SportStrata
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About SportStrata

SportStrata is a free sports statistics site for MLB, the NFL, college football, college basketball, the NBA and the WNBA. It is an independent project, built and run by one person. It has no ads, no paywall, and every page works without an account. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any league, team or data provider.

Where the data comes from

Every number on the site is read from the sources below or computed from them; nothing is typed in by hand. Scores and stats belong to their respective owners. Standings, the home page and live game pages show when their data was last fetched ("Updated 2m 10s ago"), and live pages poll again on their own.

MLB

  • MLB Stats API: scores, schedules, box scores, play-by-play, standings, rosters and season stats.
  • Baseball Savant: Statcast percentile rankings and pitch data.

NFL

  • ESPN: scores, standings, stat leaders, game summaries, win probability and the betting lines shown on game previews.
  • Sleeper: player pool, average draft position, depth charts, injury status and add/drop trends for the fantasy tools.
  • nflverse: Next Gen Stats, plus standings, leaders and teams when ESPN is unreachable (CC-BY 4.0).

College football

  • ESPN: scores, rankings, standings, stat leaders, players and game summaries.

College basketball

  • ESPN: scores, rankings, standings and game summaries.

NBA

  • ESPN: scores, standings, stat leaders, players and game summaries.
  • balldontlie: win-loss standings when ESPN is unreachable.

WNBA

  • ESPN: scores, standings, stat leaders, players and game summaries.

How the MLB playoff odds work

The DIV% and OCT% columns on MLB standings come from a Monte Carlo simulation that runs in your browser:

  1. Each team's strength is its Pythagorean win percentage (runs scored and allowed, exponent 1.83), regressed 30% toward .500 because early-season samples are small.
  2. Each remaining game's win probability uses Bill James's log5 formula on the two strengths, plus 3.5 points for the home team, held between 25% and 75%.
  3. The rest of the schedule is played out 4,000 times. Each run takes 3 division winners and 3 wild cards per league; DIV% and OCT% are the share of runs in which a team won its division or made the field.

Known simplification: ties are broken at random, not by MLB's head-to-head tiebreakers.

How the power rankings work

Power rankings in every sport use a Simple Rating System (SRS): a team's rating is its average scoring margin, adjusted for the ratings of the teams it played, solved iteratively until the ratings settle.

  • Margins are capped (8 runs in MLB, 20 points in the NBA and WNBA, 24 in the NFL and college basketball, 28 in college football) so a blowout counts no more than a decisive win.
  • Home-field advantage is removed first: 2.5 points in the NFL, college football, college basketball and the NBA, 2 in the WNBA, none in MLB.
  • Recent games count more, with weights that halve every 22 to 50 days depending on the sport.
  • Teams with no common opponents yet are rated within their own group, not against a league average that doesn't connect them.
  • In the first weeks of the NFL and college football seasons, each team's rating is blended with its own regressed rating from last season (computed the same way, never a poll), so one game doesn't decide the order.

How SportStrata Stories are written

SportStrata Stories are short data analyses written with AI assistance from SportStrata's own numbers, under the byline SportStrata Data Desk. Every number in a story is listed, with the exact source it came from, in a data file linked at the end of the story, and an automated check refuses to publish a story with a number that isn't in that file. Stories analyze numbers rather than report news; a story may link the news event that prompted it. Each story carries this disclosure: "Written with AI assistance from SportStrata's own data; every number above is listed with its source in this story's data file."

Contact

Corrections, data questions, press and partnerships: [email protected]. If a number looks wrong, send the page link and it will be checked against the source.

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