OK, folks, as spring training approaches, it’s time to familiarize yourself with some of the lesser-known things you can do with Baseball-Reference.com.
1. Batting, Pitching, and Fielding Encyclopedias
These pages are underutilized but contain a ton of useful and easily-accessible information.
Batting Encyclopedia, Pitching Encyclopedia, Fielding Encyclopedia
Above all else, these pages allow you to quickly assess different eras in baseball history. You can see, for example, that run scoring has really fallen off in the last few years and has dropped to late-1980s levels. Other things you can quickly determine, for example:
- Walks have remained largely constant for 100 years
- Strikeouts have increased steadily over time and show no signs of slowing down
- Fielding errors have been decreasing for over 100 years and are now at a third of their level from the early 1900s
- Stolen base attempts were the highest in the 1970s and 1980s and are still relatively high even today
There are many, many other useful things in these pages and looking at them can really help you understand how today’s game is similar to and different from previous periods.
2. The “the” search feature
Did you know that if you precede any search in the search box with “the”, the search returns the top result for that search? For example, “the Hank” returns Hank Aaron, as does “the Aaron”, “the hammer”, “the Henry”, “the h a” and numerous other searches.
This feature can be a fun diversion. Check out who comes up for “the Sun” and “the Moon“, or “the Earth“, “the Wind“, and “the Fire“.
It can also be a time-saver, though. Tired of trying to get to Ichiro’s page but being offered Pablo Sandoval (because of his nickname Fat Ichiro) and numerous other NPB players with the same first name? Type in “the Ichiro” and go straight to Ichiro Suzuki. Or get yourself to Albert Pujols‘ page with “the Alb”, “the pu”, “the ph” (for Phat Albert), or even “the p”, as Pujols’ page is the most popular of any player with the first or last initial P.
3. Find transactions on a particular date
OK, let’s face it. We all want to see what’s happened on the trade deadline day each year. Here are all the transactions on July 31 each year. Now look up today. Now look up your birthday.
4. The “random” feature
If you go to this page, it automatically gives you a random page within the database. It might be a player, a manager, a team, a year, a leader board, or something else. This is obviously just for fun, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself sucked in for a few (dozen) minutes. You might want to bookmark that one.
5. The milestones page
Baseball-Reference.com has conveniently put together a set of milestones pages. Here’s the page for career hits. Although we know that milestones can often be overrated, it’s pretty neat to keep tabs on where all the players are in their careers. You can get updates on batters, pitchers, and fielders in a number of different categories.
