The Awesome Awesomeness of Being Awesome
It's a new season, so we are blessed with a plethora of new stats at Baseball Reference. They are:
- The addition of a new season -- 1956 -- to the game-by-game data. Retrosheet just a few months ago added that to their list, so box scores, gamelogs, splits and more specialized stats are now available for the last 52 seasons. Here's Ted Williams' 1956 season. And Mickey Mantle's monster year.
- The addition of win probability stats to the box scores. This helps B-R compete a bit with Fangraphs, whose charts depicting the moment-to-moment roller coaster of any given game are a must-see throughout the season. Here's the Mother's Day Miracle, which shows that when the Sox opened the ninth down 5-0, they had less than a half-percent chance of winning. And when Julio Lugo stepped to the plate with two outs, the bases loaded and the score 5-4, there was still only a 29 percent chance of victory. The box scores also include the Top 5 plays by increase (or decrease) in Win Probability Added, and the pitchers' WPA and Leverage Index in their box score lines.
- Also added to box scores is pitchers' strike data (Contact-Swinging-Looking), and batted-ball data (GB-FB-LD-?). Both can be found with the more traditional pitching line statistics.
Something to waste a few hours with this weekend.


That header pretty much covers it!
Posted by: YF | Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 02:08 PM
My God, it's full of stats!
Posted by: attackgerbil | Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 02:32 PM
And thusly I enter the monolith that is B-R. See you on the other side. Or in about a month.
Posted by: attackgerbil | Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 02:35 PM
attackgerbil, well-(semi-)quoted.
Posted by: Devine | Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 02:43 PM
Well, who didn't hear this the moment they found baseball-reference?
Posted by: attackgerbil | Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 04:41 PM
If the Sox hadn't won the Mother day miracle game, Cleveland would've owned the best record and had home field advantage in the ALCS. Which could've meant the difference between winning and losing. The orioles came through for us at big moments last year.
Posted by: Pat (SF) | Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 07:57 PM
ZR would be nice on the defensive statistics.
Posted by: j | Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 08:21 PM
No ZR yet, but they have added WP and SB/CS data for catchers. Something I forgot to mention above.
Posted by: Paul SF | Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 09:15 PM