We are currently in the process of updating our leaderboards interface. As part of this update, we have already released a quick leaderboard interface in our app, and we are now focusing on developing a modern, mobile-friendly web version of the complete leaderboards.

Just like when we made changes to our player pages, the upcoming modifications to the leaderboards will involve underlying HTML changes that could impact any data analysis tools you have built. To address this, we have created a legacy version of the page, which will remain accessible via a direct URL until the end of the 2023 season. Please note that normal navigation or parameter changes may not work as expected on the legacy page. Its purpose is to allow users to replace the URL in their tool and continue functioning until they have a chance to make any necessary adjustments. Read the rest of this entry »

We are excited to introduce Quick Leaderboards – an intuitive, mobile-friendly interface for accessing our major league leaderboards. With this new addition, you can now easily explore and find leaders for various statistics through a list-based interface. Our goal is to provide a seamless experience that closely reflects the web version’s robust leaderboards within our app. Our future plans are to further develop leaderboards in the app to closely match the functionality of the web version.

To access the app and enjoy these new features, simply download it here:

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When we released the new FanGraphs app in August, we asked users to tell us which features they wanted to see next. The overwhelming response was to add both articles and leaderboards. We’re still working on how best to integrate the leaderboards, but as of today, we’ve added editorial content to the app. (If you are currently reading this on the app, you might already know all of this!)

If you haven’t already, you can download the app here:

Specifically, we’ve added or updated the following:

• The ability to view our articles on the app.
• A home screen layout that closely reflects the FanGraphs web homepage.
• A blog roll that closely reflects the FanGraphs web blog roll.
• Customization features for Members.

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We are launching a new FanGraphs mobile app, which is available for both iOS and Android devices. You may remember our previous attempt at an iOS app over a decade ago, but this is a completely new app that more closely reflects our website, built with a native mobile experience specifically for phones in mind.

The app is free to download, but similar to our website, it has ads unless you are signed in as a FanGraphs Member. Any customization features in the app will also only be available to Members.

As we launch today, the app has player pages, scores, and standings available. We plan on adding more features from the site in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

You might have noticed that we updated the main home page to reflect some of the changes we recently made on the RotoGraphs landing page and the new blog roll.

We cleaned up the design, added more photos, and reorganized our content. The left column will primarily contain editorial content, while the right column will have more evergreen site features. Our aim is to make FanGraphs more inviting and discoverable to new users, while simplifying and streamlining the experience for our current users. Almost all of the content from the old home page has been retained with the new home page. We also expanded the most popular article section (which is determined by pageviews) to include more articles and RotoGraphs content.

If you have any questions or comments, or if anything is broken, please let us know in the comments. Please include what device, browser, and operating system you are using in order to help us figure out any issues. Thank you!

Historically, we have made many data tables available for download in a comma-separated values (CSV) format text file. Most of our data grids are rather straight forward and can be translated easily into a CSV file to be consumed by your data analysis tool of choice. Starting today, we are making RosterResource Excel workbook downloads available for FanGraphs Members. You can find the download button to the right of the page underneath the RosterResource navigation.

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Let’s do something completely different and have some fun! Over the course of the past year, I created an arcade game that can be played on a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from 1985! The game might looks familiar, but it’s been adapted for baseball.

This is an actual NES game; it is a .nes ROM file that you can play on original hardware. I found a JavaScript emulator, so you can more easily play it online. You can download the ROM here and use it in your emulator, flash cart, or your retro gaming setup of choice.

Below you can click on the photo, which will take you to the online emulator. It works best on desktops running Chrome, Firefox, or the new Edge. Safari is playable but it gives a soft picture without sound. Gameplay suffers on mobile, especially smaller devices. It’s best to use your keyboard to control everything, but there is a virtual controller available, too.

(Click to open FanGraphs Arcade)

Game Play

I don’t want to give too much away about the game, because half of the fun of an arcade game is trying things out, failing, then trying again until you succeed, though I will answer questions in the comments or on Twitter if anyone has any. Read the rest of this entry »

We just updated our player pages! The pages might not look that different, but we’ve redone everything under the hood. We did this to achieve responsive player pages, and it also comes with improvements in speed and a better platform to develop new features in the future.

Quick Look

If you are on a desktop computer, the most noticeable difference on the new pages is the Quick Look section we’ve added to the very top of the page. These will have some popular stats for the player’s major league career and the current or most recent season. Retired players will only have their career stats.

For position players, we’ve also provided a summary of how many major league games the player played at each position, while a pitcher’s Quick Look will show their pitch repertoire. The position breakdown will double count games a player played at two or more positions, and does not include pinch-hitters or pinch-runners, so those values might not add up to games played. We display the Pitch Info classifications for the pitches where usage is 5% or greater for the season. Once again, these will only show for the current or most recent season.

Prospects and players who were recently prospects have their most recent scouting grades and team rankings from the prospect team shown. The report year those grades and rankings come from is shown and also serves as a link to The Board, allowing you to see that report’s entire class. Any in-season rankings are denoted with a (U) for Updated.

Table View Options and Minor League Stats

Minor league stats are no longer shown by default for every player. We do, however, show them for players who:

• Do not have any major league stats.
• Current players who have less than two years of service time.
• Retired players who have minor league stats in our database, but played fewer than three seasons in the majors.

You can toggle the minor league stats into view as always, with the table options between the table header and the data grid.

On mobile, those table view options are hidden but are accessible via the settings gear on the top-right of the table.

Game Logs

The game log calendar has been updated as well. Days when the player played a game are shown in black and have a dot underneath the date. Clicking update will load the new date range. You are also able to select an entire season or all games that we have available. If you select a very long range, it might take a while to load.

We also now have game logs and play logs available for players who played from 1974 to 2002. These behave just like the game logs and play logs of current players. 1974 is as far back as our play-by-play data currently goes.

Mobile

We made the data grid pages responsive. Much like The Board or the minor league leaderboards, you are able to scroll across the table while the season for the row is fixed in the left column.

For the moment, the visualization-based pages still require the full desktop view to use. We hope to move everything over to a responsive view soon.

Other Notes

Fantasy Player Profiles are still in the process of being written and will be available soon. The placement of the profiles on the player pages haven’t changed.

Back in January, we announced the creation of legacy pages for all players pages. The HTML structure on those has not changed. However, they are not meant as a fully-featured alternative, so navigation might not work and new features we develop in the future will not be added to them. This is meant as a stop-gap for any research tools you might have that rely on the HTML structure.

As always if you find any issues or bugs, please let us know in the comments!

We decided to make a leaderboard that combines THE BOARD! with our Minor League Leaderboards. There are a ton of new features to review, but if you are the type of person that attempts to assemble furniture without reading the instructions, here’s the link:

https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board-scouting-and-stats

If you are still with us, we have a lot to cover. This combined leaderboard is similar to a feature we tested on our prospects landing page where the prospect list that Eric and Kiley have compiled is joined with our minor league stats.

Here’s a list of the new features:

• THE BOARD: Scouting + Stats!
• Revamped Minor League Leaderboards
  • Added the ability to select multiple seasons
  • Added the ability to filter by organization
  • Added three new league filters: Upper (AAA/AA), Mid (A+/A), and Low Levels (A-/R)
• Revamped Custom Reports
  • Your custom reports can be displayed as a tab (blue instead of green) on the leaderboard.
  • The interface to add and change stat columns is all-new.
  • You can choose to include row numbers in your report.

THE BOARD: Scouting + Stats!

You can think of the combined leaderboard as a Venn diagram or a SQL inner join. Minor league players who are not in the selected prospect list will not appear on the combined leaderboards. Likewise, players without any minor league stats (Shohei Ohtani) are not available on this leaderboard.

Unforunately, you also can’t mix batting and pitching stats on the same leaderboard; these are still different data sets (pictured in the above data join diagram). The scouting report data is position agnostic, but the stats data still behaves like our traditional leaderboards, so you can only combined one stat data set with the scouting data set.

The filters are organized by the source of data they control. For example, scouting grade filters are on the scouting tab, while the playing time filter appears on the stats tab.

Since there is the possibility of duplicate filters for position and organization, we have those two filters located under common filters. Both filters use data from the scouting data set, so you could look at the stats of a traded prospect regardless of what system he accrued those stats. The position filter uses Eric and Kiley’s classification, instead of what position our leaderboards have for a player. This might change in the future if we deploy more advanced control options.

Important Notes:

• A leaderboard can only contain either batting or pitching stats.
• Right now, we are only including scouting information from prospect lists. There are plans to include draft and international players in the future.

Minor League Leaderboards

The Minor League Leaderboards have been redesigned, and we added a few new features. We added the ability to select multiple seasons and either aggregate them (default option) or have them split into multiple years. The “Split Seasons” option splits the player’s stat line by both season and team. An organization filter has been added so you can group stats across levels by the MLB organization instead of just being able to filter using the affiliate teams. We also included a few new league filters that groups tiers of levels: Upper (AAA/AA), Mid (A+/A), and Low Levels (A-/R). These will allow you to aggregate stats across those tiers.

We don’t always carry legacy tools, but we are keeping the old minor league boards around at least for a bit. These will be available in the leaders menu, but they won’t be the main link. You should be aware these might not always exist, and we are not going to continue developing them. If you are using them as a data source for research, please considering migrating to the new Minor League Leaderboards.

Custom Reports

The Custom Reports for the combined leaderboard and the Minor League Leaderboards are all-new. While FanGraphs has well-established stat groups: Standard, Advanced, and Batted Ball, combining scouting and stats data left us with too many combinations to include everything; this is where the new custom reports come in.

Like the old custom reports you are able to create a leaderboard with your choice of stat columns, filters, and players, but now they can be displayed as blue tabs on the leaderboard for quicker access. You can create a new report by clicking the plus button.

All of your reports for the specific leaderboard are housed in the Custom Reports dialog box accessible from the Custom Reports button on the data grid. In that dialog box, you can manage your reports including loading them into the tab bar and making them load in to the tab bar by default.

The interface to change the stat columns on the table is also completely new. You can either double click (long press on mobile) or drag/drop stats to customize your report. The columns are organized by the default tab they appear in. Once again, you can’t mix batting and pitching stats, but mixing scouting columns is cool.

Important notes:

• Each report has an owner.
• The owner is the only one who can modify, save, or delete that report.
• You also must be signed into your FanGraphs account to modify, save, or delete any report.
• However, every report is viewable by anyone if you have the URL with the report id in it.
• You can create a copy of a report by viewing it and clicking to create a new report.
• “Edit Table” allows you to choose different columns on the table.
• Turning off the “Include Filters” button allows you to create a report that is agnostic to filters including custom players. This can be used if you want to create a tab with certain stats acting like native tabs.
• Your older minor league reports are still available, though you won’t be able to save them.

Future Notes

• We are in the process of determining how to handle the “current” level for prospects. It’s an addition we want to add to THE BOARD, but it’s not ready for this update.
• While these tools are conceptually connected, they don’t share data between them, so going from the Minor League Leaderboards to THE BOARD: Scouting + Stats! won’t retain settings and filters.
• Custom Reports “belong” to the tool you created them in, so you can’t make one in the leaderboards and use it with the combined leaderboard. This might change in the future, but it’s a restriction for now.

The Playoff Odds page looks different! The playoff-odds data and simulation method remains the same; however, we have revamped our reporting page to make it easier to understand and more powerful.

The most noticeable changes are the table layout and the mobile layout. We’ve tried to make it easier to understand what the columns mean for users who are new to the site. The goal of the mobile layout is to allow users to reach the most important information more quickly. Every column on the desktop page is viewable on the mobile layout by clicking the “Full” button.

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