Retrosheet announces Fall 2024 updates
By Tom Thress
Retrosheet is pleased to announce its semi-annual update for Fall 2024 at Retrosheet.org.
Major thanks go out to Joe Callahan for generating the “Games/People/Parks” portion of the website. I would also like to thank Rob Wood for his significant efforts in helping to prepare the data presented here.
New and Updated Data
- 2024. The 2024 season is now available. Thanks to MLB for providing the data here and thanks to Ted Turocy for doing the heavy lifting in converting it to Retrosheet’s event-file format. Event and box-score files are available for download for all 2024 regular-season and postseason games as well as the 2024 All-Star game.
- 1914. Event files, including some deduced files, are now available for all of the 1914 American League, National League, and Federal League seasons. Special thanks to Rob Wood for leading this effort and thanks to our team of deducers: Cliff Blau, Dick Cramer, Jim Herdman, Dave Smith, Wayne Townsend, and Rob Wood.
- One note regarding the 1914 (and 1915) season(s). Retrosheet does not have official daily data for batter strikeouts for the Federal League. Rather than arbitrarily assign strikeouts to batters based on mere whims, we have decided that, in cases where we are not sure exactly which batters struck out in a game, we would make no effort to assign such strikeouts. Instead, these strikeouts are implicitly treated as “out on an unknown play” within these games. Pitcher strikeout totals are still reported within our box-score event (.ebx) files and on our game pages.
- Additional updates. Beyond the 1914 and 2024 seasons, improvements have been made to the game accounts of approximately 650 additional AL, NL, and FL games, through the discovery of new scorecards, new newspaper sources, and a growing number of radio and television accounts that are being made available online. These improvements include the addition of 16 new accounts in 1913 (the only remaining season for which we have released only partial data), the promotion of 23 deduced files to full event files between 1931 and 1953, the removal of 58 games from our most wanted list between 1912 and 1962, and the addition of pitch data for 72 games (between 1965 and 1985). Special thanks to Mike Cantor, Mike Grahek, Wayne Townsend, Jay Wigley, Rob Wood, Bob Yahr, and others for their help in this work. A detailed description of most of these improvements can be found here (this list does not include detailed updates for the 1914 and 2024 seasons and may be incomplete). The file detailing updates is included in the full download available on our home page and described below.
Additional Updates
- Using Retrosheet Data: Since our last major release, Retrosheet has added several sources to its page listings, Resources for Using Retrosheet Data and Websites Using Retrosheet Data. If any of you have or know of a website that you think should be added to either of these pages, please contact Tom Thress below.
- Ballpark firsts and lasts: We have updated the MLB firsts pages for several historical MLB stadiums as well as the new stadiums first used for AL/NL games in 2024 (Gocheok Sky Dome and Rickwood Field). A page has also been created for the MLB lasts in the history of the Oakland Coliseum. Thanks to Jim Herdman for compiling these data.
- Retrosheet has also updated several additional pages since our last major release to add and update historical data based on ongoing research and to include new instances in 2024. These include pages on no-hitters, cycles, alternate site games, suspended games, triple plays, pitch-count mistakes, mid-game umpire changes, non-pitchers on the mound, and replay challenges.
Still to come
- Retrosheet hopes to do one more significant release this calendar year. This release will hopefully include two new Negro League seasons as well as some improvements to the daily log downloads which were introduced this summer. Stay tuned for details.
Thank you to all of Retrosheet’s volunteers. My apologies to any that I failed to identify by name. Retrosheet is always looking for more volunteers. If you would like to help us with any of this work, please reach out to me at the e-mail address below.
TOM THRESS is the president of Retrosheet. He can be contacted at tthress@retrosheet.org.
Originally published: December 3, 2024. Last Updated: December 3, 2024.