Why MLB added Negro Leagues stats to its records; apologizing to the Cleveland Guardians

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MLB’s record books are integrated, Ken’s Guardians mea culpa, Pedro Grifol might be on the hot seat and we have another installation of advanced stats 101. I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal — welcome to The Windup!

Historic changes

More than 77 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, Major League Baseball is officially recognizing and integrating Negro Leagues statistics into its ledgers.

No longer is Ty Cobb (.367) the all-time leader in batting average, nor Babe Ruth (1.164) the king of OPS. Josh Gibson (.372, 1.177, respectively) is the new standard-bearer.

There will indubitably be some hand-wringing about this upturning of baseball’s sacrosanct record books. But Tyler Kepner does a phenomenal job of explaining the intricate process of integration and makes some great points as to the validity of the decision.

• While some might argue that Negro Leagues’ shortened schedules led to numbers that didn’t stand the test of the brutal triple-digit schedules of MLB seasons, baseball did count the stats from the shortened 60-game 2020 season (among others). And while barnstorming games weren’t counted, their toll on players’ bodies — not to mention the more arduous living conditions for Black players during segregation — was real. It’s not as if their endurance wasn’t put to the test.

• Further, Black players didn’t choose to play in a separate league but were forced to do so by MLB’s exclusionary decisions. These players competed at the highest level available to them. And MLB’s criteria for inclusion were rigid: If a complete box score wasn’t available, the stats weren’t included.

• Here, for me, is the money quote, by historian Larry Lester, who served on the committee that oversaw this integration: “Critics will say, ‘Well, (Gibson) only played against other Black teams. Well, Babe Ruth never hit a home run off a Black pitcher, and Josh Gibson never hit a home run off a white pitcher.’ … The amount of melanin or the lack thereof does not indicate the greatness of a ballplayer.”

I highly recommend reading Tyler’s article to get a full understanding of the decision and the years-long process it took to ensure they got the numbers right. If you need more explanations about the process, Stephen Nesbitt has you covered. When you’re done with that, here’s Tyler again, examining nine of the most interesting implications of this move.

Ken’s Notebook: Sorry to the Cleveland Guardians

José Ramírez and the Guardians could be the best story of the season. (Ron Chenoy / USA Today)

True confession: I dismissed the Guardians in spring training.

They didn’t know, mind you. It’s not like I announced on X, “I refuse to see the Guardians this spring!” But generally, I don’t get to all 30 teams. The ones I skip are those that demonstrate a seeming indifference to fielding a competitive product, usually evidenced by a lack of offseason spending.

The Guardians’ “big additions,” for the grand sum of $11.45 million, were reliever Scott Barlow (acquired in a trade from the Padres), right-hander Ben Lively and catcher Austin Hedges. They also traded righty Cal Quantrill to the Rockies for a minor-league catcher rather than pay him $6.55 million in arbitration.

This was a team coming off a disappointing 76-86 record in manager Terry Francona’s final season, a team that finished 27th in the majors in runs scored and last in home runs. Granted, the Guardians had a new manager, Stephen Vogt, and new managers are always a story. But heck, I had a relationship with Vogt when he was a player, and figured I would catch up with him later.

I didn’t know what I was missing.

As The Athletic’s Zack Meisel wrote in late February, the Guardians entered the spring intending to transform their offense. More hard contact. More swing and miss, too, if that was the tradeoff for driving the ball more often. Well, look at the Guardians now.

They’re second in the majors in runs per game. They’ve hit 63 home runs — 16 by José Ramírez, 15 by Josh Naylor — putting them more than halfway to last year’s total of 124. Most impressive of all, their 37-18 record is one-half game better than the Yankees for the best in the American League.

All this despite losing staff ace Shane Bieber to Tommy John surgery after only two starts. Reliever Trevor Stephan had Tommy John before the season even started, and two other projected members of the staff, righty Gavin Williams and reliever James Karinchak, have yet to pitch this season.

Not to worry, the bullpen is the Guardians’ foundation — the team, as Meisel pointed out this week, is 32-0 when leading after eight innings and 27-1 when ahead after six. My favorite Guardians stat, though, concerns their performance since losing outfielder Steven Kwan, who was leading the American League with a .353 batting average when he strained his left hamstring on May 4.

With Kwan, the Guardians were 21-12 (.636), averaging 4.97 runs per game. Without him, they’re 16-6 (.727), averaging 5.36 runs per game.

Shame on me for blowing off the Guards. They’re maybe the best story of the season.

Are Pedro Grifol’s days with the White Sox numbered?

I didn’t write about it yesterday, but this quote by White Sox catcher Korey Lee’s quote about his manager Pedro Grifol caught my eye:

“He’s going to feel that way and obviously we have a different feeling.”

Jon Greenberg dug in a little bit on the circumstances (including but not limited to a 4-1 loss to the Orioles on Sunday and Grifol saying “most” of his hitters were “f—— flat” that day) that led to a minor rift between manager and players, comparing Grifol to former Bulls coach Jim Boylen.

This is starting to feel like the end of the line in Chicago for Grifol. It’s not unusual for players and managers to disagree — it’s a long season! It is less common for those sentiments to become public, though. And it’s put-it-in-the-newsletter notable when the manager doubles down the next day, rather than attempting to brush it off as no big deal.

Look, I’ve been wrong before; managers have survived similar instances in the past. Just last year, I was certain the writing was on the wall for Oli Marmol of the Cardinals, based on his spat with outfielder Tyler O’Neill.

But while the Cardinals were a massive disappointment last year, they weren’t 2024 White Sox bad (15-41, 22 1/2 games back). Perhaps more relevant: Marmol didn’t pre-date Cardinals’ president of baseball operations John Mozeliak. But Grifol was hired in November 2022, nine months before owner Jerry Reinsdorf cleaned house, firing Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams and hiring new GM Chris Getz.

It’s one thing to be on the hot seat with a boss whose reputation is partially tied to your hire. It’s another altogether when there’s a new boss whose reputation is tied to how quickly he can turn a capsized ship upright.

Quantifying luck: Your primer on Diff

In yesterday’s Windup, we started a week-long series explaining a few lesser-known stats. Today, let’s piggyback off yesterday’s xwOBA explainer to examine a related stat, one Baseball Savant lists as “Diff.”

Like BABIP, Diff is meant to tell you how lucky or unlucky a player has been. But where BABIP fails is by counting all contact as equal. If Levi Weaver and Giancarlo Stanton each make contact with the same number of pitches, one should not expect the results to be remotely similar.

Calculating Diff is easy: Subtract the xwOBA from the wOBA and voila! That’s Diff.

So who’s leading the league? Here are the three luckiest and unluckiest players in baseball (ahead of last night’s games):

So why do we care about “luck” stats?

Let’s say you work in a team’s front office (or, more likely, you have a fantasy baseball team). You need a first baseman, and two players are available:

• PLAYER A: .280/.351/.458 (.809 OPS), .355 wOBA
• PLAYER B: .262/.357/.455 (.812 OPS), .355 wOBA

Similar! But if you dig into the expected stats, Player A (Connor Joe of the Pirates) has a .303 xwOBA, meaning his Diff is +.052, while Player B (Christian Walker of the D-Backs) has a .385 xwOBA for a Diff of -.030.

You probably didn’t need this explainer to tell you that Christian Walker would be the safer bet, but Diff is a useful piece of the puzzle.

Just for fun, here are the luckiest and unluckiest single seasons of the Statcast era (2015-present), not counting the shortened 2020 season (since “luck” stats tend to normalize over larger samples).

• 2023: TJ Friedl (CIN): .064
• 2019: Logan Morrison (MIN): -.060

Handshakes and High Fives

Sam Blum and Cody Stavenhagen got reactions from a few folks around the game after Angel Hernandez’s retirement.

Jeremiah Estrada, who the Padres claimed off waivers from the Cubs in November, has set an expansion-era record for most consecutive strikeouts, at 13.

Shohei Ohtani, moonlighting as the best hitter in the game while recovering from UCL surgery, is throwing from 60 feet as he works his way back to the mound.

Mets owner Steve Cohen wants to build a casino on the Citi Field parking lot. It’s not going well for him (or his team).

On the Rates & Barrels podcast, DVR and Eno react to Ronald Acuña Jr.’s second ACL tear and explain what it means for the Braves and fantasy owners.

Fabian Ardaya tells us how the Dodgers are, as a pitching staff, implementing the sinker (with great success).

We’ve talked a lot about the surprising success of Boston’s pitching, but the Red Sox defense has been awfully good lately, too.

Scott Boras spoke about Juan Soto and said the word “centurion” sooo many times.

You can buy tickets to every MLB game here.

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(Top photo of Josh Gibson: Mark Rucker/ Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)