Top Reference Web Sites for Every Baseball Fan

The Baseball Zealot’s Top Reference Web Sites for Every Baseball Fan- Part 3

This is the last of a three part series of articles where I talk about my favorite baseball websites I use for research and reference. In Part One, I hit on the top stats sites and in Part Two, I focused on prospect and player development.

In Part Three, it will be a bit of eclectic hodgepodge but a couple sites fall into the category of historical data collecting.

Baseball Almanac/Baseball LogoServer

Baseball LogoServer is exactly what it sounds like. It displays logos of pretty much every baseball team that has ever existed. We’re talking current major league teams as well as historical teams but it doesn’t stop there. Baseball LogoServer shows off the colors of teams from the Negro Leagues, Japanese leagues, most minor leagues, college conferences, even older defunct leagues like the Federal League, Players League and the Union Association.

The LogoServer is a fun trip through baseball history in graphic format. And for those interested, it has logos for other sports, too.

The Baseball LogoServer is associated with The Baseball Almanac, a website dedicated to preserving the history of the game of baseball. The Baseball Almanac probably deserves its own entry here given its breadth of historic data. The site is filled of pages of famous firsts, records, lists of all sorts and other baseball trivia. Those who are really into the history of baseball should definitely bookmark Baseball Almanac.

Hit Tracker

Make no mistake about it, the hits that Hit Tracker are talking about are Homeruns. This website is all about the dinger, tater, long ball and the four-bagger.

Hit Tracker is a online database of homeruns hit. With an interactive interface, you can find out all kinds of info about homeruns that have been hit (their info goes back to 2005) including true distance, wind speed, speed off bat, elevation angle. The site even includes a link to MLB.com’s video of the shot if you want to watch it.

Hit Tracker also has a leaderboard for non-conventional categories such as Homerun Distance, No Doubts (Homeruns that clear the fence with no problem) and Just Enoughs (those that just barely make it).

Baseball Library

Baseball Library.com is a database of player (both current and historical) biographies. I’m impressed at the number of entries in this database. Granted, the lesser known ones have smaller bios but they are there.

There are two features that make Baseball Library stand out:

Chronology: The Chronology for each player is so helpful. Essentially, it is a timeline with entries with important events in the player’s career. This includes transactional moves, great games, basically any time they made the news in a big way. There are helpful links to other players, teams and dates to further the interactive process.

Related Info: Under Related Info, Baseball Library provides links to news stories or articles about the player.

For info on individual players, Baseball Library is the first place I go.

That ends my series of Top Reference Web Sites for Every Baseball Fan.

All sites reviewed are ones that I use as often as I can. By the way, I polled the Baseball Zealot think tank on sites they used. The ones they used that I just didn’t have the time/space to write about include: Rototimes, Tango on Baseball, Fangraghs, Baseball America Online, ESPN, and CBS Sportsline.

I personally want to put a good word in for USA Today Sports. They display all the box scores on one page and I use them for that reason alone.

Here is the link to all three articles in the series.

I hope you enjoyed reading it and found it useful.

The Baseball Zealot’s Top Reference Web Sites for Every Baseball Fan- Part 2

This is the second in a three part series of the websites I find incredibly useful when researching the game of baseball. In Part One, I got to the heavy hitters but these websites are equally important. They are more focused on prospect forecasting, player development, and scouting.

Again, in no particular order:

The Baseball Cube

If I’m researching an up-and-coming prospect, The Baseball Cube is one my first stops. Yes, TBC has major league stats but to me, its strength is that I can easily find minor league and college numbers on any player.

Like other stats sites that cater to Major League baseball, TBC provides us with the same interactivity with minor league and college baseball teams. College team pages even provide quick links to players who have been drafted.

The stats are complete (they even include Spring Training numbers). In addition, the TBC has a baseball draft index that includes every baseball draft that occurred. One project that The Baseball Cube seems to have undertaken is the High School Alumni database matches players from their high school.

For updates, commentary and other related Baseball Cube matters, you can read The Baseball Cube Blog.

First Inning

First Inning bills itself as the website with “Insights on Baseball Player Development”. All players from rookie league to the major leagues fall within its scope. For each prospect and big leaguer, you get a host of statistical data from the basic stats to longitudinal trends to even batted ball charts.

For each MLB team, we are treated with a list of prospects categorized by readiness. Quite handy for those fantasy rookie drafts.

My personal favorite part of First Inning is the “Your Page” function. You can register for free then if you want to follow a player, his link will be on your page in First Inning. This is particularly useful for those minor leaguers you want to keep track of.

Baseball Prospectus

For everyone, Baseball Prospectus provides articles with excellent analysis not to mention their podcast, Baseball Prospectus Radio if you like your analysis in audio format.

Baseball Prospectus Online is the companion website to the popular Baseball Prospectus annual publication. It isn’t strictly dedicated to fantasy baseball or news reporting, but somewhere in between with a strong slant on statistical analysis. Stats like VORP, EqA, and PECOTA are defined and well-explained. Some of the best baseball writing you’ll find anywhere on the web or in print can be found here. I would rank Will Carroll as my favorite. His analysis of baseball injuries and the effects of steroids is the best in the business. Full access to all the Baseball Prospectus online content costs $39.95/year. Unlike all other pay sites, this one is full worth the money spent. In fact, it is the only web site that I personally pay money to read. It’s that good, whether you’re fantasy junkie or news hound, there’s a lot of worthwhile stuff to be found here.

Thanks to Shawn Lee who contributed to this article. When I informed him of my idea for this series, he rattled off a bunch of websites he uses… some I’ve never heard of. Maybe I’ll get HIM to write an update to this article someday.

Part 3, which will be an fun, eclectic assortment of websites, is forthcoming.

The Baseball Zealot’s Top Reference Web Sites for Every Baseball Fan- Part 1

Back when I became a hard core baseball fan, the one way to get access to data was to wait for the local newspaper to print them. For me it was Tuesday for the NL stats and Wednesday for the AL. Boy, I couldn’t wait to open the sports page on those days.

Obviously, things have changed with the advent of the Internet. Now we have any kind of data we want with a few mouse-clicks.

With that, I decided to write a series of posts detailing my favorite reference web sites I use when I want baseball stats, data or any sort of reference information.

A few points before we get started:

Keep in mind that I will be discussing websites which have a focus on stats, data or referential information. Not blogs, team fansites, or general baseball websites.
These sites are not necessarily listed in any order of preference.
I realize that there are the popular ones out there (I’m talking about the big media ones). I’m trying not to focus on them since you probably know about them (chances are you probably know the ones listed too).

In Part 1, I’m going to focus primarily on those web sites that focus primarily on stats. Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will discuss minor league and fantasy league sites.

Well, here goes:

Retrosheet

Any talk of baseball stats reference web sites begins with Retrosheet.org. Not only is it useful as an end user site but many sites use the data from it as a back end.

The mission of Retrosheet is threefold:

First is the collection of the game accounts… The second activity is the translation of these accounts to a unified, modern system which is essential since there are an extraordinary variety of scoring systems which have been used. The final activity is the entry of the translated accounts into the computer.

The end result is a compilation of boxscores and game accounts which are accessible by browser or downloadable in database form.

The philosophy behind Retrosheet.org is refreshing if unusual in this day and age.

The ultimate objective of Retrosheet is to make this basic play by play

information publicly available for all interested researchers.

Graphically, there’s nothing fancy about Retrosheet. No clickable maps or glowing images. Just honest to goodness baseball data. Do make the effort to check out their Noteworthy Events page, though. It’s very interesting.

We managed to have Mark Pankin from Retrosheet on our podcast earlier this year. It’s a very interesting show if you’re interested in the inner workings of Retrosheet.org

Baseball Reference

I honestly don’t know what I’d do without Baseball Reference. When I doing my APBA replay of the 1979 season B-R.com was indispensable. This baseball stats site has it all. In addition to being organized well, it is very interactive.

Stats are updated daily and are organized by league, team, and player. Historical stats from the beginning of organized baseball can be viewed as well as leaderboards for every stat. We can also view postseason stats, manager records, and awards.

Baseball Award has recently unveiled Play Index which can help determine streaks, events, and splits. Caveat: Some of more intense searches for Play Index require a paid subscription.

One of my favorite blogs is Baseball Reference’s Stat of the Day. A dedicated cadre of stat freaks who play around with B-R’s Play Index post interesting stat anomalies.

Founder Sean Forman was kind enough to come on Baseball Zealot Radio to talk to us about Baseball Reference in January 2007.

Day by Day Database

David Pinto who keeps us all up to date on baseball news on Baseball Musings also has a little gem almost hidden away called Day by Day Database. This database is quite handy for:

viewing batting and pitching logs
comparing players stats over a given time
viewing batting, pitching and team splits over a given time
viewing batting and pitching streaks

Again, nothing fancy here but the interface is simple if you know what data you want. As is true for most event databases like this, the data goes back to 1957.

I find this most handy for splits data. With one search, I can find out stats on twelve different splits on Albert Pujols for the month of May 2007. Sometimes, you just gotta know.

MLB.com’s Sortable Player Stats

Sometimes the best place to get stats is the horse’s mouth. MLB.com’s Sortable Player Stats database is run on a robust engine and is very customizable.

Yes, it’s sortable on all stats and yes, you can filter by pretty much anything. It covers splits on all levels. However, the one thing that this database does that I haven’t seen elsewhere is the Milestone Tracker. This convenient little tool allows you to see which milestones (both who’s passing who and passing those all-important numbers) will be met in the coming future or have been achieved recently.

New for the MLB.com Sortable Player Stats: It now covers Winter League stats and Arizona Fall League stats.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will be highlighting websites that focus on minor leagues and fantasy baseball.