Negro Leagues Data Is Now Available on FanGraphs!

We’re excited to announce that Negro Leagues knowledge is now accessible on the FanGraphs participant pages and leaderboards! As well as, Negro Leagues gamers now have FanGraphs participant pages. All knowledge is supplied by The Seamheads Negro Leagues Database powered by Agate Sort Analysis. Particular thanks are resulting from Gary Ashwill and Kevin Johnson for his or her help as we integrated the info into the location.

The seven Black baseball leagues included in our knowledge mirror these at Baseball Reference and are in step with the suggestions of SABR’s Negro Leagues Job Power and Main League Baseball’s announcement recognizing these leagues as being main leagues.

I extremely suggest the introduction to Baseball Reference’s “The Negro Leagues Are Main Leagues” initiative, in addition to the accompanying articles written by Negro Leagues consultants, relations of gamers, and others, for added context on the Negro Leagues and Black baseball within the early twentieth century extra broadly. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum can also be an amazing useful resource for followers, educators, and researchers hoping to study extra about this important a part of baseball historical past.

Please be aware that stats amassed in Unbiased and non-major Negro Leagues aren’t included in gamers’ WAR calculations and aren’t presently displayed on participant pages. Readers excited by statistics from these leagues can discover them on Seamheads. Moreover, as with Baseball Reference, the newly added Negro Leagues knowledge solely contains league video games, interleague video games (in opposition to main Negro League competitors), and video games in opposition to choose top-level impartial Black baseball groups. Statistics for barnstorming and exhibition video games aren’t included in gamers’ totals. Josh Gibson’s residence run whole is an illustrative instance of the have an effect on this could have. As Jay Jaffe defined in his put up protecting the Negro Leagues knowledge launch at Baseball Reference:

When he was posthumously inducted into the Corridor of Fame in 1972, Gibson’s plaque credited him with hitting “nearly 800 residence runs,” and within the 1994 version of the The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, he was credited with 972. An untold variety of his homers have been hit in exhibitions or non-league video games, which have been an financial necessity for Negro Leagues groups and gamers; solely 1 / 4 to half of the 150 to 200 video games they performed per yr would possibly depend as league video games, as Seamheads’ Gary Ashwill wrote in his accompanying essay, “Constructing the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database.” These exhibition homers aren’t included within the statistics added to Baseball Reference.

All calculations for these leagues, together with WAR, are handled as if these leagues have been a part of our unique main league historic knowledge, with the next exceptions:

– There are some years/leagues for which pitcher residence run allowed knowledge will not be accessible. For these years, we’re solely calculating RA9-WAR and have substituted that for our FIP-based WAR within the “WAR” column. Ought to residence run allowed knowledge turn out to be accessible sooner or later for these years/leagues, we’ll modify accordingly.

– The Fielding part for all Negro Leagues knowledge makes use of Michael Humphrey’s Defensive Regression Evaluation (DRA) calculation versus Sean Smith’s Whole Zone (TZ).

– The park elements for these leagues are presently calculated as impartial. We could revise this sooner or later.

Listed below are the highest gamers by WAR for place gamers amongst those that hung out within the main Negro Leagues:

And listed below are the pitchers: