Sports Reference Blog

Exciting news from your friends at Stathead! We've rolled out a new set of filters to the Season Finders on all of our sports. These filters allow you to explore the history of the draft in some exciting new ways! Read the rest of this entry

Sports Reference LLC has acquired the online baseball-themed trivia game, Immaculate Grid. 

This unique opportunity and acquisition for Sports Reference is the company’s first venture into expanding its websites to have playable content. With over one million users a day, Baseball Reference hopes to drive new traffic to the game, and vice versa. 

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Thanks to the research of Ken Pullis, Pro Football Reference has added game-by-game coverage of player fumbles for the 1989 season. For instance, you can now see which games all of Randall Cunningham's career-high 17 fumbles occurred in in the 1989 season via his 1989 gamelogs.

Last fall Pro Football Reference added a suite of new punting statistics going back to 1976. We have recently extended many of these statistics back to the 1970 merger thanks to the work of Pete Palmer and Ken Pullis.

This means that we now have coverage for return yards against, net punting yards, net yards per punt, touchbacks and touchback% for all punters back to 1970. Punts inside the 20 coverage, however, still only extends back t0 1976. Bobby Walden's page is a good example of the variable statistical coverage for punters since he punted from 1964 to 1977. You'll notice 1976 and 1977 have the broadest statistical coverage but that 1970-75 is now nearly on par with 1976 and beyond. Pre-merger punting stats, however, remain limited to punts, punt yards, long punts, etc.

Thanks to the work of researcher and former NFL official scorer Pete Palmer and fellow research Ken Pullis, Pro Football Reference has made slight fixes to 150 player single-game passing, rushing or receiving totals in the 1960s. For NFL games, these were generally changes that we made after the fact and impacted some single-game totals for teammates. Most of the fixes were in the AFL from 1960-1965. No team or season NFL statistics were changed.

The Hockey Season Finder just got a massive upgrade.

We merged the Advanced Stats Finders into the Player and Team Season Finders. Now you can combine your traditional stats and advanced stats. For example:

• Dustin Brown of the 2007-08 Kings had the most hits (311) among 30-goal scorers since 2007-08.
• Justin Williams of the 2018-19 Hurricanes had the highest expected +/- (+24.8) among players with a negative actual +/- (-4) since 2014-15.

We added a bunch of new stats while we were at it! For example:

• Expected Goals: Since 2014-15, MacKenzie Weegar had the highest single-season xGF (Expected Goals For, or expected goals for the team while the player was on the ice at even strength) with 88.8. Cam Fowler of the 2022-23 Ducks had the highest xGA (Expected Goals Against, or expected goals against the team in the same situations) with 85.3. The single season leader in E+/- (Expected Plus-Minus) is Charlie McAvoy’s +29.6 for the 2021-22 Bruins.
• Scoring Chances: With scoring chances, you can see which player’s teams generated (or conceded) the most scoring chances when they were on the ice (Erik Karlsson’s 884 last year are the highest created since 2014-15). You can also see which player individually contributed the most scoring chances (Timo Meier barely edged Auston Matthews for the NHL lead last season).
• High Danger Scoring Chances: Over the last three seasons, Auston Matthews generated the most individual high-danger scoring chances with 187. We can also see that last season, the Sabres conceded 282 high-danger scoring chances when Owen Power was on the ice, the most in the league.

We hope that you enjoy these updates to the Hockey Season Finder. If you're not subscribed to Stathead Hockey, now is a great time to try it out (and get your first month free!).

In April, we launched the brand new Hockey Versus Finder. May brought us the new Basketball Versus Finder. Now that it’s June, we have yet another big launch. The Versus Finder is here for Football.

The Versus Finder is your one-stop shop for any comparisons or matchups. Want to compare a current player to an all-timer? Check out the Versus Finder. Want to see how two quarterbacks perform in their games against each other? Once again, the Versus Finder. Want to see how a star player performs against his upcoming opponent? You want to fire up the Versus Finder. Want to see the history of matchups between two teams? Find it in the Versus Finder. Want to compare historical dynasties to see how their stats were similar? You’ve got it—the Versus Finder. 

The Versus Finder is a “next generation” version of our popular Player Comparison Finder. We’ve listened to user feedback and built what we hope is the tool of your dreams. What’s different? A whole lot is:

- A visual summary: The Versus Finder has a lot of information available. But if you only want a quick visual summary, we have you covered. In the graphic above, you’ll see overall players stats, head-to-head records (in the regular season and playoffs), and more.

- Awards: Yes, the visual summary includes more than stats. Compare the number of championships and Pro Bowl appearances as well as other honors such as MVP and AP Defensive Player of the Year. This is particularly handy when searching for two players from positions with limited stats.

- More stats: In addition to all the stats you expect from Stathead, we’ve added Advanced Stats for modern players (since 2018). For example, when you search for Patrick Mahomes vs. Jalen Hurts you’ll see standard Passing and Rushing stats, but also tables for Air Yards, Accuracy, Pressure, Play Types, Advanced Rushing, and even Snap Counts.

- Game Logs: In addition to seeing players’ records each other, we’ll show their game logs right in the Versus Finder.

- Team vs. Team: A popular request, you can now compare the stats for teams as well as see their head to head records and game logs.

- Team vs. Player: Sometimes a player can absolutely dominate an opponent. The new Player vs. Team view can show you year-by-year stats and game logs. You can also use this to see your QB’s history against his upcoming opponent. 

What do you think? We'd love to hear from you! If you've used the Versus Finder, we'd really appreciate it if you took a few minutes to fill out this survey so we can make sure it's meeting your needs.

Stathead is your all-access pass to the Sports Reference websites you already know and love. Our array of discovery tools will let you dive deeper into the sports you love. Plus, you can browse the Reference sites ad-free with a Stathead subscription. If you've never used Stathead before, you can try it for free for a month before committing. Try it today!

We've added Plus/Minus as a statistical filter to the Basketball Game, Streak, and Span Finders. Our Plus/Minus coverage dates back to 1996-97 in the NBA and 2018 in the WNBA.

In the Game Finder, you can now find:

• Luc Mbah a Moute recorded a +57 on November 22, 2017. It's the highest single-game NBA Plus/Minus total in our NBA database.
• Kaela Davis' +27 on May 20, 2018 was the best single-game Plus/Minus in our WNBA database.

In the Streak Finder, you can now find:

• Nikola Jokić's streak of 4 games with a Plus/Minus of at least 20 was the longest streak in the NBA this season.
• A'ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart both had streaks of four games with a Plus/Minus of at least 20, the longest such streaks in our WNBA database.

In the Span Finder, you can now find:

• Nikola Jokić has the best 5-game span Plus/Minus totals of both the regular season (+116) and playoffs (+79) this season.
• In 2019, Elena Delle Donne had a ten-game span with a Plus/Minus of +176, the best span in our WNBA database.

We hope you enjoy combining Plus/Minus searches with all of the other filter options in our Game, Streak, and Season Finders!

Not a Stathead subscriber? It's your all-access ticket to the Basketball Reference database. Plans start at just $8 per month with a one month free trial. Learn more at Stathead.com.

We've just launched a very exciting new tool on Stathead Basketball! It's called the Versus Finder and it's the ultimate way to compare player and team stats. Here's everything you need to know about it! Read the rest of this entry

Basketball-Reference has edited its box score for the Western Division Round Robin Playoff game between the Rochester Royals and Fort Wayne Pistons on March 21, 1954. In addition to adding newly discovered assists for all players in the game, we have edited our previous total of seven assists for Cal Christensen to 10 assists, giving him a 'new' triple-double. We'll explain what we mean by that a bit below. Read the rest of this entry