The Lahman Baseball Database 2012 Version Release Date: December 31, 2012 ---------- 0.1 Copyright Notice & Limited Use License This database is copyright 1996-2013 by Sean Lahman. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For details see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ For licensing information or further information, contact Sean Lahman at: seanlahman@gmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 0.2 Contact Information Web site: http://www.baseball1.com E-Mail : seanlahman@gmail.com If you're interested in contributing to the maintenance of this database or making suggestions for improvement, please consider joining our mailinglist at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/baseball-databank/ If you are interested in similar databases for other sports, please vist the Open Source Sports website at http://OpenSourceSports.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.1 Introduction This database contains pitching, hitting, and fielding statistics for Major League Baseball from 1871 through 2012. It includes data from the two current leagues (American and National), the four other "major" leagues (American Association, Union Association, Players League, and Federal League), and the National Association of 1871-1875. This database was created by Sean Lahman, who pioneered the effort to make baseball statistics freely available to the general public. What started as a one man effort in 1994 has grown tremendously, and now a team of researchers have collected their efforts to make this the largest and most accurate source for baseball statistics available anywhere. (See Acknowledgements below for a list of the key contributors to this project.) None of what we have done would have been possible without the pioneering work of Hy Turkin, S.C. Thompson, David Neft, and Pete Palmer (among others). All baseball fans owe a debt of gratitude to the people who have worked so hard to build the tremendous set of data that we have today. Our thanks also to the many members of the Society for American Baseball Research who have helped us over the years. We strongly urge you to support and join their efforts. Please vist their website (www.sabr.org). This database can never take the place of a good reference book like The Baseball Encyclopedia. But it will enable people do to the kind of queries and analysis that those traditional sources don't allow. If you have any problems or find any errors, please let us know. Any feedback is appreciated ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.2 What's New in 2012 There has been significant cleanup in the master file MLB's addition of wildcard games in 2012 adds two new types of records to the post-season files. The abbreviations ALWC and NLWC are used to denote each league's wild card game. Added the MLB "Comeback Player of the Year" award to the awards table Florida Marlins changed their name to the Miami Marlins, new team abbr is MIA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.3 Acknowledgements Much of the raw data contained in this database comes from the work of Pete Palmer, the legendary statistician, who has had a hand in most of the baseball encylopedias published since 1974. He is largely responsible for bringing the batting, pitching, and fielding data out of the dark ages and into the computer era. Without him, none of this would be possible. For more on Pete's work, please read his own account at: http://sabr.org/cmsfiles/PalmerDatabaseHistory.pdf Two people have been key contributors to the work that followed, first by taking the raw data and creating a relational database, and later by extending the database to make it more accesible to researchers. Sean Lahman launched the Baseball Archive's website back before most people had heard of the world wide web. Frustrated by the lack of sports data available, he led the effort to build a baseball database that everyone could use. Baseball researchers everywhere owe him a debt of gratitude. Lahman served as an associate editor for three editions of Total Baseball and contributed to five editions of The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia. He has also been active in developing databases for other sports. The work of Sean Forman to create and maintain an online encyclopedia at "baseball-reference.com" has been remarkable. Recognized as the premier online reference source, Forman's site provides an oustanding interface to the raw data. His efforts to help streamline the database have been extremely helpful. Most importantly, Forman has spearheaded the effort to provide standards that enable several different baseball databases to be used together. He was also instrumental in launching the Baseball Databank, a forum for researchers to gather and share their work. Since 2001, these two Seans have led a group of researchers who volunteered to maintain and update the database. A handful of researchers have made substantial contributions to maintain this database in recent years. Listed alphabetically, they are: Derek Adair, Mike Crain, Kevin Johnson, Rod Nelson, Tom Tango, and Paul Wendt. These folks did much of the heavy lifting, and are largely responsible for the improvements made in the last decade. Others who made important contributions include: Dvd Avins, Clifford Blau, Bill Burgess, Clem Comly, Jeff Burk, Randy Cox, Mitch Dickerman, Paul DuBois, Mike Emeigh, F.X. Flinn, Bill Hickman, Jerry Hoffman, Dan Holmes, Micke Hovmoller, Peter Kreutzer, Danile Levine, Bruce Macleod, Ken Matinale, Michael Mavrogiannis, Cliff Otto, Alberto Perdomo, Dave Quinn, John Rickert, Tom Ruane, Theron Skyles, Hans Van Slootenm, Michael Westbay, and Rob Wood. Many other people have made significant contributions to the database over the years. The contribution of Tom Ruane's effort to the overall quality of the underlying data has been tremendous. His work at retrosheet.org integrates the yearly data with the day-by-day data, creating a reference source of startling depth. It is unlikely than any individual has contributed as much to the field of baseball research in the past five years as Ruane has. Sean Holtz helped with a major overhaul and redesign before the 2000 season. Keith Woolner was instrumental in helping turn a huge collection of stats into a relational database in the mid-1990s. Clifford Otto & Ted Nye also helped provide guidance to the early versions. Lee Sinnis, John Northey & Erik Greenwood helped supply key pieces of data. Many others have written in with corrections and suggestions that made each subsequent version even better than what preceded it. The work of the SABR Baseball Records Committee, led by Lyle Spatz has been invaluable. So has the work of Bill Carle and the SABR Biographical Committee. David Vincent, keeper of the Home Run Log and other bits of hard to find info, has always been helpful. The recent addition of colleges to player bios is the result of much research by members of SABR's Collegiate Baseball committee. Salary data has been supplied by Doug Pappas, who passed away during the summer of 2004. He was the leading authority on many subjects, most significantly the financial history of Major League Baseball. We are grateful that he allowed us to include some of the data he compiled. His work has been continued by the SABR Business of Baseball committee. Thanks is also due to the staff at the National Baseball Library in Cooperstown who have been so helpful -- Tim Wiles, Jim Gates, Bruce Markusen, and the rest of the staff. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Dave Smith and the folks at Retrosheet. There is no other group working so hard to compile and share baseball data. Their website (www.retrosheet.org) will give you a taste of the wealth of information Dave and the gang have collected. The 2012 database beneifited from the work of Ted Turocy and his Chadwick baseball Bureau. For more details on his tools and services, visit: http://chadwick.sourc