Monday, February 25, 2013

Baseball-Reference.com


Over the years, the Baseball-Reference.com site has been an invaluable reference source, not only for players' major and minor league statistics, but for team-and-year information such as defensive line-ups and batting orders for each game, transactions, minor-league affiliations, and many others.

A few years ago, I also discovered a Retrosheet link at the bottom of each player's page. There, one can find out the player's statistics for each game played, including whether or not he started, and what position was played (including PH and PR).

One of the features I like on the Baseball-Reference home page is the group of player thumbnails (sample below). I like to guess who the players are, before hovering my mouse pointer over them to get the names. (I usually have no shot at the older black-and-white photos, but can name many of the late-1960s players on sight.)

I saved this grouping a few months ago, in anticipation of a post like this one today.

Top row: Mike McCormick, unknown, Johnny Callison, unknown, Ken Boyer (or is it Curt Simmons?), unknown.

Bottom row: Johnny Romano, unknown, unknown, unknown (maybe Dick Radatz?), Bill Monbouquette, John Roseboro.


Surprisingly, I've noticed that there are never any players from the 1970s and beyond included in the photo grids.
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

I recall when b-r started this feature, they were still running their blog and explained, due to copyright issues, only players who began their careers in 1959 or sooner could be featured. Doesn't matter when the photo was taken...Gary Bell is on there sometimes, in a Seattle Pilots cap, so that had to be taken in 1969. But since he played his first game in 1959, he may be shown.