Baseball Reference Adds Negro Leagues Statistics, Rewriting Its Record Book

M.L.B. is still working to incorporate Negro league statistics, but a popular website now lets fans put some of the numbers in context.

On Monday, Baseball Reference, the go-to source on the internet for such matters, would have told you that Stan Musial led the major leagues with a .357 batting average in 1943. It also would have said numerous pitchers took a turn leading the majors in strikeouts per nine innings between 1927 and 1945, and that the top three batters in career adjusted on-base-plus-slugging percentage were Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Barry Bonds. A day later, all of that looks much different. Now, Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays has surpassed Musial with a .466 average in 1943. Satchel Paige, a dominant pitcher for more than 20 seasons, has taken over eight of those strikeout titles. And Oscar Charleston, perhaps the finest all-around player in Negro leagues history, has bumped Bonds for the third-best career mark in adjusted O.P.S. “A lot of new books on baseball trivia will be coming out in the next few years,” Sean Forman, the founder and president of Sports Reference, joked on a video call ahead of his baseball site’s announcement on Tuesday that it had dramatically changed and expanded its accounting of the Negro leagues. The move comes ahead of Major League Baseball’s own plans to incorporate the statistics into their historical record, which could happen this coming off-season.