Josh Gibson’s Place in History: A Statistical Analysis

Had he been able to play a 154-game schedule every season, Josh Gibson would own many more hitting records than he already has. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

 

In 1972, Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard became the first players inducted into the Hall of Fame who had never played for the American or National Leagues. At the time, the Negro Leagues in which they played were not yet recognized as major leagues. That recognition would come after painstaking efforts to rebuild much of the Negro Leagues historical statistical record, resulting in Major League Baseball’s (MLB) announcement that it would recognize seven leagues that operated from 1920 to 1948.1 On May 29, 2024, MLB announced that it had integrated Negro League statistics into its statistical database.2

Various surveys have ranked Josh Gibson among baseball’s all-time greats; however, those surveys were based on what were then unofficial statistics. Now that his Negro League statistics are officially major league statistics, it is time to revisit his career.

GIBSON’S MAJOR LEAGUE CAREER

Josh Gibson’s story has been told many times, but not from the perspective of his being a bona fide major leaguer. This section summarizes Gibson’s major league career.

Except for one major-league game, Josh Gibson’s first three professional seasons were with teams unaffiliated with a league: the Homestead Grays (HG) in 1930 and 1931, and the Pittsburgh Crawfords (PC) in 1932. The Crawfords joined the Negro National League (NNL) in 1933, making it Gibson’s “rookie” season, although he was with the same team and played mostly the same opponents as the previous seasons. It was arguably the greatest rookie season of all time. Gibson led the league in virtually every offensive category, and missed the batting championship and a Triple Crown by just .003. He was with the Crawfords through 1936, followed by three full seasons with the Grays, which had joined the second Negro National League (NN2) in 1935. Gibson then spent almost all of 1940 and all of 1941 outside of major league baseball, in the Mexican League. He played with the Grays again from 1942 to 1946. He died of a stroke at age 35 in January 1947, mere months before Jackie Robinson broke the AL/NL color barrier.

In all, Gibson had 12 full seasons and two “cups of coffee” in the major leagues. His major league hitting summary is shown in Table 1.

Table 1 is filled with “black ink,” a slang term for league-leading stats. In his 12 full major-league seasons, Gibson led the league in home runs 11 times, missing the home run title in 1942 by one dinger. He led the league in RBIs seven times and in batting average three times, garnering Triple Crowns in 1936 and 1937. Gibson lost the Triple Crown in 1943 to Tetelo Vargas (.471 BA, the all-time major league record), despite batting .466, which is the second-best all-time.3 Gibson led the league in SLG nine times, in OPS and OPS+ eight times, and in OBP seven times. Barry Bonds’ .863 SLG in 2001, the AL/NL record, pales in comparison to Josh’s .974 SLG in 1937. His OPS and OPS+ in 1937 and 1943 are both in the top two all-time.

 

 

Only Babe Ruth led his league more times in home runs and in SLG. Gibson’s 1937 and 1943 seasons are among the most dominant ever. He never had an “off” season. Josh Gibson was an offensive juggernaut.

FACTORS LIMITING NEGRO LEAGUE STATISTICS

Table 1 also shows how few games were played in the NNL compared to the AL/NL. Negro Leagues team owners had to cope with scheduling issues, financial issues, and, frequently, lack of available venues to play. Teams played numerous non-league games to supplement their income. For instance, in 1933 Josh played 137 games for the Crawfords, only 68 of which were league games.4 The rest were against independent and semipro teams. According to Negro Leagues scholar Larry Lester, “They [Negro Leagues teams] were playing probably 150 to 175 games a year.”5

The Negro Leagues also suffered from poor or nonexistent record keeping, especially during the Depression, which encompassed most of Gibson’s career. The only documentation available for many league games is the final score, and perhaps an article or two in a local newspaper.6 For example, the 1937 Homestead Grays finished the season with a 45–18–1 record (one tie). No hitting stats have been found for at least 12 of those games and no pitcher of record for 12. Missing statistics greatly complicates the comparison of Negro League and AL/NL statistics.

Because of these factors, Gibson’s raw major-league career numbers greatly undersell his accomplishments. What numbers would he have posted had his teams played a 154-game season, the standard AL/NL season in his era?

GIBSON’S STATISTICS IN A 154-GAME SEASON

To answer that question, Gibson’s numbers need to be “scaled up.” Scaling up baseball statistics is fraught due to two factors. Firstly, a full season will result in far more wear and tear on a player’s body than a partial season. Secondly, due to a statistical phenomenon known as “regression to the mean,” unusually good paces set by a player in some part of a season are unlikely to be sustained over a whole season, as the player’s performance regresses towards his standard performance.

If Negro League statistics regress to the mean, statistical outliers would become less frequent with more plate appearances. To test for this phenomenon, regression analyses were run on the batting averages of all qualified batters from all the 49 Negro League seasons from the seven major Negro Leagues. Fortunately (for statistical purposes), the number of games played by Negro League teams in a season varied by a factor of three or more, resulting in a wide range of plate appearances required to qualify for batting titles. For example, using the current standard of 3.1 plate appearances per game to qualify for a batting title, a hitter on a team that played 36 league games would qualify with just 112 plate appearances (36 x 3.1 = 112), whereas a hitter on a team that played 90 league games would need 279 plate appearances to qualify.

In most cases, increased numbers of plate appearances did not result in Negro League batting averages regressing to the mean. As an example, in the 1933 NNL, 29 hitters qualified for the batting title. As shown in Figure 1, more plate appearances result in higher rather than lower batting averages. Batters with more than 250 PAs were likely to hit over .300, whereas batters with less than 150 PAs were likely to hit near the mean of .274—opposite what is expected if the data were regressing to the mean. Thus there is no reason to suspect that Gibson’s .395 batting average that season would have been closer to the league mean had all his 137 games with the Crawfords been league games—or if he had played in a 154-game schedule.

 

 

More plate appearances corresponded with higher batting averages for the 1943 NNL as well. (See Figure 2.) Batters with more than 200 PAs were likely to hit over .300, whereas batters with less than 200 PAs were likely to hit near the mean of .279, again, opposite what is expected if the data were regressing to the mean. Gibson’s .466 batting average appears sustainable over the course of a 154-game schedule. This same effect is seen, to varying degrees, in the datasets for 10 of Gibson’s 12 seasons.

What about Josh himself? Figure 3 plots PAs vs. batting average for Gibson’s 12 full seasons. As seen below, the more PAs, the higher his batting average.

 

 

In 1933, Gibson played in 68 of 73 of the Crawford’s games—93%—a very high percentage compared to an AL/NL catcher.7 After the regular season, he, like many other Negro Leaguers, headed south to play winter ball in warmer climes such as Cuba and Puerto Rico. Ballpark and travel conditions outside of the States often were substandard, leading to more wear and tear on their bodies than their AL/NL counterparts experienced. Yet there is no evidence that wear and tear from playing baseball, from being a catcher, and from the challenges that faced all Negro League players had any deleterious effect on Gibson’s ability to slug the baseball. Therefore, there is no apparent reason why Gibson’s numbers cannot be scaled straight up to a full 154-game season without any adjustments.

Table 2 shows the percentages of league games played by Gibson and the number of games played in a simulated 154-game season.8 The scaling factors were calculated as follows:

 

 

The big increases in games played would result in big increases in his quantitative statistics. The simulated, scaled-up career totals are shown in Table 3.

 

 

Had he been able to play a 154-game schedule, Gibson would own many more records than he already has. With sufficient plate appearances to qualify, he would be the all-time record holder in career BA, SLG, OPS, and OPS+.9 In 1943, he would have set all-time records in runs scored (202) and RBIs (236), and he would have tied the all-time record in 1937 with 119 extra base hits.

WHAT IF GIBSON HAD BEEN A PIRATE?

In 1939 Cum Posey, principal owner of the Homestead Grays, made a deal to sell the contracts of Gibson and Buck Leonard to the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, even though the Pirates lacked a decent catcher for most of the 1930s, Pirates president Bill Benswanger backed out of the deal.10 What if Gibson, who grew up in Pittsburgh, had joined the Pirates in 1939? Better yet, what if there had been no color barrier, and Gibson spent his entire career in a Pirates uniform?

Had he played in the NL, Gibson’s stats likely would have been somewhat reduced. Qualitative evidence strongly suggests that the AL/NL had an overall higher caliber of play than the Negro Leagues. For example, Robert Peterson states that “there is general agreement among men who played in the Negro major leagues that the level of play on the field was equal to that of Triple-A leagues.”11 According to Buck Leonard, “We didn’t have star men at every position. … We had pitchers that we never would have pitched in [major] league games.”12

To understand how he would have fared as a Pirate, Gibson’s numbers need to be adjusted. To adjust the numbers, we look to games in which Negro League players faced white players. This happened in both pre-integration barnstorming tours and in the post-integration AL/NL.

Much has been made about the success of Negro League hitters during barnstorming tours.13 However, in those games the Negro League hitters often faced minor-league pitchers, green rookies, and even non-pitchers.14 Because the white teams didn’t always field their best players against the Negro League teams, the barnstorming data are, at most, qualitative indicators of how Negro League hitters would have fared in the AL/NL.

A better dataset consists of the statistics of the 18 hitters who made the transition from the Negro Leagues to the AL/NL, minimum 100 plate appearances. Table 4, derived from Goldman and Alter, compares these players’ three averages (BA, OBP, and SLG) in the Negro Leagues to their averages in the AL/NL.15

 

 

As shown on Table 4, 17 of the 18 hitters had lower batting averages and OBAs in the AL/NL, and 16 of 18 had lower SLGs. Their aggregate batting averages dropped by 10.7%, their OBAs by 4.2%, and their SLGs by 8.0%. They scored 20.7% fewer runs and had 20.4% fewer RBIs in a set amount of plate appearances. They hit 25% fewer doubles, half as many triples, but 38% more home runs.

Using these numbers to adjust Gibson’s stats is problematic for these and other reasons:

1) A dataset of just 18 batters is very small compared with the number of hitters in Negro League history.

2) 100 PAs is a very low threshold on which to determine usable data.

3) There is a hazard in applying data, almost all of which is from the 1940s and 1950s, to other eras.

Gibson’s scaled-up Negro League statistics were adjusted as follows:

• His batting averages were decreased by 10.7%. His total hits were back-calculated to reflect the decrease in BA.
• His OBAs were decreased by 4.2%.
• His SLGs were decreased by 8.0%. His double and triple totals were adjusted downward to fit the newly-calculated SLG, with a preference given to the downward adjustment of triples.
• His runs scored were reduced by 20.7%.
• His RBI totals were reduced by 20.4%.
• His OPS+ was recalculated using the Pirate’s multi-year Park Factors.

Gibson’s resulting simulated ledger is provided in Table 5.

 

Table 5. John Gibson Pittsburgh Pirates Simulated Statistics

 

Despite the above-described reductions, Gibson’s simulated career stats are impressive. In just 12 seasons, he would have led the NL in SLG 10 times, in home runs, OBA, and OPS+ eight times, in RBIs and OPS seven times, in runs scored four times, in batting average twice, and in hits once. He would have been the season record holder in RBIs (Hack Wilson, forgotten), SLG, and OPS+. His 59 home runs in 1937 would have set the NL record: Joe Medwick would not have come close to winning a Triple Crown. Ted Williams’ .406 average in 1941 would have become a footnote, as Josh’s .416 average in 1943 would have become the enduring brass ring for hitters. He would be tops all-time in OPS+, second all-time to Babe Ruth in SLG, and third all-time to Ruth and Williams in OBA and OPS.

The Pittsburgh Pirates of the 1930s boasted several future Hall of Famers, including Paul Waner, Lloyd Waner, Arky Vaughan, Pie Traynor, and Freddie Lindstrom, and were consistently among the top hitting teams in the National League. The Pirates generally were a first-division team in the 1930s, but didn’t win any pennants. What if Gibson was in the order and had posted the above statistics?

Pittsburgh received meager contributions from its catchers in the 1930s. Collectively, they had between –0.3 and 2.3 WAR per season. With Gibson in place, the Pirates would have had 5.1 to 9.4 more WAR each season from 1933 to 1938. Translating WAR into wins, Josh could have propelled this team to as many as four pennants in those six seasons, as shown in Table 6.

 

Table 6. Simulated Pirates Record, 1933–38, with Gibson

 

If the Pirates had had such success, other teams also would have looked to the Negro Leagues for talent. But the Pirates presumably would have kept their lead in recruiting more Negro League talent, as did the Dodgers after signing Jackie Robinson. In summary, this theoretical exercise—not to be taken literally—illuminates Gibson’s potential impact on the Pirates, if its ownership had possessed the courage to act in its own self-interest.

THE GREATEST CATCHER OF ALL TIME

The standard barroom question goes something like this: ‘Who is the greatest [fill in the blank] of all time?’ In the case of baseball catchers, there is only one answer: Josh Gibson.

Table 7 lists the 19 catchers in the Hall of Fame. Gibson’s career OPS+, both actual and simulated, are more than twice as far above the average as second-place Mike Piazza. Gibson dominates the other HOF backstops in every average, and in home runs and RBIs in his simulated statistics. Regarding the rate of WAR accumulation, there is Gibson, then everybody else. Like his OPS+, Gibson’s WAR accumulation rate, not simulated here, would be only slightly lower for his simulated career line.

 

Career averages include a player’s declining years, which may bias the data towards Gibson, who had just a minor decline towards the end of his career. To get a more complete comparison of their careers, we compared the peak seasons of these immortals.

In all, the 19 Hall of Fame catchers played 309 qualifying seasons in the major leagues. Table 8 summarizes the 20 best of these seasons, as determined by the rate of WAR accumulation.

 

Table 8. Best Seasons by Catchers, WAR/600 PA

 

Josh Gibson had the six best seasons, and nine of the 20 seasons. All 12 of his seasons are in the top 40. Note: Roy Campanella had his highest rate of WAR accumulation in 1945, when he played for the Baltimore Elite Giants in the NN2. Josh’s rate of WAR accumulation that season (8.2) exceeded Campy’s (7.4). When three-time MVP Roy Campanella was at his best, Josh Gibson was better.

Gibson’s fielding prowess is hard to determine because Negro League fielding statistics are sparse and often unreliable. Anecdotes regarding Gibson’s fielding are mixed. Peterson states that “Many maintain that he became a good receiver, but never a great one.”16 Brashler notes that early in his career, Gibson was considered a weak catcher.17 According to his longtime teammate Jimmy Crutchfield, Josh developed into a “good defensive catcher” whose offensive prowess overshadowed his defensive skills.18 Teammate Judy Johnson said, “He was not a Campanella, but … he had a good arm, and he did the job.”19 Campanella himself had high praise for Gibson’s fielding skills, but some feel he was just being deferential.20 In this paper, we conclude that he was a competent, unspectacular backstop.

Fielding should play a secondary role to hitting in ranking Gibson among the all-time greats. Many players who regularly appear on all-time lists, such as Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, and Rogers Hornsby, were not known for their defensive prowess. Catcher is a more critical fielding position than the positions these immortals played. That stated, because his bat was so superior to all other catchers, we place Josh Gibson as number one among all catchers in major-league history.

 

GIBSON OR RUTH?

During his career, Gibson often was portrayed as the “Black Babe Ruth,” to which some would retort that Babe Ruth was the “White Josh Gibson.” Table 9 compares Josh Gibson’s simulated career statistics to those of Babe Ruth, and eight all-time great AL/NL hitters with whom Gibson’s career overlapped.

Even with far fewer at bats, Gibson’s simulated statistics stand robustly compared with these monster hitters. He would have the highest OPS+ and be no lower than fifth for every average. If his stats were scaled up to the same number of plate appearances as Ruth, he would have 701 home runs and almost 2,500 RBIs: Ruthian territory. So the answer to the above questions are Yes and Yes: Gibson was the Black Babe Ruth, and Ruth was the White Josh Gibson.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper demonstrates conclusively that Gibson was the greatest catcher of all time due to his vastly superior offensive accomplishments. His simulated statistics, generated by comparing the success of hitters who played in both the Negro Leagues and the AL/NL, place him among the greatest of the great.

Since their induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame, the Negro League greats often have remained in the dugout in discussions about baseball’s all-time team. Now that Major League Baseball has certified their major-league stats, Josh Gibson and the other Negro League greats must be allowed to come to the plate in the discussion. Let the debates begin! 

BENJAMIN ALTER has been a member of SABR’s Elysian Fields Chapter since 2019. Prior to retiring in 2021, he was a principal and shareholder at an environmental engineering firm. When not indulging his passion for baseball, Ben may be found singing and/or playing the piano, working out at the gym, or writing articles for charitable organizations.

 

Additional Sources

Baseball Reference. Last accessed on May 30, 2024.

Gibson, Sean, 2021. Gibson Family Reflections on the Publication of Baseball Reference’s Negro Leagues Statistics. www.baseball-reference.com/articles/gibson-family-reflections-sean-gibson.shtml.

MLB.com. Josh Gibson page accessed on May 30, 2024.

Murphy, Brian, “Reality of Josh Gibson’s incredible talent transcends even his legend.” MLB.com, May 29, 2024. Last accessed on September 9, 2024.

Retrosheet. Interracial Baseball Prior to Integration. http://retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/Interracial.html. Last accessed on September 9, 2024.

 

Notes

1. Numerous researchers took part in the rebuilding of the record—which is still ongoing—and in advocating for the recognition, including Gary Ashwill, Scott Simkus, Mike Lynch, Kevin Johnson, and Larry Lester, who were among those who worked on the Seamheads Negro League Database, and Todd Peterson, editor of The Negro Leagues Were Major Leagues (McFarland, 2019). See “The Negro Leagues are Major Leagues,” Baseball Reference, updated June 15, 2021: https://www.baseball-reference.com/negro-leagues-are-major-leagues.shtml. SABR’s committee on the subject, convened by president Mark Armour, is continuing to evaluate additional seasons and teams for recognition.

2. There are small differences between the MLB statistics and the statistics posted on Baseball Reference. The MLB statistics are identical for six of Gibson’s 12 full seasons and his two cups of coffee in the major leagues. For the other six seasons, MLB has 87 more at-bats than does B-R, with 19 more runs scored, 8 more home runs, and 18 more RBIs. Gibson’s career BA and OBP differ by just .001 between the two databases; his SLG and OPS are identical. This paper utilizes the statistics posted on Baseball Reference. The analyses and interpretations presented in this paper would not change had the MLB data been used as the basis for the analyses.

3. MLB believes that Vargas did not have sufficient plate appearances in 1943 to qualify for the batting title. It lists Gibson as the batting champion in 1943, and the owner of the highest batting average in major-league history.

4. William Brashler, Josh Gibson: A Life in the Negro Leagues (Ivan R. Dee, 1978, 2000.)

5. Tyler Kepner, “Move Over, Cobb: Gibson Reigns,” New York Times, May 30, 2024.

6. Records of Negro League games are still being unearthed and verified. However, numerous games were never documented and their statistics are lost to history. In addition, it is possible that teams on which Gibson played, which currently do not have major-league status, might achieve major-league status in the future.

7. For example, compare Earl Grace, the Pittsburgh Pirates first-string catcher 1932–37, whose career high was 115 out of 154 games (75%) and who appeared in 93 games in 1933 (60%).

8. Because Negro League statistics often are incomplete, it was assumed that the number of games played by the team is the number of games played by the player who played the most games that season.

9. MLB has a lower threshold for qualifying for the all-time lists for averages than BR. Gibson meets MLB’s lower threshold, and is recognized by MLB as baseball’s all-time leader in batting average, SLG, and OPS.

10. Brashler, Josh Gibson.

11. Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (Oxford University Press, 1970.)

12. Peterson, Only the Ball Was White.

13. Todd Peterson, The Negro Leagues Were Major Leagues: Historians Reappraise Black Baseball (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2019.)

14. Gibson’s own experience on barnstorming tours elucidates this point. Retrosheet has records of seven barnstorming games in which Josh Gibson played. In those games, he batted .455 with four home runs. However, 50% of his plate appearances were against pitchers who either were in the minor leagues, were no longer in organized baseball, or normally played shortstop, as in the case of Tommy Thevenow.

15. Duke Goldman and Benjamin Alter, “Should Negro League Stats and AL/NL Stats Be Combined?” Presented at the Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, June 4, 2022.

16. Peterson, Only the Ball Was White.

17. Brashler, Josh Gibson.

18. Peterson, Only the Ball Was White.

19. Brashler, Josh Gibson.

20. Brashler, Josh Gibson.