Baseball Reference Explained

Baseball Reference is a baseball statistics database maintained by Sports Reference. The site provides career statistics for Major League Baseball (MLB) players and teams as well as records, MLB draft history, and sabermetrics.

History

Founder Sean Forman began developing the website while working on his Ph.D. dissertation in applied math and computational science at the University of Iowa. While writing his dissertation, he had also been writing articles on and blogging about sabermetrics. Forman's database was originally built from the Total Baseball series of baseball encyclopedias.^[2]

The website went online in April 2000, after first being launched in February 2000 as part of the website for the Big Bad Baseball Annual. It was originally built as a web interface to the Lahman Baseball Database, though it now employs a variety of data sources.

In 2004, Forman founded Sports Reference. Sports Reference is a website that came out of the Baseball Reference website. The company was incorporated as Sports Reference, LLC in 2007.^[3] In 2006, Forman left his job as a math professor at Saint Joseph's University to focus on Baseball Reference full-time.

In February 2009, Fantasy Sports Ventures took a minority stake in Sports Reference, for a "low seven-figure sum".^[4]

In late April 2021, the site changed a number of identifying names, "discontinuing the use of nicknames that are racially or ethnically influenced" and "names based upon a player's disability", such as Chief Bender and Dummy Hoy, who are now listed as Charles Bender and Billy Hoy, respectively.^[5]

Features

Statistics

The site has season, career, and minor league records (when available, back to) for everyone who has played Major League Baseball, year-by-year team pages, all final league standings, all postseason numbers, voting results for all historic awards such as the Cy Young Award and MVP, head-to-head batter vs. pitcher career totals, individual statistical leaders for each season and all-time, managers' career records, the full results of all MLB player drafts, Negro leagues statistics (Baseball Reference added Negro League statistics to its website in 2021), a baseball encyclopedia (the Bullpen),^[6] and box scores and game logs from every MLB game back to, among other features.

To compare ballplayers to one-another it offers "Black Ink" and "Gray Ink" tests, which tally a player's dominance and overall productivity against his peers. In 2012, it began to offer Jay Jaffe's Jaffe Wins Above Replacement Score (JAWS) statistic for comparing players of different eras against each other by weighing their performance in the prime as well as their entire career.^[7]

Baseball Reference began including its version of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) in 2010.^[8] Its version determining a player's value differs slightly from other baseball statistics websites, including FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus.^{[9] [10]}

Bullpen

Baseball Reference has its own baseball encyclopedia, a wiki called "Baseball Reference Bullpen", which can be edited by anyone and is modeled after Wikipedia. the Bullpen contains more than 123,000 articles.

Easter eggs and other humor

There are a number of what the website calls "Frivolities."^[11] Examples include:

• The Oracle of Baseball, which is no longer active on the website,^[12] linked any two players by common teammates in the way the pop culture website "Oracle of Bacon" does.
• A page devoted to Keith Hernandez's mustache,^[13] which is the only "fictional" page on Baseball Reference.^[14]
• The site made "Tungsten Arm O'Doyle", an internet meme associated with Shohei Ohtani, a redirect to Ohtani's page.^[15]
• Although the standard player page notes a given player's favored batting and throwing arms, Paul O'Neill's page adds his kicking leg and a link to a video of the 1989 game when he kicked the ball from the outfield to first base.^[16] Likewise, the page for Jim Abbott (who was born without a right hand) adds "Fields: Left as well" in addition to him batting and throwing left handed.^[17]
• The 2021 Seattle Mariners page lists the team's "fun differential" of +90, based on a comment from manager Scott Servais on the team's negative run differential.^{[18] [19] [20]}
• Oddibe McDowell's page features his monthly water bill payments from February 2011 to March 2012, which were public record for Broward County, Florida and subsequently were featured in a recurring fashion on Deadspin.^{[21] [22]}

See also

• Sports Reference
• Pro Football Reference

Notes and References

1. Web site: About Sports Reference . . August 7, 2024 . en.
2. Weinreb. Michael. The Sublime Simplicity of Baseball-Reference.com. 28 October 2015. Rolling Stone. October 28, 2015. rs.
3. Company Overview of Sports Reference, LLC. dead. Bloomberg Businessweek. https://archive.today/20131108204017/http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=53311244. November 8, 2013. November 8, 2013.
4. FSV buys stake in reference sites . Fisher, Eric . . February 16, 2009 . July 16, 2011.
5. Web site: Foreman . Sean . April 30, 2021 . Changing Player Identification Names from Player Nicknames to Given Names . May 10, 2021 . Sports Reference.
6. Web site: Main Page – BR Bullpen. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20090617181542/http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Main_Page. June 17, 2009. July 16, 2011. Baseball Reference.
7. Web site: Jaffe WAR Score system (JAWS) for HOF Evaluations. 2025-05-06. Sports Reference.
8. Web site: Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained. 2025-05-06. Baseball Reference.
9. Web site: 2024-04-05. 2024 FanGraphs WAR Update. 2025-05-06. FanGraphs.
10. Web site: WAR Comparison Chart . 2025-05-06 . Baseball-Reference.com . en.
11. Web site: Baseball Frivolities and Fun Stuff . 2025-05-06 . Baseball Reference.
12. Web site: Foreman . Sean . May 28, 2024 . Baseball Reference is sunsetting the Oracle of Baseball . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20241217235047/https://www.sports-reference.com/blog/2024/05/baseball-reference-is-sunsetting-the-oracle-of-baseball/ . December 17, 2024 . December 21, 2024 . . en-US .
13. Web site: Keith Hernandez Mustache Statistics and History . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20241125133511/https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hernake01mustache.shtml . November 25, 2024 . December 21, 2024 . Baseball Reference .
14. Web site: Perry. Dayn. April 30, 2013. Keith Hernandez's mustache has its own Baseball-Reference page. https://web.archive.org/web/20160413033757/http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-baseball/22171252. April 13, 2016. December 21, 2024. CBS Sports. live.
15. Web site: Curtis . Charles . March 31, 2023 . Who's Tungsten Arm O'Doyle? The legendary Angels meme involving Shohei Ohtani, explained . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20240622215021/https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/who-is-tungsten-arm-o-doyle-angels . June 22, 2024 . February 20, 2024 . . .
16. Web site: Paul O'Neill Stats, Height, Weight, Position, Rookie Status & More . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20241208134311/https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/o%27neipa01.shtml . December 8, 2024 . December 21, 2024 . . en-US .
17. Web site: Jim Abbott Statistics and History . July 20, 2025 . Baseball Reference.
18. Web site: 2021 Seattle Mariners Statistics . 2025-05-06 . Baseball Reference.
19. News: Brock . Corey . 2021-08-25 . 'Fun differential' on the rise, as Mariners finish road swing with a 6-2 record . 2025-05-06 . The Athletic.
20. Web site: Bucholtz . Andrew . 2021-08-25 . Baseball-Reference actually adds a "fun differential" stat for the Mariners following Scott Servais' comments . 2025-05-06 . Awful Announcing . en-US.
21. Web site: Oddibe McDowell Statistics and History. Baseball Reference.
22. Web site: Petchesky. Barry. April 6, 2012. An Oral History Of Oddibe McDowell's Water Bill. July 20, 2025. Deadspin.