MLB Officially Incorporates Negro Leagues Player Stats Into Historical Records

By Barry Janoff

May 29, 2024: MLB’s extensive record book has just been rewritten.

Calling it the “first major step that makes the achievements of the players of the Negro Leagues available to fans via the official historical record,” MLB said today it has followed the recommendations of the independent Negro League Statistical Review Committee to incorporate available Negro Leagues numbers into its official historical record.

The official move follows a decision in 2020 that seven different Negro Leagues from 1920-1948 would be recognized as Major Leagues and that their statistics would be considered part of MLB records.

More than 2,300 Negro Leagues players — including three living players who played in the 1920-1948 era: Bill Greason, Ron Teasley and Hall of Famer Willie Mays — are now officially part of a newly integrated database at MLB.com.

The database now combines the Negro Leagues numbers with the existing data from the American League, National League and other Major Leagues from history.

"We are proud that the official historical record now includes the players of the Negro Leagues," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said via the league.

"This initiative is focused on ensuring that future generations of fans have access to the statistics and milestones of all those who made the Negro Leagues possible. Their accomplishments on the field will be a gateway to broader learning about this triumph in American history and the path that led to Jackie Robinson’s 1947 Dodger debut."

The move also came with the backing and support of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

“It’s a big day,” Negro League Museum president Bob Kendrick told Yahoo Sports. “The great thing about it is that we’ve been saying that quite a bit over recent days and weeks as it relates to the Negro Leagues.

“This is the result of a lot of intensive effort by some incredible historians and researchers who have completely dedicated themselves to trying to do something that people thought probably wasn’t possible.”

Negro Leagues produced 37 eventual members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Historians point to Robinson’s integration of MLB as the beginning of the end for the Negro Leagues.

Hall of Famers also including Willard Brown, Roy Campanella, Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, Minnie Miñoso, Satchel Paige and Robinson are among the many players whose career statistics will now officially include their accomplishments in the Negro Leagues.

“Shortened Negro League schedules, interspersed with revenue-raising exhibition games, were born of MLB’s exclusionary practices,” John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball, who chaired the Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee, said via MLB.

“To deny the best Black players of the era their rightful place among all-time leaders would be a double penalty.”

Among the significant changes, Hall of Famer Josh Gibson, who played for the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, is now MLB’s all-time leader in batting average, slugging percentage and OPS and holds the all-time single-season records in each of those categories.

Gibson’s .466 average for the 1943 Homestead Grays is now the highest mark in Major League history, followed by Charlie “Chino” Smith’s .451 mark for the 1929 New York Lincoln Giants.

Both of these averages eclipse the previously recognized record held by Hall of Famer Hugh Duffy (.440, 1894 Boston Beaneaters).

Gibson, with a career .372 average in the revised official stats, is now also the all-time MLB batting champion, surpassing Hall of Famer Ty Cobb’s long-standing .367.

Four slugging percentage marks now eclipse Barry Bonds’ .863 mark with the 2001 Giants. The top spot now belongs to Gibson (.974, 1937 Homestead Grays), followed by Hall of Famer Mule Suttles (.877, 1926 St. Louis Stars), Gibson (.871, 1943 Grays) and Smith (.870, 1929 Lincoln Giants).

Experts estimate that the available Negro Leagues records between 1920-1948 are nearly 75% complete. Future findings by the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database and other baseball researchers may result in additional modifications to the game’s all-time leaderboards.

“Stories, folklore and embellished truths have long been a staple of the Negro Leagues narrative,” Larry Lester, a Baseball historian and Negro Leagues expert who served on the Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee, said via MLB.

“Those storylines will always be entertaining, but now our dialogues can be quantified and qualified to support the authentic greatest of these athletes. Every fan should welcome this statistical restitution towards social reparation.”

The seven leagues are: the Negro National League (I) (1920-31), Eastern Colored League (1923-28), American Negro League (1929), East-West League (1932), Negro Southern League (1932), Negro National League (II) (1933-48) and the Negro American League (1937-48).

This first release of the MLB database also includes independent teams that formerly played within a Negro League and subsequently returned. The database includes not only these clubs’ won-lost records as independents, against league opponents, but also their players’ statistics.

According to MLB, when the decision in 2020 was made to include the Negro Leagues, MLB and its official statistician, the Elias Sports Bureau, had to complete a review process of the Seamheads data, and MLB and Seamheads had thorough and detailed discussions over how the data would be utilized.

MLB built upon the Seamheads database with the help of Retrosheet, an organization that computerizes Major League games from prior to 1984.

A 16-member Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee was formed to determine, among other things, what minimum standards would be put in place for Negro Leagues players to qualify for season or career leaderboards.

“The Negro Leagues were a product of segregated America, created to give opportunity where opportunity did not exist,” said Lester. “As Bart Giamatti, former commissioner of Baseball, once said, ‘We must never lose sight of our history, insofar as it is ugly, never to repeat it, and insofar as it is glorious, to cherish it.’”

Earlier this month, MLB and the MLB Players Assn. said they have expanded existing financial assistance programs to support living Negro Leagues players.

Under this joint initiative, players who played in fewer than four seasons in the Negro Leagues will now receive an annual financial benefit based on their time in the Negro Leagues.

The program is intended to complement the Major League Baseball Players Pension Plan and the existing non-vested benefits programs for former players, both of which are jointly administered by MLB and the MLBPA.

An updated full data base can be found here.

Historical Move: Negro Leagues Become Part Of MLB

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