We’ve Updated Our Player Pages!
Our new player pages, which have been available to FanGraphs Members for the past week, are now available to everyone! Thank you to all our Members who helped test these out. The new player pages include a number of enhancements:
Vertical Menu
We have a new vertical menu with expandable options within each player page. Now you can access Pitch-Type Splits and Pitch Velocity Graphs without going through other menus.
The menu is now accessible via a floating action button in the bottom right corner on mobile devices. This allows you to access the menu from any point on the page without having to scroll to find it.
Modular Player Information
We’ve given the player information section an overhaul with organized modules. There are now additional RosterResource details, such as player role, acquisition method, and current contract information seamlessly integrated into the layout.
Data Table Enhancements
We’ve streamlined pitch-level data into fewer tables with selectors for the different data sources. Pitch Type and Velocity are also now in one table, and the Pitch Values/100 have been combined with the Pitch Values into a single table. For the Statcast and Pitch Info data, we’ve filtered out pitch types columns where we don’t have data for both pitchers and batters, though this will be less noticeable for batters.
Pitch Modeling
We’ve added pitch modeling tables for both Pitching Bot and Stuff+. The pitch modeling sections allow you to toggle between the different models.
I also wanted to recognize and thank the rest of the engineering team, David Appelman and Keaton Arneson, for their contributions to this project!
Have feedback or spotted a bug? Drop us a comment or send us an email at support@fangraphs.com. Your input helps us keep improving.
I build things here.
It’s gonna take me a minute to get fully used to it (I’ve got my player page scrolling habits in muscle memory, lol) but the new layout has grown on me immensely in the short time I’ve been messing with it. Great job!
I like it!
The only thing I don’t generally love is that it takes a little longer to get to the game logs, but I could just be missing something there.
I think it’s just one click. There is a game log option in the menu on the left.
they’re way harder to access on mobile
Agree with that. Buried and hard to find.
These look great. Thanks, you all.
It looks great, and the sidebar is amazing, but I don’t love that the first thing you see (the top / first page / whatever it is) is something that I have no use for. One thing you might consider for the settings is to set the player page to default to particular sidebar option (Dashboard, Advanced, Statcast, etc).
Yes. And you have to scroll a bit to get to the floating menu bar, which is a big decrease in functionality on mobile. I don’t like that it takes two clicks to get to the game logs or splits now. Previously it was just anchored there at the top of the page. Now you have to scroll a bit and then click on the menu and then you can click on the game log or splits.
This really does make navigating hard on mobile. Used to be that you could always navigate back to what you needed with one tap. For instance, on the game logs, if you wanted to switch to standard or advanced stats, you’d just tap the tab for that. Now you have to find the floating menu button, which navigates you away from the game log, then find whichever table you want. Just more clicking and searching with your eyes.
I’ve figured out now that you have to resize your screen to make the floating menu pop up. If you could at least make it so the menu button shows up automatically that would be a big improvement.
Maybe it’s not optimized for bigger phones?
It works on my SE…so the only annoyance is the extra click to toggle between game logs, etc.
Thank you for your feedback. The mobile button should always be visible if the menu bar is not. We’ve been trying to reproduce this error, but we have a few questions: What device are you using? Are there ads on the page? What do you mean by resizing?
Iphone 14, using a Chrome browser. No ads on the page (I’m an ad-free member).
When I pull up a player page, the page is zoomed in a little too far. I have to do the pinch maneuver to resize (zoom out) and then I can see the menu. I can also side scroll as well to find it. But if I zoom in again, it goes off screen.
Can you send a screenshot to support@fangraphs.com. We’re having some issues reproducing this.
Sent an email to support. These videos show what I’m talking about. https://x.com/ballskwok/status/1800220878875329012
Thank you for sharing. I’ve been able to reproduce the issue, and we’ll try to fix it.
It appears that Chrome on iOS resizing the window, and I’m guessing the text is optionally scaled down in Chrome and Chrome is then resizing the text box for input.
I’m having the same problem with an iPhone SE, Safari browser. No ads (I’m ad free, logged in).
Does it look better on the app?
I don’t use the app as it doesn’t have near as much function as the website. I re-downloaded the app just to check, and it appears to be the same as before.
Works well on desktop, but this is a nightmare to use on mobile. Needs some big changes. Those three giant blocks at the top are a waste of space (would be great to have an option to hide them). All the links that are clicked most often to navigate around are hidden behind the menu pop-up which we have to open up every time we need to make any kind of change.
Agree with everything.
Love this!
Initial reaction:
-Moving the menu to the sidebar is a nice win, that should improve usability.
-One of my favorite things to do on the player pages is to look at up to the minute advanced stats throughout a game when someone is having a very good or very bad night – will that still be available?
My only complaint is with the module player boxes:
-They’re massive! They take up all the space above the fold.
-I’m not coming to a FanGraphs player page for that info, I’m coming to a player page for the interactive stats (plus, 2 of the boxes are pointless if you’re looking at a player who is retired). It’s frustrating coming to a page knowing I will have to immediately scroll down for awhile (the -reference sites are terrible about this).
–>Maybe there could be links to the info in the sidebar or those boxes default as collapsed with a ‘show more’ button.
-You’ve also decided for us which stats we’re going to see in that first ‘Quick Stats’ box. If I could customize which stats I see there, I might like it more, but it’d still be the entire screen wasted showing me 9 stats stacked vertically.
-The way the information was previously laid out was fine, so this is creating a solution for a problem that didn’t exist.
-I do like the info in the prospect report and RosterResource sections.
An idea:
-The main reasons I’m scrolling to the top of a FanGraphs player page is to review contract info or confirm the player details (height/weight, bats/throws, age).
-It would be great if that information stayed available from the side bar menu as I scrolled down. It could be as simple as a link that takes me back to the top section. For the Player Details, a more user friendly solution would be to display that info in the sidebar above the menu options, so it’s always visible as the user scrolls down. The player bar at the top could effectively collapse down to a section above the sidebar menu options.
A few minor points of QA feedback:
-There is a large gap at the top of the player pages on my mac. When I load a player page, only thing I see above the fold is the player info bar, I need to scroll down even to see the module player boxes.
-I’m also having trouble with the buttons on the sidebar. Every time I click on one of the menu items, I am redirected to a blank page and need to refresh for the data to load. I see a lot of console errors indicating issues with the URL.
Agree.
“The way the information was previously laid out was fine, so this is creating a solution for a problem that didn’t exist.”
I actually love the update – so kudos to the team, typically UX changes take some time to get comfortable with.
Two requests:
1 – please add a toggle that allows the top three data boxes (quick look, roster resource, news) to be collapsed by default. It’s useful info but I don’t always need it and hate needing to immediate scroll down for every player page to start getting the stats I want.
2 – please add an ‘averages’ option for all stat sections. Exists currently for plate discipline section, but would also be great for statcast, batted ball, custom sections, etc.
Thank you for the feedback, we’ll consider those for future feature requests.
Great comments, I was going to write #1 too so thanks for doing it for me :). 100% agree: please add a toggle that allows the top three data boxes (quick look, roster resource, news) to be collapsed by default. It’s useful info but I don’t always need it and hate needing to immediate scroll down for every player page to start getting the stats I want.
I’m having a lot of problems getting pages to load. At first it was every player page I clicked on, now it’s off and on, but the page will load for half a second and then go totally blank. Happens when I click the home page too. Having adblock on/off doesn’t seem to make a difference either.
Thanks for the feedback. If you are using an adblocker, we can’t guarantee our site will function properly.
If the site has the same issue in a browser without any ad blocker on it, please let us know.
He literally said, “Having adblock on/off doesn’t seem to make a difference either.”
Which players? That’s been happening for me when I look up current free agents (it happened when I looked up Mike Ford and Jorge Alfaro).
We have a fix for those free agents being deployed. Good pattern recognition!
Having this same problem, no matter what state my uBlock is set to. If I search a name in the search bar and click it, the page will never load. Once I refresh, it works fine. This has never happened on Fangraphs until I enabled the beta and now that the change is pushed to everyone.
If I search for the player on Google (Example: Aaron Judge Fangraphs) and open from there, it all works fine. If I go to say a team’s top prospect article and click names from that article, it works fine. But opening from the search bar doesn’t load.
I’m noticing that for AAA hitters who have MLB experience, you can see their AAA plate discipline metrics.
Is this a bug? If not, you should absolutely announce that that data is available because it’s immensely useful. Also, if not a bug, please add it to AAA players who haven’t debuted yet!
We’ve had that data for a bit. We haven’t fully rolled it out everywhere on the site yet, but we can make that table visible for the AAA but non-MLB players.
!!! That’s awesome – I assume since that data is pulled from Statcast, you have no leeway to add pseudo-plate discipline data in AA and below? You won’t have strike zone data, but you still have generic contact rates, etc.
Are there any plans to update the minor league dashboards to include that data?
Can I voice another issue somewhat related to player pages? Sorry if it’s not the focus of the article.
The search bar in the top left corner has never worked for me on desktop. When I type anyone’s name (like “Betts”, for instance), search results never come up. If I type a name and press Enter, nothing happens either. All I see are the trending major/minor/international players. What am I missing?
It sounds like your browser or network can’t communicate with our search service. Are you able to try search on another computer in another location?
Multiple people have mentioned this same issue since the update. The search bar works fine, it populates with the correct names, but clicking on them brings you to a white page. It is only on desktop and it does not matter what the browser is.
In Firefox (all three versions), nothing comes up. In Chrome, using the search bar leads to debilitating CPU usage causing the browser to freeze. In a Chrome window with just one tab open, the Fangraphs homepage, searching for a player leads to 30-40% CPU usage.
It is a back end issue.
I have a marginally-related issue. Sorry both to SeanD and OP.
A lot of times when I am on the internet (on laptop) I see a baseball player and I want to look up his stats on FG. What I currently need to do is to go the the FG homepage, navigate search space, type in part of his name, and then click on his name.
Would love to be able to do one of these two:
When I arrow-down to the right one in the autocomplete list, be able to hit Enter to go to his page. Right now while I can arrow-down, hitting Enter doesn’t do anything.Currently I can do a search like this https://www.fangraphs.com/search?q=patrick-bailey and it would return a list of potential matches. This is great because I can combine this with a keyboard shortcut. It would be awesome I can also add a “I am feeling lucky” parameter (like https://www.fangraphs.com/search?q=patrick-bailey&btnI) and instead of a list of results, send me directly to the first hit.Thank you for your time and consideration!
Using Firefox desktop, this site is now unusable. Half the player pages don’t load at all. The ones that do enter an infinite reload loop that maxes CPU usage and nearly crashes the PC. I have tried with and without ad blocker. Both scenarios use a massive amount of CPU and cause instability.
Doing all this simply to have a margin navigation bar seems insane to me.
I am having this same issue. Every single time I search for a player and click on them, the ensuing page never loads and remains blank until I refresh.
Does anybody know where the Splits, etc. specifications went on player pages? I can’t find them
Having used it all day, I think the changes work nicely on a desktop. It’s just not as user friendly on mobile.
Really like this update so far! My only note is that, for me at least, clicking “Dashboard” in the vertical menu doesn’t work. It changes the URL at the top of the page, but doesn’t actually jump me up back to the dashboard. It’s not a big issue, but something I’ve noticed. That’s happening on Chrome on a Windows desktop by the way.
Thanks for all your hard work on the site!
My guess is you had the normal dashboard hidden and only had just a custom dashboard visible? I have the anchor set to both of those tables now instead of the just the standard dashboard, so this should work now for you.
I really like the changes, especially on desktop. One other small request, it would be great to have a link to a players prospect report direct from their player page. Like the full write up, not just the grades. That’s an option on mobile but not desktop (unless I’m missing something). I know I can click on ‘Report: 2024 Preseason’ but that just brings me to the board which isn’t super helpful for anything other than the top prospects.
As someone that almost exclusively uses Fangraphs on Desktop, I like the changes, I think it works well for that format. However, to echo other comments, there is clearly something wrong on Fangraphs’ side of things when it comes to the search bar.
Searching for a player in the search bar and clicking their name renders nothing but a white page. It simply never loads. Once you refresh, it loads just fine. It isn’t an ad block issue, it isn’t a cookie or cache issue, there is something causing this on Fangraphs’ side of things.
Accessing player pages using any other means works fine (direct from Google, from an article, etc). It is only the search bar.
I mentioned it in another reply, but adding on to my own, this is exclusively a desktop issue and it does not matter what browser or ad block state.
On Firefox, all three versions, clicking on a player name in the search bar leads to nothing but a white page. On Chrome, clicking on a player name in the search bar does load the page, but it causes Chrome to use upwards of 30% CPU usage and freezes the browser entirely despite being the only open tab. On Edge, clicking on a player name in the search bar loads the page but like Chrome, that one tab ends up with over 30% CPU usage and freezes the browser.
This only started when I began the Beta and since the change went in permanently. There is something happening on the back end with the search bar on desktop. Mobile works fine, though I agree with the others that the mobile version of this new design is horrendous to use.
It’s much more difficult to navigate through game logs. I used to click game logs then plate discipline to see trends in swstr% and pitch usage but now it’s just way more cumbersome.
I’ve noticed that f you go to the leaderboards, you can get the “+ Stats” but don’t see them anywhere on the new pages. Any plan to incorporate those somewhere? Easy to remember baselines such as AVG, OBP…but tougher to remember/contextualize what a 30% GB rate is and whether it is higher or lower than avg.
No problems with the new layout or search, works fine for me on an old Chromebook laptop. This comment is aimed at the distribution of key info between various tables, in case future updates might take it into consideration.
For me, the key seasonal info about a pitcher is IP, ERA-minus, FIP-minus, WAR, and WAR per 200 IP (or per some similar IP metric). If I know those, I pretty much know all the important stuff about the pitcher’s general, overall quality and performance that season. It would be so nice to have them all in the SAME table (preferably the Dashboard, but Advanced would do fine), rather than split between Dashboard and Advanced.
Thus, I wonder why you list raw FIP and ERA in the Dashboard, but not the adjusted rate stats of ERA-minus and FIP-minus. The former tell us nothing until you adjust them! You don’t do it this way for hitters–instead, you (appropriately) list WRC+, the key, adjusted rate stat, in the Dashboard. Why not for pitchers? And it seems to me the xERA and xFIP are quite advanced stats, so why not move them to Advanced, and make room for the helpful (and not very advanced) info on WAR/200 IP in the Dashboard?
In general, your division (and repetition, or not) of data between tables seems strange–stats in Dashboard are often quite advanced (and of minor importance on the Dashboard), but are not also listed in Advanced. And some stats in Advanced are not very advanced, and/or are redundant. For example, I don’t know why you need K% AND K/9, and ditto for BB, in the same (Advanced) table, especially since you already listed the /9 stats on the dashboard! The % and /9 stats are the same stat, just multiplied by a constant PA/game factor. Yet by including that repetition, in the Advanced table, you have to leave out IP in the Advanced table, which IS crucial for comparing ANY advanced rate stat to the total production level of the pitcher that season.
I would also love to see WAR/600 PA in the Dashboard for hitters. Perhaps dump Xwoba, which is quite advanced, down into the Advanced table…?
However, the site remains invaluable–I just have to do more work to copy various sets of data into my own spreadsheets to gather all the key info in one place, to use it to evaluate players more efficiently. Keep up the good work… 🙂
You can create your own custom dashboard, just click on the “Customize” button next to “Dashboard” on a player page. I think would solve some of these problems, outside of WAR as a rate state.
I think where the stats sit in the various sections is more of a legacy thing than anything. For instance, a lot of people still look at K/9, so we didn’t get rid of it, even if K% is preferrable.
Thanks, David, appreciate the help, will customize! I realize no one else on earth seems to value WAR as a rate stat, which is just one of those things I find totally inexplicable–many, many other counting stats are also presented as rate stats as well–hits, total bases, reached base safely, HR’s, K’s, BB’s, SB’s, balls in play…but not WAR, the single most important statistical summary of a player’s value? Hmmm…I just don’t get it. 🙂
Just want to reiterate what a bunch of other comments have said – navigation on mobile is unnecessarily clunky. Needing multiple clicks to go to game logs and back to season stats is difficult. Please make use of the big boxes at the top of the player page to make navigation easier
I’m still getting used to it but it seems really nice
Engineers are not UX designers
No offense, love you guys, but personally I don’t like these changes. My main issue is simply that my custom dashboard I set up is no longer at the top of the page, instantly visible without scrolling. The vast majority of my fangraphs usage is just searching a player and looking at that dashboard, so now it is significantly less efficient.
Change is hard but the quick look isn’t doing it for me, hard to read and doens’t have the information I am looking for when I go to the page. I’m sure y’all had your reasons and really appreciate all the work you’re putting into the site.
I think what it is for me, the stats names are to the left in the Quick Look but I am use to seeing them on top with stats below. It kind of wigs out my brain from an information design perspective. I am sure I will get use to it.
Great job guys! I love it! 😀
Thanks for all the work.
Btw, I noticed that for some players, the search doesn’t return players with initials as their first names as the first result, even with exact name entered. e.g., if you enter “JD Davis” or “CJ Cron” in the search field, some other players would appear in the first slot. I think this might be because they are listed with the periods following their initials? i.e. not JD, but J.D. It would be great if the search can understand they are the same thing.
Thank you for adding back the game log tabs as well as the drop downs for the navigations through the different stat sections on mobile. Works much better than before!
How come DRS, TZ & TZL stats don’t show up for older player’s pages? I only see players from the 2000s-. e.g.
I was just trying to look up Lenny Dykstra’s DRS figures for the early 90s, but they’re not listed.
We only have the data for advanced fielding stats from 2002 onward.
Cool, now maybe figure out why your site opens 30-40 chrome processes and locks up the browser? I understand you need ad revenue, but come on…the site is nearly unusable.
We’re actively looking into what the problem might be and hope to have a solution soon.
I hate this!! I paid for the ability to bring up pitcher’s game logs. Now I cannot even find it!!!
You should be able to find the game log in the sidebar on desktop?
The mobile version was fixed and it’s now once again very easy to find commonly used features in the “Quick Links” section, such as Game Logs. And once you click Game Logs on the mobile site, you get contextual links directly below it which makes it easy to toggle between MLB/Minors, change stat selection, etc. Thank you for that!
However: is there a reason not to make the same changes for the desktop version? Or at least make it an option that we can turn on in settings? The current desktop layout makes it clunky trying to toggle between those different settings because they’re up at the top left of the page and we have to search through contextually irrelevant links. And there’s still wasted space at the top of the page for those 3 data blocks, which as far as I can tell still can’t be disabled. Using that new mobile “Quick Links” section on the desktop layout would take up very little space and be a huge improvement.