Our Player Pages Are Going To Change
You might have noticed the URL structure for our player pages changed during the Winter Meetings. We are in the process of updating these pages, and that was our first step. We are planning on making more changes as the winter continues.
Some of these upcoming changes will alter the underlying HTML structure of the page, which could affect data analysis tools you might have built or use. We are creating a legacy version of the pages, so the player pages can be accessed from a direct URL (but not through normal navigation) in their current form for the near future.
To access the legacy version of the pages you will have to add -legacy to the old URL structure. So the statss.aspx becomes statss-legacy.aspx. This will circumvent the redirects to any updates we make to the pages. Below are a list of legacy player page URLs.
Notes
- This is different but related to the URL redirects we did during the Winter Meetings. Using the
-legacyURL will circumvent the redirects. - This isn’t designed to allow for normal browsing on these pages, so no site links will ever point to them. You can only access the legacy pages through the direct URL with the proper query string.
- Some of the controls on these pages might not work. The URL parameters will still work, though.
- We won’t add new features to the legacy pages.
- After we launch the new player pages, the legacy pages might not last forever, but they will give you time to transition to the new pages.
I build things here.
Are the new player pages going to have new information or is it just a redesign?
Both…the big task will be redesign but we plan on keeping the overall look and feel. But we always are adding information here and there like 3-year ZiPS and options and service time were added in the last 6-12 months.
Sean, where do we find the 3 year ZIPS? I was looking for those the other day
I believe we are waiting on revised ZiPS for the 2020 season.
Will the player pages be more mobile friendly?
Yes, that’s one of the primary goals.
How seriously are mobile users analyzing data?
Such typical Dobbs ignorance.
Can I make a request for the new pages? If so I would like to request some sort of uniformity in pitch labeling especially as it relates to curveballs? Even just labeling all curves CU/CB would be an improvement. A similar system for fastball clarifications would also help. Even fixing the mouse over function so that it actually displays a description of the stat would be an improvement.
Sorry if this sounds nit picky but this is one of the few things that consistently frustrates me about player pages.
Thanks for taking the trouble to maintain the existing layouts while you make the transition. Mostly it seems sites just overhaul things without even telling anybody…
One thing I would love to see are league averages for the current season at least, similar to what is on the player pages on Baseball Savant. Not an urgent thing of course, but would just save some additional steps when I’m using FG individual player data.
why was this announcement not delivered by the Apple Man?
It’s not exactly a shift in business, it’s a notification, like a head up.
the Dark Lord requires a sacrifice in order to appear
Someone should change the pitch splits information as it currently doesn’t make any sense. When I go to Splits I have to click “select” and then “all”. That should be more easily accessible and intuitive. I mean, I know where it is but I imagine most people can’t find that information. I don’t really see the value in even providing the option for individual pitches – all works just fine and if you want to get weird there are advanced tools.
I find it annoying that things like OPS and WHIP (things that changed the way we think about the game and are not such rough approximations that they are under constant revision) are in the third set of stats – the past 30 years have been an attempt to improve on those highly useful numbers. I get that FG is about progress first and accuracy second but I imagine that you lose a lot of people to other sites that want to easily find those stats. Probably the only reason that other major stat sites are still relevant is because the back of the baseball card stats are more accessible at other places. I feel like FG largely has an elitist, condescending attitude towards tradition and that turns a lot of people off – making traditional stats hard to find is a good example of that. If FG was more accepting of tradition I am sure it would be a healthier community with less turnover and ultimately more significant progress. I imagine the kind of people that enjoy digging through progressive stats are probably fine with a scavenger hunt, while the traditional folks probably are not. IMO the progressive stuff should be in a progressive set of data and the traditional stuff could be at the top – I bet you would get a bump in traffic from random folks who end up here in a Google search. Rates are rates, adjusted value metrics are adjusted values and real outcomes are real outcomes but they are all mixed together right now. I find it interesting that when I Google a player’s name looking for stats FG isn’t at the top – that probably tells you something about casual stat fans and their preferences.
Not saying this guy’s opinion isn’t valid, but I just want to counter, for the sake of the developers, that I couldn’t disagree with this more ^
One of the main advantages to FanGraphs over BR is that the tables are easier to read and parse. To me, I would absolutely not want to make the primary table more cumbersome simply for the sake of including every state in one place.
Names in the slug are so helpful. (For search engines, too.)
Hi Sean, I am afraid of change. Are there resources available for those of us who prefer to wrap ourselves in the warm blanket of familiarity?
DRS was updated/improved over two months ago.
When will FG show the new calculations for older years, or will FG only show the new DRS from 2020 on?
BIS said “coming to other sites soon,” on Twitter.
This will be updated sometime in February.
Hey, Sean, great work. Any way to add an Averages button to other sections where it makes sense. For example, Average in the ‘Batted Ball’ section would be helpful to me since I almost always forget league averages for stats like IFFB% and LD%. Thanks.
yea id love to see this, especially for individual pitch swstr%.. things like that
It’s definitely something I’d like to include in one form or another.
Hey Sean, I appreciate all the data the team has pulled together. Do you have an API setup that users can access? I’ve been trying to find the most efficient way to pull game log data, an API would be preferred but right now im looking at webscraping. Do you know of another site with an API connection?
Thanks!
Unfortunately, we don’t plan on having a public API.
Maybe this is already available and i just haven’t figured out how to display the info, but being able to quickly and easily show the sum totals of minor league season stats for individual players would be great.
I’m thinking like a button on the main player page called “choose seasons” and then being able to click each season you want to include in the total that will be displayed. If this already exists, where can I find it?
This is a good idea. Thank you.
As you are updating please make the pages easy to reference based on playerid. URL redirects destroy the analysis tools I’ve been developing with rvest. I’m nervous because I see that Mookie Betts’ new page is https://www.fangraphs.com/players/mookie-betts/13611/stats?position=OF, but https://www.fangraphs.com/players/13611 redirects to Mike Trout. I have also run into redirect problems using the custom date range leaderboards. Please limit redirects and/or give hobbyist programmers like myself tips on how to deal with them. Thanks!
I’d use the legacy URLs in this post. They won’t change and won’t redirect.
Also the new URL structure is /players/[player-name]/[playerid]/[stat-page]. If the route doesn’t follow that structure, it will fall back to Trout’s page.