tips and Tricks | Comments Off on Add Your Blog Posts to FBref Player Pages

Video: Sports-Reference Table Tips and Tricks

25th April 2017

We're pleased to announce the newest video in our series showing how to get the most out of our websites. Today's video is all about the stat tables themselves. We've programmed several ways for the site to reorganize and add up stats on the tables for you, just by clicking a button or two. However, many users don't realize these hacks exist. Hopefully, this video will save you some time and also illustrate how to answer questions like "What was Bryce Harper's OPS over his last 10 games" Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, Hockey-Reference.com, How-To Videos, HowTo, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 3 Comments »

Video: How to SHARE Sports-Reference Data

30th March 2017

We're excited to post the latest video in our How To series, showing you some secrets and hacks that will help to get the most out of the Sports-Reference family of sites. Today's video is all about sharing. While many users know how to find the data they're look for, fewer know the different ways of sharing it. From embedding tables on a website or blog, to posting them to Reddit, to downloading directly to your computer as a spreadsheet, this video will show you the different ways that you share all the info you find on our sites:

Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, Hockey-Reference.com, How-To Videos, HowTo, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Video: How to SHARE Sports-Reference Data

Exporting Data

7th November 2016

UPDATE: As of March 14, 2017, we figured out how to once again allow for automatic export to Excel

As you may have noticed, on our re-designed sites we recently disabled the feature allowing you to export our tables directly to Excel. This was because updated browsers were no longer supporting the function and it was becoming problematic to keep up. However, this doesn't mean that you can't still easily export our tables into spreadsheets. There's just an extra step or two, now.

First, look for the "Share & more" tab atop the table you'd like to export. If you don't see this tab, it means the particular table you're looking at isn't exportable. Otherwise, hover over it and options will drop down (see image). Select "Get table as CSV (for Excel)", which will convert the table to comma-separated values.

csv-descrip

Once the table has been converted to CSV, copy and paste the entirety of the table (or whatever section of it you want) into Excel, as text. You will now have an unintelligible, single-column mess in your spreadsheet, but that's fine. The commas are there for a reason and Excel will help us easily convert those commas into nice, readable columns of data. This next step is sometimes variable depending on the version of Excel you're working with, but what you want to find is the "text to columns" function. In my Excel for Mac 2011, this can be found under the "Data" tab. If you can't find it on your version, a google search for "Excel text to columns" with your Excel version number should yield useful results.

Once you have located the "text to columns" function, you will choose a file type that best describes your data. You will want to choose "delimited" since the fields are separated by commas. Next, you will choose the delimiter. Check the box next to "comma." Once you make that selection, you can finish up with the text to columns wizard and you should then have a nicely formatted spreadsheet.

We realize this is not quite as quick or simple as the old export function, but unfortunately we can no longer support that function. Once you get the hang of this method, you'll see it's also quite simple.

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, Data, Features, Hockey-Reference.com, HowTo, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Redesign, Tips and Tricks | Comments Off on Exporting Data

Comparison Tool Shortcut Added to Player Pages

25th March 2015

Regular visitors to the site have likely noticed a small tweak we recently made to the layout of player pages. The change is the addition of a shortcut to our Player Comparison Finder tool. For instance, from Stephen Curry's page, someone might decide that they want to compare him to James Harden. This can now be done very simply by typing Harden's name into the "compare to" box shown in the image below:

Steff Curry Compare

 

Once you type in Harden's name and click on it, this career comparison page is generated:

Curry-Harden Comp

This is the default comparison search, but you can easily edit it to just compare 2014-15 (or any other season(s)). Just click the red "Show/Hide Search Form" link on top of the stat tables to bring up the search form. From there, edit your search to compare "single seasons" in the yellow part of the search form. Then select 2014-15 for both players and click "get results." This will take you to this page, comparing two leading 2014-15 MVP candidates in a variety of statistical categories, from basic to advanced.

As an added bonus, if you go back to the search form, you'll notice there's room for up to 6 players in a comparison. You can go ahead and populate any players you'd like there. For instance, here's 6 leading 2014-15 MVP candidates compared:

MVP Comp

We should note to longtime fans of this tool that it is still accessible from the main Play Index page, but we've added this search to player pages as an added convenience.

Posted in Announcement, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features, HowTo, Play Index, Tips and Tricks | 1 Comment »

Batting Splits by Defensive Position

2nd July 2013

I got a couple of questions about this today, so I thought it would be valuable to highlight this feature in blog-post form.

Essentially, the question was regarding what kind of batting production a specific team has gotten from a given defensive position this season. For example, a user wanted the combined season stats for Yankees players this season, only while playing 3B.

Veteran B-R users will know that to get this information, you need to go to the team's main 2013 stats page, then mouse over the menu option marked "Batting ?", and choose "Splits". Scroll down until you find the table marked "Defensive Positions", and you'll get a list of every position along with the batting stats from players while they were in the game at that position:

Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+
as C 82 288 254 34 59 8 0 6 23 4 0 22 51 .232 .300 .335 .635 85 11 4 5 3 0 2 .265 87 82
as 1B 82 332 302 28 65 18 1 12 46 4 2 25 78 .215 .278 .401 .679 121 10 2 0 2 2 3 .248 97 74
as 2B 82 354 311 48 92 17 0 19 53 5 0 36 49 .296 .371 .534 .905 166 10 3 1 3 11 6 .297 162 148
as 3B 82 328 300 27 68 13 0 4 23 2 0 19 80 .227 .288 .310 .598 93 9 7 2 0 1 1 .296 76 64
as SS 82 323 286 27 57 11 2 2 17 11 1 23 82 .199 .266 .273 .539 78 5 5 4 5 1 3 .266 59 60
as LF 82 340 319 35 72 10 0 10 32 8 3 18 54 .226 .265 .351 .616 112 6 0 0 3 0 8 .240 79 66
as CF 82 369 334 50 99 22 6 8 33 13 6 28 71 .296 .352 .470 .822 157 5 1 5 1 1 1 .355 139 125
as RF 82 329 304 30 80 9 2 8 22 9 3 20 41 .263 .310 .385 .695 117 8 1 3 1 3 5 .281 103 83
as DH 77 327 290 37 62 6 1 14 41 3 0 34 82 .214 .303 .386 .689 112 5 3 0 0 3 2 .247 101 84
as P 5 11 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 6 .000 .000 .000 .000 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 .000 -100 -100
as PH 40 51 45 7 9 2 0 2 9 0 0 5 17 .200 .294 .378 .672 17 0 1 0 0 1 0 .269 96 112
as PH for DH 9 9 7 3 2 0 0 2 3 0 0 2 1 .286 .444 1.143 1.587 8 0 0 0 0 1 0 .000 346 272
as Infield 82 1625 1453 164 341 67 3 43 162 18 1 125 340 .235 .302 .374 .676 543 45 21 12 13 15 15 .275 98 87
as Outfield 82 1038 957 115 251 41 8 26 87 23 11 66 166 .262 .310 .403 .713 386 19 2 8 5 4 14 .292 108 92
at Def. Pos. 82 1334 1185 159 307 58 8 35 126 28 6 109 253 .259 .325 .410 .735 486 31 13 15 12 13 12 .299 115 107
at Off. Pos. 82 1329 1225 120 285 50 3 34 123 16 6 82 253 .233 .285 .362 .647 443 33 10 5 6 6 17 .266 89 72
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/2/2013.

You can even click on the red text for each position, and get a table of the individuals who contributed to those team-wide totals at the position:

Rk G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+
1 Kevin Youkilis 22 88 79 10 21 6 0 2 7 0 0 5 19 .266 .341 .418 .759 33 3 4 0 0 1 0 .328 134 106
2 Jayson Nix 28 95 86 7 23 2 0 0 7 2 0 7 22 .267 .330 .291 .620 25 1 1 1 0 0 0 .359 105 72
3 Chris Nelson 10 37 36 3 8 2 0 0 2 0 0 1 11 .222 .243 .278 .521 10 3 0 0 0 0 0 .320 80 42
4 David Adams 26 100 91 7 16 3 0 2 7 0 0 6 24 .176 .242 .275 .517 25 2 2 1 0 0 1 .215 105 41
5 Alberto Gonzalez 3 8 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 .000 .000 .000 .000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000 -100 -100
Team Total 82 328 300 27 68 13 0 4 23 2 0 19 80 .227 .288 .310 .598 93 9 7 2 0 1 1 .296 76 64
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/2/2013.

One final note -- if you want to know where the team ranks among others at the position, you can go to league splits and find the same table -- clicking the position tooltip will give you a list of every team's production from that position, which you can then sort:

Rk G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS ? TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+
1 DET 81 376 322 64 118 20 1 25 83 2 0 49 58 .366 .455 .668 1.122 215 13 4 0 1 10 0 .388 186 202
2 OAK 83 351 310 45 95 22 1 13 53 2 2 36 60 .306 .376 .510 .886 158 9 1 0 4 1 2 .340 141 140
3 TBR 83 361 322 50 91 17 2 18 46 7 2 34 78 .283 .352 .516 .867 166 8 2 0 3 3 1 .319 130 134
4 TEX 82 349 326 49 99 20 0 15 44 4 0 22 41 .304 .350 .503 .853 164 9 1 0 0 2 4 .311 130 130
5 BAL 83 380 359 53 115 38 2 6 42 6 4 15 59 .320 .349 .487 .837 175 9 1 5 0 0 3 .371 116 126
6 SEA 82 359 327 40 87 22 1 11 35 3 3 29 65 .266 .326 .440 .766 144 3 1 0 2 0 1 .300 123 107
7 BOS 84 342 318 36 79 20 1 10 36 3 2 17 81 .248 .290 .412 .702 131 8 3 1 3 0 3 .300 76 89
8 TOR 82 342 309 39 67 15 2 13 37 3 1 24 63 .217 .278 .405 .682 125 11 4 0 5 0 7 .227 85 84
9 LAA 82 331 296 39 78 14 0 4 33 1 2 26 45 .264 .320 .351 .671 104 5 1 3 5 2 2 .294 80 84
10 MIN 79 335 300 31 70 13 1 7 32 2 0 26 50 .233 .303 .353 .657 106 5 5 2 2 0 5 .257 85 79
11 CLE 82 326 298 31 62 11 0 11 28 3 1 24 83 .208 .276 .356 .632 106 7 4 0 0 1 4 .250 68 71
12 HOU 83 314 294 29 64 14 0 11 44 0 0 11 51 .218 .247 .378 .624 111 14 2 2 5 1 3 .224 84 68
13 KCR 79 311 286 25 64 13 0 7 23 1 3 18 42 .224 .277 .343 .620 98 9 4 1 2 1 1 .238 80 69
14 NYY 82 328 300 27 68 13 0 4 23 2 0 19 80 .227 .288 .310 .598 93 9 7 2 0 1 1 .296 76 64
15 CHW 79 312 287 25 64 9 1 6 27 1 1 20 52 .223 .269 .324 .593 93 6 0 0 5 3 1 .248 76 62
TOT 1226 5117 4654 583 1221 261 12 161 586 40 21 370 908 .262 .320 .427 .747 1989 125 40 16 37 25 38 .293 104 102
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/2/2013.

An alternate way of getting this would be to go through the brand-new Split Finder, recreating a similar table using the options in the form:

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 7/2/2013.

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Features, HowTo | 4 Comments »