A Fond Farewell to The Baseball Gauge
February 3, 2021 by Mike Lynch · 17 Comments
Hello, friends and fellow Seamheads. As some of you have noticed our partner site, The Baseball Gauge, is no longer around. This has been in the works for a while, but only because our good friend and genius behind the goodness that was The Baseball Gauge, Dan Hirsch, has moved on to bigger and better things.
He was hired by Baseball-Reference.com and a lot of his work on The Baseball Gauge will eventually be featured there or already has been. We’ll miss his site and working with Dan, appreciate his design and valuable contributions to our databases, and wish him nothing but the best.
Well crap. The Baseball Gauge was one of the best baseball web sites ever.
Oh no! Is there any other site on the web that publishes win shares?
Not that I’m aware of but B-R.com might add them eventually.
I couldn’t agree more which is why I reached out to Dan when I first discovered his site and asked if he wanted to join forces. I’m going to miss The Baseball Gauge as much as anyone.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! The Gauge was my favorite website, yes, even over B-Ref, and here’s why:
1) It had links to other websites that B-Ref doesn’t
2) It listed Win Shares that B-Ref doesn’t
3) It listed defensive metrics using Michael Humphrey’s DRA which B-Ref doesn’t
4) On B-Ref when you try to sort players all time by WAA, for example, it doesn’t let you include both position players and pitchers on the same list. There’s a list for position players, there’s a list for pitchers, but never the twain shall meet. The Gauge let you do a list of ALL players combined regardless of position played although you could also sort it by position.
5) It let you sort players not by where they were born, which B-REF does, but by where they went to high school, a much better look at what states are producing talent wise.
The Gauge was SOOOOOOOOOO MUCH better than B-Ref in a lot of ways. To lose this data is a disaster!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There’s been a death in the family…..
The Baseball Gauge was a terrific site with a layout that was SECOND TO NONE.
Please, for those in the know and the power to do so, please do what you can to bring it back.
I was working on a project involving selecting All Stars for a pretend game from the start of the American League until the very first All Star Game. I was just starting, got to about 1905 or so, and dang, The Gauge went away.
Please bring it back! — Joe Garrison, Williamsport PA
Sorry, Joe, but The Baseball Gauge is now owned by Sports Reference and I doubt they’ll bring it back. I know they plan on incorporating some of Dan’s work into Baseball-Reference.com, but I have no idea what data or when.
I NEED my baseball Gauge Fix! I can’t find it anywhere at Baseball Refrence!
I’m having STATHEAD withdreawl pains!
AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There should be a Baseball Gauge page over on Baseball Reference if you ask me. There is nothing like asking a sorting question and having the answers come out with the players stationed on the page shaped like a baseball diamond. That was so pleasing to the eye. And the whole site was very very user friendly.
The feature I miss about Baseball Gauge was the way you could select two yearly endpoints and then see the combined team standings for either the AL, the NL, or MLB as a whole. That was an incredibly valuable tool for evaluating both leagues and franchises and seeing how they evolved over time. If Baseball-Reference has anything like it, I sure as hell can’t figure out where it is.
Awww, The Baseball Gauge was such an amazing resource for uniform identification. Every single team page showed which uniform was worn for that year. Invaluable in my line of work and that feature hasn’t made it into baseballreference yet. The Baseball Gauge will be surely missed
If I didn’t know better I’d guess that baseball reference shut down baseball gauge because they didnt want that kind of free-based competition out there. reference may or may not have any interest in showing the kind of information baseball gauge provided but they definitely have even less interest in letting a competitor show that information out there FOR FREE. With Dan in the fold now reference can charge for that kind of information on an ad hoc basis. That’s how business works.
Win Shares should not be behind a paywall.
It’s a terrible shame that Sports Reference LLC purchased The Baseball Gauge and took all its free content offline. I have contacted the people at Baseball-Reference.com several times to see if The Baseball Gauge content will be put back online. Each time I get told that very few customers have expressed interest in getting that content put back online. Bummer.
I find their response difficult to believe. I know a ton of people, including myself, that would kill to have the Baseball Gauge back.
You guys are right. I’m one of probably many tbousands who haven’t said a word but who have been disappointed in the end of Baseball Gauge and in Sports Reference’s failure to have resumed providing its information — especially the Win Shares data. While I felt their version of Win Shares was somewhat inferior to Bill James’ own version, it was very very good, and the format of the site permitted usage of the data that wasn’t possible elsewhere.
Just a quick check back. I still miss this site. Here’s hoping a stortable Win Shares Database is in the works.