Sports Reference Blog

When we launched our new site three months ago, one of the casualties was the neutralized stats tables we printed on player pages. Those tables were originally built using code that had grown increasingly unwieldy and were not something we'd be able to adequately maintain moving forward. That said, we're happy to announce that we have rebuilt these tables and added new features, as well.

Read the rest of this entry

Exciting news for basketball fans; with the 2017 WNBA season underway, the WNBA section of our site is also up-and-running for this season. If you want to keep up with the Los Angeles Sparks' attempt to defend their title or check on how Elena Della Donne is doing in Washington, just go to the WNBA section of Basketball-Reference (there's a link on every page in the footer).

We'll be updating the site weekly on Mondays. Also statheads should note that, in addition to the standard box score numbers, we also have advanced stats, including Offensive/Defensive Rating, Win Shares, PER, and more.

We're happy to announce that we have added box scores for every Stanley Cup Playoff game in NHL history (back to 1918) to Hockey Reference. With this addition, we've also been able to build game logs to player pages covering their entire postseason career. This has also allowed us to create cumulative box scores for every playoff series in history (for example, the 1975 Stanley Cup Final)

Read the rest of this entry

We have rolled out an update to our search function on Baseball Reference, Basketball Reference, Pro Football Reference and Hockey Reference. If you type "random" or "zz" into our search forms on those sites, you will be taken to a random page. We have also added a random page tool to the frivolities menus on those four sites (Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey).

Read the rest of this entry

With the NFL Draft kicking off Thursday night, now might be a good time to point out all the draft resources we have available at Pro Football Reference. You can check out:

Read the rest of this entry

While the NBA Playoffs, MLB season, and Stanley Cup Playoffs may be in full swing, football never sleeps. This weekend, the country's most popular sport will take center stage as the NFL Draft descends on Philadelphia.

Last year's draft showed how a smart team can use the draft to turn their fortunes around at warp speed, as the Dallas Cowboys, who went 4-12 in 2015, took Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott with two of their first five picks and then watched as that duo led the team to a 13-3 record and the #1 seed in the NFC. While it may be too much to ask for a team to replicate the feat of finding two franchise-changing, All-Pro skill players in the same draft, Dallas' experience shows that it's not impossible.

Are any teams out there poised to pull off the same feat as Dallas and go from their division's cellar to its throne by shrewd drafting? Is there another Dak Prescott out there, waiting for the right team? Let's dig into those questions and more, with our preview of the 2017 NFL Draft. Read the rest of this entry

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

After an unusually eventful final week of the season that saw Moe Harkless going to great lengths to get paid, featured thrilling closing arguments from all four NBA MVP candidates in what may be the closest race in history, and ended with Dion Waiters and the Miami Heat falling painfully short in their late push for a playoff spot, the field is set for the 2017 NBA Playoffs.

The question that has loomed over the NBA all season is whether any team had the quality to challenge the Golden State Warriors or Cleveland Cavaliers, or if this year would be one long preamble to a third showdown between those teams. While we won't know the answer with certainty until June, there's plenty of reasons to expect that the playoffs won't be a cake-walk for the either the defending champs or their rivals in the East Bay. In fact, in Cleveland's case, by both raw win-loss record and more advanced stats like Simple Rating System or Net Rating, they haven't even been the best team in the East this year.

Still, the playoffs are a different animal from the regular season, and before those teams can think about replaying the 2016 NBA Finals, they have to win their first round matchups, no sure thing given that both the Warriors and Cavaliers are facing a little uncertainty at the moment. For the former, they're tasked with re-integrating Kevin Durant into their offense after finding a major groove in his absence. For the latter, the problems are more severe: in the second half of the season, only the Minnesota Timberwolves and Los Angeles Lakers have been worse on defense than the defending champs.

For Warriors and Cavs fans, as well as those cheering on the Boston Celtics and San Antonio Spurs, a loss in the first round would be a devastating outcome for a season that seemed so promising. Fortunately, this kind of thing rarely happens. Since 2002-03, the year that the NBA changed to its current playoff format with a Best of Seven series in the first round, only four top-two-seeds out of fifty-six have lost in round one.

Today, we're going to take a look at what went wrong for those teams, and what went right for the underdogs who managed to pull off the unthinkable. Read the rest of this entry

With playoffs season upon us, we wanted to point out our 2017 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs section. While it's mostly a shell right now, it will be a good bookmark for info as the playoffs get going. You can find a schedule & results for every game, stats for every skater, goalie & team, as well as leaderboards.

Read the rest of this entry

We're just a couple of weeks away from the most glorious period of the annual sports calendar, the NBA Playoffs. However, there's still one huge piece of unfinished business to settle before we get there: the race for NBA MVP. This year's race is going down to the wire as LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden all remain in contention with just a few games remaining on the NBA schedule.

In the big picture, very little has changed since the last time we checked in on the race: Russell Westbrook is still averaging a triple-double, James Harden is still combining efficiency, volume, and playmaking to an unprecedented extent, LeBron James is still looking like Magic Johnson 2.0, and Kawhi Leonard remains the best two-way player in the league while dominating the ball and shouldering the offensive load in a way that no Spurs player has since Gregg Popovich took over as head coach. Read the rest of this entry