Sean Lahman donates Lahman Baseball Database to SABR
OCTOBER 8, 2024 — Sean Lahman has graciously agreed to donate the Lahman Baseball Database, an open source collection of historical baseball statistics, to SABR.
The Lahman Baseball Database — which Lahman created in 1996 and has made freely available online every year since then — contains complete batting and pitching statistics back to 1871, plus fielding statistics, standings, team stats, managerial records, postseason data, and more. While Lahman and others had previously released smaller datasets online, his database allowed researchers to perform complex queries across the entire history of the game for the first time. The Lahman Baseball Database has served as the foundation for many popular baseball research projects and simulation games, including Out of the Park Baseball and Baseball Mogul.
SABR plans to continue to update the database and make it available for free online every year at SABR.org/lahman-database.
“The Lahman Baseball Database is a keystone in our community and we’re incredibly grateful to Sean for trusting SABR to manage a research tool that has aided the work of millions of researchers,” said SABR CEO Scott Bush.
Lahman has worked for SABR since 2011 overseeing database projects, working with the volunteer community on new research, helping them to organize data collections and get new content integrated into SABR databases. He is also responsible for maintaining existing collections and setting data standards.
Lahman works as a communications specialist in upstate New York after an award-winning career as an investigative reporter and data journalist for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the USA Today network. He has served as an editor for a dozen sports reference books, including Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball and The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia. He attended the University of Cincinnati and lives in Rochester, New York.
Originally published: October 8, 2024. Last Updated: October 7, 2024.