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Archive for the 'Awards' Category

Reliever of the Month Award Added For Baseball-Reference

22nd January 2020

For April 2017, MLB awarded Reliever of the Month honors to Greg Holland (NL) and Tommy Kahnle (AL) and has kept up this award through the 2019 season. With 3 years of the award in the books, we have added it to Baseball-Reference's repertoire of awards history. This will appear in the Leaderboards, Awards and Honors section of player pages as Monthly Awards. Here's a link to Edwin Diaz, who currently leads with 5 Reliever of the Month honors.

Check out the full list of Reliever of the Month recipients at Baseball-Reference.com. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form or Baseball Reference's official Twitter account. Thanks for following us!

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Baseball-Reference.com, Data, Trivia | 2 Comments »

Introducing the PFR HOF Monitor

19th December 2019

Baseball-Reference tracks various Hall of Fame predictor statistics such as Bill James' Hall of Fame Monitor and Jay Jaffe's WAR Score System. Basketball Reference also has a Hall of Fame Probability formula that we display on player pages and gives people a brief glance at where players stand based on their statistical case.

With the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2020 being debated this winter, we figured it was time to work up a Hall of Fame predicting formula for the NFL. We have devised a new HOF Monitor metric that we are deploying for Pro Football Reference beginning today! Here's a link to the quarterback HOF Monitor page, which also includes links to the other positions. Links to these tables will also appear under the Leaderboards and Awards section of player pages.

The base formula uses weighted Approximate Value (which is 100% of the player's peak year, 95% of their second-best year, 90% of their third-best, and so on) as a starting point. Bonuses are added for Pro Football Hall of Fame All-Decade selections, MVP awards, Defensive Player of the Year awards, first-team AP All-Pro selections, Super Bowls/titles, and Pro Bowls, in descending weights.

In addition, bonuses are added if a player has earned first-team All-Pro in over 33% of their seasons. This reflects the reputation boost afforded to players who led the league in short careers like Gale Sayers and Terrell Davis. For players not yet inducted, small bonuses are also added for semi-finalist and finalist appearances on previous HOF ballots, since that indicates that they've already been seriously considered.

On top of the base formula, there are statistical bonuses given depending on the position. For quarterbacks, wide receivers and tight ends there are different thresholds depending on the era they played in so as to narrow the gap between the depressed passing stats before 1980 and the explosion after that. For the full methodology, check out our PFR HOF Monitor explainer page here.

Similar to JAWS, a score of 100 is around the average modern-era HOF inductee for each position. All eligible players with a score over 120 got into the Hall of Fame fairly quickly, save for a few exceptions such as Willie Wood. A score of 150 would be a first ballot lock (sole exception of Alan Page who had to wait a year).

A score of 80 or above means they're a good candidate to eventually get in, or they’re the highest-profile borderline candidates. The absolute lowest score for HOF inductees would be 40, although most of these lower scoring Hall of Famers are courtesy of senior committee selections.

To get a sense of what absolute HOF locks look like in this system, here's a look at the highest HOFm scores:

Player Pos HOFm
Jerry Rice WR 311.81
Peyton Manning QB 258.00
Reggie White DE 238.23
Tom Brady QB 225.94
Lawrence Taylor OLB 215.68
Walter Payton RB 214.91
Bruce Smith DE 211.35
Ray Lewis ILB 197.85
Tony Gonzalez TE 196.33
Jim Brown RB 190.29

As for the Centennial Class of 2020, here's how the HOF Monitor judged the modern-era semifinalists on the ballot, with this year's inductees marked with an asterisk:

Player Pos HOFm
Alan Faneca G 141.93
Steve Hutchinson* G 118.53
Zach Thomas ILB 112.20
Reggie Wayne WR 107.01
Torry Holt WR 104.27
Isaac Bruce* WR 99.81
Edgerrin James* RB 99.58
Richard Seymour DE 96.65
Troy Polamalu* DB 95.73
Patrick Willis ILB 89.60
Leroy Butler DB 89.28
Steve Atwater* DB 85.13
Tony Boselli T 84.83
Ronde Barber DB 83.58
Hines Ward WR 72.90
John Lynch DB 71.30
Bryant Young DT 65.43
Ricky Watters RB 64.77
Darren Woodson DB 60.53
Sam Mills ILB 57.33
Simeon Rice DE 53.35
Clay Matthews OLB 52.30
Fred Taylor RB 52.13
Carl Banks OLB 51.50
Steve Tasker WR/ST 14.88

We want to stress that this is especially meant to judge a player's chances of getting into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and not necessarily for "who is the best middle linebacker" debates. Many analysts agree that championships won reveal little to nothing about a player's individual skill, but it's certainly a factor that's taken into consideration by Hall of Fame voters. With that caveat out of the way, we're eager to hear feedback on the formula. Particularly, if you're interested in testing out your own tweaks, feel free to reach out to us via our feedback form and we can share the player data used to test out this system.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Features, General, Hall of Fame, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 2 Comments »

Conference Awards Added to College Basketball Reference

24th April 2019

If you've visited the Awards Page on our College Basketball site recently, you've probably noticed a lot of new awards listed.

This is because we've added a full history of conference awards for the Power 5 Conferences (plus the Big East) and also 2018-19 conference awards for every other conference.

Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Awards, CBB at Sports Reference, Data, Features | 1 Comment »

High School Hoops All-Americans Added Back to 1949

14th February 2019

In college basketball the talent spread across teams has always been very disparate. This makes recruiting arguably the most important aspect of college basketball (ahead of even coaching). For the more modern era of the game, we have compiled Recruiting Services Consensus Index Rankings back to 1998. That is a compilation of the top 100 recruits in any given class.

But aside from noting McDonald's All-Americans, we had little to no info on the top recruits from older seasons. So we're happy to announce that we've now compiled information on High School Basketball All-Americans all the way back to 1949!

Read the rest of this entry

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, Data, History | Comments Off on High School Hoops All-Americans Added Back to 1949

RSCI Rankings Added to CBB-Reference

17th September 2018

On Basketball-Reference, we have a feature that shows players' peak rankings in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index (RSCI) back to the high school class of 1998. We have now gone ahead and added this feature to our College Basketball Reference site as well. This will be available in a yearly format in the Awards section, and they will also appear where applicable on player pages under their bio section. Team pages will display RSCI rankings in the roster section so it's easier to see which teams had more highly-touted prospects to work with.

To recap, the RSCI service is based on gathering several national recruiting lists and calculating a consensus ranking from there. The rankings found on Basketball-Reference and College Basketball Reference are the final rankings for each year. If you want more information on how the process works, as well as additional data like in-season rankings (fall, pre-summer, etc.), you can refer to RSCIhoops.com.

If you have any questions or suggestions concerning our site's features, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, Data, Features | Comments Off on RSCI Rankings Added to CBB-Reference

NFL Player of the Week Leaderboard Added to Pro Football Reference

12th February 2018

To enhance our coverage of NFL Players of the Week, we have also added an NFL Player of the Week leaderboard. As you can see, Tom Brady is the all-time leader in this honor, which dates back to 1984.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Data, Features, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on NFL Player of the Week Leaderboard Added to Pro Football Reference

Yearly Top 100 Players Added to Pro Football Reference

25th August 2017

We have added a new section to the Awards page at Pro Football Reference. We're happy to announce we have added the NFL Network's yearly list of the Top 100 NFL Players, as voted by their fellow players every offseason. These rankings go back to 2011, and feature the statistics each of the players went on to post that season. These rankings can also be found in the Awards section of player pages. We hope you enjoy this addition and please let us know if you have any questions.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Data, Features, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 4 Comments »

New Search Criteria Added to Basketball Reference Player Season Finder

1st August 2017

We have added a few new search options to the Basketball Reference Player Season Finder

These additions can be found in the "Search Award/Honor" dropdown on the search form. Previously, you could run searches for major award winners and All-NBA or All-Rookie players. We've now added the ability to search for All-Defensive Players. Additionally, rather than searching for just First or Second team players separately, you can can now search for both First and Second team in the same search. Here are a few examples of new searches you can run:

---Worst Defensive BPM by a First-Team All Defense Player

---Fewest Win Shares by an All-Rookie player (1st or 2nd team)

---Youngest players to make an All-NBA team

We hope you enjoy these additions. Please let us know if you have any questions

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Basketball-Reference.com, Data, Features, History, Play Index, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Is This the Best NBA MVP Race Ever? A Statistical Inquiry

10th April 2017

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

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Basketball-Reference.com | 5 Comments »

NCAA Men’s Basketball All-Tournament Teams Added

31st March 2017

Since we now have most players who have participated in the NCAA Tournament in our database, we thought it would be good to add All-Tournament teams to College Basketball Reference. So we've added these teams to our college basketball Awards section. This team was originally named in 1940 (the 2nd NCAA Tournament), and was then discontinued for 1941-51. It has been awarded every year since 1952. We've included tournament scoring stats for each player awarded, as well as other stats when fully available. Jerry Chambers's 35.8 PPG in the 1966 tournament for Utah represents the highest scoring average for an all-tournament selection, while Jim Thomas's 4.6 PPG for 1981 Champs Indiana represents the lowest. This list complements our previously existing list of NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Players.

We hope you enjoy this addition. And keep an eye out for NCAA Tournament All-Regional teams in the future.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, CBB at Sports Reference, Data, Features | 1 Comment »