Companion Anniversary Update
Welcome to the new 9 Innings Companion!
To celebrate one year since I published the Companion, I put together the biggest update the site has ever seen! This post has all the details. I've tried to keep it succinct. Use the Table of Contents to jump to the changes that interest you.
First off: If anything appears to be broken, try clearing your cache or hard-refreshing the page (click here to find out how) .
If that doesn't solve the issue, please report it as a bug via my Contact Me form .
Support the Companion!
I spent more than 100 hours over the past 7 weeks working on this update. If you find the Companion useful, please consider sending a few bucks my way! Every bit helps me dedicate the time and resources to improve this site.
UI Update
This one is hard to miss. The Companion's UI has been completed updated with a new color theme, layout, and site structure.
I have always focused on providing useful functionality over flashy looks. My time is finite. If I have to choose between building a new feature or updating the look and feel of an existing one, I'll built something new.
But it's about time the Companion got a makeover, and that is a big focus of this update.
Sticking with the dark-mode vibe, I threw in more color and some nice header graphics to differentiate each section of the site.
Site Sections
When I started the Companion, I only had a handful of features so it was easy to fit everything in the navbar. As the site grew, the nav became more cluttered. To resolve this, I've split up the site into three main sections: Player Registry , Resources , and Tools .
As you can see, each section has its own icon and link in the nav. From there you can navigate to the section's main page and dive into related content and tools.
Registry Improvements
The Player Registry is the flagship feature of the Companion. It's by far the most-used part of the site, but it hadn't received a significant update since I published the Companion. As such, I spent quite a bit of effort improving the experience of searching for players.
Search Form
The Registry search form has been redesigned to make it faster to use for the searches people do most often. All of the filters are still accessible, but less-used filters are tucked out of sight unless you're trying to use them.
Most Registry searches filter by at least one team, so I've changed the Team field from a lengthy dropdown to a text field with autocomplete. Just start typing your team's abbreviation and pick it from the list!
On mobile, this redesign means the "Search!" button is now visible from page-load so you don't have to scroll to get to it.
Performance
By re-writing significant portions of the Registry search code, it now loads up to 75% faster and downloads up to 80% less data while still showing the same results!
Player Full-Details Modal
I've improved the Player Full-Details modal (accessible via any link with this icon: ).
It now shows all other years for the player. You can even jump between years without reloading the page! The modal also has a link to the player's Baseball Reference page, in case you want to check out their real-life stats.
Player Card
The player card has been redesigned to be easier to read, particularly in the Sandbox where there are multiple stat lines. On mobile, you can save space by hiding the card body. Just tap the link in the header.
Where applicable, the card also features quick-link buttons pointing to the Full-Details modal ( ) and the Sandbox ( ).
New Feature: Track League Rewards
Ever wonder how frequently you get Diamonds in Regular League, or Vintages / Primes in Master League? With this tool, you can track all of your End-of-Season rewards and see trends over time! The tool generates a chart showing you exactly how many cards of each grade / type you've pulled as well as the current % rate. It even separates Regular and Master League, if you have results from both.
Here's an example of the chart:
This new feature is exclusively available to Patreon supporters with site access. Find it on your Account page.
Don't yet have site-access? Click here to see all the other benefits you receive when you support me on Patreon.
New Features for Logged-Out Users
Companion users without site access are also getting new features in this update: Star Calculator and Best Lineup!
Star Calculator
This tool calculates how many stars you can earn per month for free, based on how much you typically play and how high you typically rank in different game modes.
EDIT: This tool has been removed.
Best Lineup
This tool analyzes the Companion Registry and generates the best lineup for any team, showing you all the different players, their base OVRs, and their aOVRs. Click here to try it out!
Both of these features can be found in the Tools section, and both are likely to see some improvements in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for future updates!
Tracker Pages
The Companion is the only publicly-available resource for Free Agent and Auction history. For a long time, the pages for those two trackers have been fairly spartan. In this update I did a ton of work under the hood to make the data more accessible.
This will allow me to build useful features in the future, such as a search engine or listing appearances on a card's Full-Details modal. This also means tracker pages load faster than before.
One immediate benefit: Each tracker now has a tool to show you how many cards appeared for your team in the last thirty days. This is useful for guessing at whether your team is likely to see a card in FA/Auction soon. You can find the tool in the Data section on each tracker page.
I'll have even more new features for these trackers in the near future!
New Section: Game Guides!
This is a new component of the Resources section. My goal is to create a library of guides that you can use as a reference for specific game mechanics or info.
This section currently contains three guides.
While the BD Guide is largely the same as before, I've added tons of new content to the Special Training Guide including explanations of how distribution works and strategies for how to complete ST faster.
The Grade Increases guide is brand new. It explains how GIs, GI Tickets, and GI Resets work, and answers common questions about how to buy and use the tickets.
I have several more Game Guides already in the works and ideas for even more down the road, so keep an eye out for updates!
Thank you!
Thanks for reading and thanks for coming to my site!
I could not do this without the support of the community and especially without the support of all of my followers on Patreon.
Have I mentioned you can even get exclusive extra features by joining me over there?