We now have new search functionality, which will hopefully allow you to get to the player pages much faster than before.

Typing something in the search box will now display a drop-down of all the players you searched for, just as would have been displayed on the actual player search page. You are still able to hit enter and get to the old search page if you want.

One additional note is that when the search bar is empty, the drop down displays a list of the most popular Major League and Minor League players on FanGraphs.

As the title says, the FanGraphs iPhone app is discounted to $0.99 for today only!

The app will of course include data for the 2013 season and already has the 2013 Bill James Handbook Projections available in the player pages.

The Hardball Times Baseball Annual for 2013 is now yours for the purchasing. This is something we do every year, just for the heck of it. In fact, this is our ninth THT Annual, and we’re trying a few new things this year.

First of all, we went the self-publishing route. We always had a great relationship with our previous publisher, ACTA Sports, but it’s so easy to self-publish, and the economics are better (we think). So you’ll notice that our cover art has changed, and we won’t be available in bookstores. The price is lower, and the dimensions are a bit smaller, too. We’ll let you know how it goes.

The Annual is now 6″x9″—easy to carry and read. We dropped the stats altogether after significantly cutting them back last year. As time went on, the stats became a less important feature of the Annual, because it’s so easy to pick up your stats online at any time. Other than that, the format is exactly the same.

You’re left with 300 pages of baseball eloquence, primarily contributed by THT and Fangraphs writers, as well as a few special guest writers. Here is the specific table of contents:

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The 2013 Bill James Handbook Projections courtesy of Baseball Info Solutions are now available on the players pages!

The player pages now have some some additional usability features.

– You can now hover over any stat header and get the definition of the stat. This will soon make its way to all sections of the site.

– Seasons, Teams, and Positions are now linked back to the leaderboards. For instance if you are perusing Mike Trout’s page and you click on the Angels link in his 2011 season, it will bring you to the 2011 Angels leaderboards for the corresponding section.

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There’s a new positional option for the leaderboards labeled NP (Non-Pitchers). This will exclude all players that qualify as pitchers from any of the batting leaderboards.

This works at both the team and league levels as well, making it easier to compare teams across leagues.

To better isolate batting and base running skills, SB and CS have been removed from wOBA and given their own category wSB.

What’s Changed?

wOBA, wRAA, wRC, wRC+ – These all no longer include SB and CS. SB and CS have been removed entirely from the wOBA calculation include the weights calculation.

Batting – Batting in the Value section no longer includes SB and CS.

Base Running – Base Running in the Value section now includes SB and CS.

FanGraphs Guts! – Our Guts! section now has updated weights and the SB and CS weights for use in wOBA have been replaced with the raw run values.

What’s New?

wSB – how many runs above or below average a player is at stealing bases.

UBR – (miscellaneous baserunning / advancement) is now broken out into a separate category which is in the Advanced section. This contains all the information that was formerly just in Base Running.

The Value (WAR) section for pitchers has been updated to help further break out a pitcher’s value. These stats are now available in the leaderboards and player pages.

We’ve added the following stats:

RA9-Wins – Wins above replacement calculated with RA9. This is both park adjusted and league adjusted.

BIP-Wins – Wins above average based on BABIP. This is both park and league adjusted.

LOB-Wins – Sequencing (and miscellaneous) wins above average calculated as RA9Wins – WAR – BIPWins.

FDP-Wins (Fielder Dependent Wins) – This is the full difference between RA9Wins and WAR, or BIPWins + LOBWins.

WAR – Wins Above Replacement remains unchanged.

Dave Cameron will have two posts with more details about these new stats at 9:00am and 10:00am and will be answering questions during his 12:00pm chat.

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You can now filter your results on the FanGraphs leaderboards!

For instance, if you’re looking at the career leaderboards and you want to know which players had a career .300/.400/.500 slash line, this is now possible.

This also works out great for comparisons. For instance, here’s a single season list of starting pitchers since 1990 who had peripherals similar to Stephen Strasburg.

The filter feature allows for lots of flexibility and even more complex filters.

For the moment we didn’t include every stat we have and just some of the more common ones, but if there are stats you feel you must be able to filter on, let us know and we’ll try and add them to the list.

The PITCHf/x section for pitchers now contains splits by pitch type. You can now see all the usual stats for how a batters does against a pitcher’s individual pitches.

The splits are sorted by season and then by most pitches thrown, but you can also break things down by individual pitch, if you only want to view a particular pitch type.