Philadelphia Phillies: Baseball-Reference mistakes I found

Baseball-reference.com is an indispensable website, but that didn’t stop me from spotting a few errors that they made regarding the Philadelphia Phillies.

Recently, while doing some research for my article about Rob Ducey and his odd 2000 season when he was (kind of) traded for himself by the Philadelphia Phillies, I went, as I always do, to Baseball-reference.com. It’s basically the gospel of baseball stats, and their sister sites are invaluable for the other major sports. While there, however, I spotted an inconsistency.

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I guess even the experts make mistakes, as I saw a discrepancy in Ducey’s plate appearances because of his two separate stints with the Phillies that year. I don’t need to get into the fine, boring details, but I sent them an email and they responded by thanking me for pointing it out and saying that they had fixed the stats.

Cool, case closed, right?

No. Because, while poking through the annals of recent Phillies history, I noticed a few other problems. Baseball-Reference, you’re on notice. Just how do you explain these?

Warning: attempted humor ahead.

• Chase Utley‘s B-R page is jam-packed with all of his triumphs as a Phil. But at the end of his career, this weird abbreviation that says “LAD” shows up. The site claims that Chase played the last 4 years of his career for LAD, whatever that is, when clearly he only ever played for the Phillies. Nice try, B-R, but every Phils fan knows that Chase was a lifer. He was the freakin’ man. I’m also taking issue with all of the decimals on Chase’s page, which imply less than total success at everything he ever attempted. Get it together, B-R.
• There’s a lot of bold type on Ryan Howard‘s page, and that has to be a mistake. This implies that he won or finished first in something. Rookie of the Year and an MVP Award? Two times leading the league in home runs and three times in RBI? Yeah, ok. Every Phillies fan I know always talks about how much he stunk and only ever struck out. Clearly, they filled in the wrong columns all over the place on his page.
• Looking through the history of Phillies managers, B-R has a guy named Ryne Sandberg listed from 2013-15. I have absolutely no recollection of this person. It’s just another error on the site; maybe they’re getting hacked. Even if this guy did exist, it’s like he just up and disappeared.
• The top of the 2011 Phillies page states that they lost the NLDS to the St. Louis Cardinals. This didn’t happen. That team was a juggernaut.
• Ty Wigginton and Juan Pierre did not play for the Phillies, despite what the site says. Whatever, Baseball-reference.
• I found this guy named Phillippe Aumont. By the numbers they’re showing on the site, he looks like he might have been the worst pitcher in the history of the game. Such a guy can’t possibly exist.
• Lastly, for now, I see that there is a pitcher named Robert Person who allegedly pitched parts of four years with the Phillies. Come on, now. “Robert Person”? That’s the best you could do? What, was he in witness protection and he couldn’t remember what his new identity was actually supposed to be? I guess Guy Incognito was taken.

I’m going to continue my tireless efforts to making sure that the Phillies are correctly represented on Baseball-reference.com going forward. So if you ever suspect that they’ve shortchanged Nick Punto a stolen base or wrongly charged Geoff Geary with a wild pitch when it should have been a passed ball, I’m your guy. Feel free to reach out anytime.