Baseball-Reference.com's Redesign

[alkeiper]

http://www.baseball-reference.com/

There's a tutorial video available via the front page. There's some fun new stuff here, the big one being an ability to SORT. For example, check out the franchise index of the Oakland Athletics.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/OAK/

Click on playoffs, it'll put the World Series winners up top. See which team scored the most runs (1932), which one allowed the most runs (1936). The 1992 A's had the oldest pitching staff, the 1915 A's had the youngest. Which team used the least pitchers? And that's all without leaving the page.

Player pages now have subtotals for each franchise, and you can sort their statistics as well. Minor league stats are available, and independent statistics for the first time.

One more nice thing about this. On a player's page, you can click and sum up their totals over a period of time. So you can quickly sum up the prime years of a player like Edgar Martinez.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/martied01.shtml#1995-2001-sum:batting_standard

Or Tim Raines.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/raineti01.shtml#1981-1987-sum:batting_standard

 

[KanadianKrusty]

Baseball-Reference is too damn efficient for it's own good, and possibly one of the best term-paper-procrastinating tools on the web. But then again who knows when those Expos box scores from June 1993 might come in handy?

 

[alkeiper]

Here's something else that's really cool. Baserunning data. Finally stolen base information is split between bases. So take a look at Derek Jeter a moment, scroll down to baserunning and misc. stats.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jeterde01-bat.shtml

Stolen base pct: 79%
Steals of 2nd: 209/62 (77%)
Steals of 3rd: 64/12 (84%)
Steals of home: 2/1 (67%)

Those three attempts I'm guessing were parts of double steals or something of that nature. I picked Jeter because he's reputed to be a great runner when it comes to steals of third. Looking over the league averages, second base was stolen at an average of 73%. Third base at 76%. It seems odd to me that third is stolen more successfully, but I suspect selection bias is at work (bad runners are less likely to attempt that steal). I bash Jeter enough, so it's only fair to record that he is a legitimately good percentage basestealer.

One other thing I note here, stolen base opportunities. That is, times a runner was on base with the next base open. I'm not diving into the data, but that seems like an interesting thing to compare Henderson, Raines, Coleman, etc. on.

 

[Bored]

One other thing I note here, stolen base opportunities. That is, times a runner was on base with the next base open. I'm not diving into the data, but that seems like an interesting thing to compare Henderson, Raines, Coleman, etc. on.

Checking RICKEY~'s 1982 season, he attempted to steal 172 out of 224 stolen base opportunities so he was running 76% of the time which is nuts. For Vince Coleman's 1985 season (110 steals) he was running 64% of the time. Tim Raines' 1981 season (71 steals in 88 games) he was running 69% of the time.

Edit: Just for perspective, last year's MLB stolen base leader Willy Taveras was running 38% of the time.

 

[alkeiper]

If you go to the league pages, you can get baserunning data for the league as a whole. Let's take a historical look at the National League.

2008: 5.5%
1998: 6.3%
1988: 9.6%
1978: 8.5%
1968: 5.6%
1958: 3.6%

And that's as far as the data will go. Really interesting to see how slow the Golden Era of baseball really was. No wonder football grabbed the nation.

 

[Vitamin X]

Excuse my baseball ignorance, but what is usually referred to as the "Golden Era" of baseball?

 

[alkeiper]

Excuse my baseball ignorance, but what is usually referred to as the "Golden Era" of baseball?

Usually whatever era you grew up in. In this case it's derisively towards those who worship the era when New York City dominated baseball and it was a wonderful game, if you lived in New York City. It was bullocks to the rest.

 

[Vitamin X]

So what are we talking here, the 30's and 40's?