Reviewing Stathead, the Successor to Play Index

Play Index is dead. Long live Stathead.

A little over a week ago, Baseball-Reference announced its successor to Play Index, their super powerful search tool. Much like the site itself, Play Index has been a revolution in baseball information gathering. With a subscription, you could customize any search of their vast database to scratch practically any baseball trivia itch. For example, there are just two ways to discover that Joe Gordon is the only second baseman in history to ground into a double play in five consecutive games: search Play Index or pore over nearly every box score ever.

Play Index has been heaven-sent for those of us obsessed with baseball facts and figures. It's a tall order to ask its replacement- Stathead- to prove worthy (while overcoming baby duck syndrome). Let’s dig into some of the pros and cons.

Search Features

By necessity, function will always be more important than form for any search tool like Play Index or Stathead, so we’ll start with what matters most. All of the searchability of Play Index has been carried over to Stathead. When the change was announced, many Play Index subscribers lost their breath momentarily, but seeing all of the familiar search modes brings a sigh of relief.

On the front page, you can choose from season and career, game, split, streak, and event finders. Other tools, such as game results and team comparisons, are a little further down. It’s great to see that Stathead does everything Play Index could do; any loss in functionality would have been unacceptable. However, if you’re looking for any new search features, such as more extensive defensive stat searches, you’ll be disappointed. There’s nothing new and improved about the queries you can create. Moving to a new site should allow room for growth in the future, so we’ll have to keep an eye open for updates.

Layout

While Stathead’s search features may be mostly identical to Play Index, its layout yields many welcome changes. The most obvious difference is that Stathead is its own website, rather than a subsection of Baseball-Reference. On the top of any Sports-Reference page, you can easily navigate between baseball, basketball, hockey, or any of their other subsidiaries. Now, Stathead has joined this search bar, making it reachable with one click from anywhere in the Sports-Reference universe. Each has its own color (red for baseball, blue for college football, and so on), and Stathead is adorned in purple. This further signifies its ascension in prominence and differentiation from Baseball-Reference.

Stathead’s variety of search modes are laid out clearly and brightly, which is a big improvement from the cluttered Play Index home screen. Choose one, and you can see even more dramatic layout differences. The search criteria used to take up the entire page on Play Index, and was arranged rather haphazardly. It took some getting used to in order to find what you need quickly. Stathead has moved all the criteria into a single column on the left side of the page. This streamlined layout is more user friendly.

The best change of all is that the search results are displayed on the same page as the search criteria. If you select batting season and career finder, single-season home run leaders are set as the default and you immediately see 2001 Barry Bonds’ batting line at the top of the results. This allows you to review your criteria while viewing your results, as well as change criteria without hitting the back button.

As soon as you alter any of your criteria, a popup covers part of your results, announcing “You have edited your search criteria,” and prompts you to get results, keep editing your search, or clear changes. While there’s definitely a need to remind people that their criteria have changed, and the prompts are helpful, the popup can get annoying. It would be better if it was translucent so you could still see results, or a little less obtrusive. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter very much; you can simply ignore it and proceed with your query.

Room to Grow

While any new website layout requires some adjustment, the new look of Stathead represents a significant overall improvement over Play Index. Furthermore, having a stand-alone site will allow the Sports-Reference team to spread their wings even more. For now, Stathead is just for baseball, but Play Index from other sports will surely be incorporated in time.

If you do not subscribe to Stathead, you can still play around with all of the search features… but you won’t see the top ten results. Subscriptions cost $8 per month, and the first month is free. (Existing Play Index subscriptions have been carried over to Stathead.) If you have an interest in the facts, statistics, and minutiae of baseball, it’s well worth the price. All the searchability of Play Index with an improved layout makes Stathead an even better value.