Business of Baseball: SABR MLB Team Employee Database Project

A historical database of Major League Baseball team employees is a project of SABR’s Business of Baseball Committee. This initiative offers a new lens into major-league front and back offices, from team owners to ticket sales.

• The MLB Team Employee Database is now available for viewing to all SABR members on the Research Resources page. Browse or search by person, team, or season to learn more about the scope of baseball and business operations.

To accomplish this undertaking, we have relied on SABR volunteers to enter data from information sources, principally team media guides. There are still quite a few team-seasons left to add. If you are interested in helping, please contact Dan Levitt.

If you have interest in a particular team or year, we have sources for a number of un-entered seasons that we can provide electronically. If you do have a source with the relevant information and would be willing to enter it into a spreadsheet, that would be terrific as well. We have a sample spreadsheet we can provide showing the information we include and the format we use.

For those using this database for research purposes, please realize that the information included in the database generally represents the information listed in the staff directory section of team media guides. The positions included in this section occasionally differed among teams and changed over the years. Some team-seasons, for example, included scouts; others might have included beat writers.

The initial version of the database was created by Sean Lahman and Dan Levitt and programmed by Bryan Walko with technical support from Jason Best. Richard Cuicchi and Jerry Gauthier were responsible for numerous entries, sorting out name variations and performing extensive data entry and cleanup. Others with substantial data entry contributions included: Brain Barnes, Mike Bender, Dennis Bidwell, Cliff Blau, Kurt Blumenau, Dennis Degenhardt, Steve Ginader, Vince Guerrieri, Sarah Johnson, and Andrea Long.

Thanks also to Derek Bain, Jacob Benjamin Benabou, Dan Bergman, Dana Berry, Mark Bonino, Paul Brown, Ken Carrano, Ray Danner, Brian Dini, Gabriella Garr, John Green, Leslie Heaphy, Scott Martriree, Matt Mitchell, Ryuta Mochizuki, Paul Moehringer, Mauricio Montenegro, Chad Moody, Sven Muencheberg, Bill Nielsen, Andrew Noe, Andrew North, Elena North, Stan Osowiecki, KaSaundra Peterson, Christine Schaeffer, Kelley Rybak, Michael Scott, Anne Setten, Karly Siegler, Joe Stockmann, Bruce Thompson, Stew Thornley, Joseph Wancho, Mike Webber, Jim Wohlenhaus, and Adam Young.

As we continue to build the database, we will be able to see the evolution of baseball employment over time and also create a record of the individuals who staffed them — a valuable addition to our collective baseball knowledge.