Babe Ruth All-Time RBI's
 

What's the story about Babe Ruth's All-Time RBIs ? Elias doesn't report any RBI's before 1920 ? Then let's get rid of Elias. They stated they are the stats of MLB, but if you go to mlb.com, "The Babe" has 2213 RBI's. So MLB doesn't even use Elias stats !!!! I don't understand this. Does that mean, there were no
RBI's before 1920 if you use Elias ?

Mike- Maybe I'm lazy, but I go with BaseballReference.Com for records and they have Ruth with 2,214 RBIs. They do a lot of excellent research so I trust them.

However, I never can look at the All-Time leaders anymore without wondering what was and what wasn't 'legit'.

That is the real fallout of juicing.

I have really gotten upset with the media not giving Ruth all his RBI. Every report I hear is that A-Rod is now only behind Bonds. Bullcrap, The Babe had over 2200 RBI. :mad:

MLB did not recognize RBI as an official stat until 1920.

They didn't recognize a lot of stats but they're all accounted for. I'm having trouble understanding this one.

I do think it's odd that MLB still has a formal relationship with Elias, because the MLB Network guys only ever seem to quote SABR, Baseball-Reference and RetroSheet for all of their statistics. I agree they should drop Elias, as Elias is not doing the historical research to correct their data, they are just using the old traditionally accepted statistics that made up the Baseball Encyclopedia and Total Baseball, both of which just compiled stats from existing compilations of stats.

Effectively, those have become the Abner Doubleday of statistics, based on assumptions and just accepted, because who has the time to actually confirm all those numbers? Oh yeah, SABR and RetroSheet!

Simple explanation - $

For Elias, sure. What does MLB get out of it? Is it Elias that records all of the stats at the games, or is that all done by MLB itself?