Pre-Modern Era Stats, Myths

[jaybird2001wi]

I was looking at baseball-reference's all-time leaders by team and noticed the Reds have a significant amount of players on the top 10 single-season leaders from pre-modern baseball days (pre-1900) with records that may never be broken like 138 stolen bases in one season.

How reliable are pre-modern stats when baseball statisticians usually utilized newspaper box scores to compile stats before we even had operable radios to listen to games (yes, radios)? Also, there is a great myth of Josh Gibson being the actual Home Run King by belting 900 home runs in the Negro Leagues, but due to the lack of newspaper coverage on Negro League Baseball during the pre-Civil Rights movement, we may never know.

With all of these in mind, now I am starting to understand why media outlets only recognize the post-1900 stats. Will we ever be able to know or find out exactly how many homers Josh Gibson hit? Will we ever be able to validate the reliability of pre-modern era stats? Then again, one argument is the rules have changed since the turn of the 20th century. I believe back then, they called ground rule doubles home runs and had other situations where some offensive stats may have been bloated due to non-uniformity of rules.

[Invader3K]

I think it's been stated somewhat reliably that Gibson's home run totals are probably rather inflated due to unreliable records. The guy was almost like a Paul Bunyan type of figure for Negro League Baseball...certainly a great hitter, but it's doubtful that he actually hit 900 or so home runs, I would think.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Some of the pre-1900 stats just aren't compatible with modern records. There was one year where it took 9 balls to draw a walk. One year where any extra base (going from first to third on a single for example) was considered and recorded as a "stolen base". At one point any ball that struck anywhere in fair territory was fair. There were batters that perfected the ability to stand in the very front of the batter's box and chop a ball down and away, so it would hit in fair territory and then bounce towards where the dugouts would be, which was basically an indefensible hit. At the very early stages of the game, it was considered "unsporting" to hit a ball over the outfield fence, and a homerun was actually frowned upon. There was one or 2 seasons, don't remember, but walks were counted as both a walk and a hit.

 

And then there's the pitching records (600 IP! in a season) which obviously can't be touched. 2 man rotations, coupled with some seasons where throwing overhand was outlawed (not to mention most people didn't throw arm destroying pitches like curves or sliders), and batters being able to call for a "high" strike or a "low" strike.

 

There's so much more, but there's so many differences between then and now that it's a completely different game, and if nothing else, the records could and should be broken down even further by era, as home run hitting didn't really become prevalane until after 1920 (aside from Babe Ruth)

 

For what it's worth, in 1894, the league batting average was .309, and the league averaged 7.36 runs scored per team per game. Philadelphia's team batting average was .349.

[endaround]

Its also really hard to sort out major leagues from minor leagues pre1900