Another Thing I'm Thankful For: Baseball Reference

Even before I started writing about the Brewers, I used Baseball Reference a fair amount. Now, though, I use it every day. During the season, I probably use it five or more times each day. If you've ever looked up a stat or refreshed your memory on the history of a player, odds are you've used B-Ref too. B-Ref and some of the other reference sites out there have done an incredible job of taking information that would have taken days or weeks to compile in the past and making it available at your fingertips.

So I'd like to take a moment today to say thank you to B-Ref, and encourage you to do the same. There are a couple of ways to do it:

Subscribe to the BRef Play Index. Easily the single most powerful baseball research tool on the web. Want to know how many Brewer catchers have hit two home runs in a game since the team moved to the NL? They've got it. Or which Brewer team had the most position players with an OPS+ over 100? Got that too. I use Play Index to put together the Thursday Thinker every week. You can have access to that too for $29 annually, and help support B-Ref in the process.

Sponsor a page. If you have a blog to promote, want to help promote this one or simply like making jokes about players, sponsoring a page may be the opportunity you've been waiting for. BCB sponsors a few: Ryan Braun, Yovani Gallardo and Claudio Vargas so far. If you're looking to pick up a page of your own, here's a list of 2009 Brewers who are currently available, sorted by price:

$30

• Mike Cameron
• Jason Kendall

$25

• Josh Butler
• John Axford

$10

• David Riske
• Jesus Colome
• Jorge Julio
• Chris Smith
• Chris Narveson
• Mike Burns
• Carlos Villanueva
• Manny Parra
• Chris Duffy