On Wednesday, Major League Baseball made the announcement that the MLB database now includes statistics from the Negro Leagues.
In 2020, MLB promoted the statistics of the Negro Leagues to the “major league” tier, citing it as “a longtime oversight in the game’s history.”
Since then, MLB and the Elias Sports Bureau have been collaborating to find a method of integrating them into the league database.
The change caused a stir in the baseball record books. For instance, Satchel Paige went from 28 victories to 125, and Willie Mays has 10 more hits.
However, the greatest baseball player of all time may have changed.
Josh Gibson was his name. Despite Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, he was a brilliant catcher in the Negro League who actually might do it.
However, he’s currently being discussed as the finest player in any league history.
The system’s redesign gave Gibson the records for career batting average (.372, over Ty Cobb’s.367), slugging percentage (.718, above Babe Ruth’s.690), and on-base percentage (.177, above Ruth’s 1.164). His career on-base percentage of.459 is the third-best in history.
