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Who decided this and why should editors follow this rule? In every other major sport, being a part of the season's roster is enough to receive a ring. What makes baseball reference the supreme law of gatekeeping? Clayton Kershaw is a 2-time champion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Summerfell1978 (talk • contribs) 09:22, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's the easiest to verify? Some players play 10 games for a team in the middle of the season and they can still get a ring if the players choose to give them one. Should a player be called a champion in that instance? The easiest way to do it is by the World Series roster. Nemov (talk) 16:38, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not that it's hard to verify. This, for instance, shows all of the players who appeared in a game for the 2024 Dodgers. It's that we keep the navbox, in this case Template:2024 Los Angeles Dodgers, to the members of the series roster only, and so only put it in their infoboxes. It's not about who gets a World Series ring, since secretaries and other support staff get rings too. That was the thinking among the most involved editors, and the less involved dislike it. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:54, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It was a consensus formed among community members on this talk page some time ago, that some who are not active on this page seem to very much dislike. There should be discussion threads in the talk page archive. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:50, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why the baseball community members chose this route. While I can't definitively speak for the other sports' community members, I will note that Carson Wentz tore his ACL during the 2017 NFL season and missed the rest of the season, including the playoffs, but his page still lists him as "Super Bowl champion (LII)". Assadzadeh (talk) 17:25, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That seems disingenuous. Why should someone be called a champion if they weren't even on the postseason roster? Giving players, and even former players, championship rings is a completely honorific celebration that is left to the discretion of the teams. I see no reason why that should be the determining factor in whether someone is regarded as a champion. Y2Kcrazyjoker4 (talk • contributions) 18:15, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a matter of at least theoretically keeping things from getting out of control, starting with the WS navboxes. Take a look below for comparison. The full team roster looks like an NFL roster in the template based on its size. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:13, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It was a bright line way to determine championships.. other wise it's a free for all... was someone who was called up for one spot start in May and then released a "world series champion"? Clearly that should not be the case. Kershaw made seven starts last season, he then went on the shelf and sat out all of September and the postseason... If someone did not contribute in the world series, they should not get that distinction on their pages.. who gets a ring is immaterial... the secretaries in the front office get rings.. they shouldn't go in that template either. Spanneraol (talk) 21:01, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Let me bring up a hypothetical situation from the football world. Suppose an NFL starting quarterback leads his team to a victory in the conference championship game, but gets injured on the meaningless final play. The backup quarterback then leads the team to a Super Bowl victory and the third-string quarterback never plays in the game. Based on the arguments that I'm reading, the starting quarterback would not be considered a Super Bowl champion, whereas the backup would be. What about the third-string quarterback, who didn't play, but was on the roster? I'm sure there is a similar baseball analogy. Assadzadeh (talk) 21:17, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Football is a different sport and i'm not sure how they handle it in the football project.. but it is a one game as opposed to a series.. and those other quarterbacks would still be on the roster for the game... it's not about if they played but if they were on the active roster. The backup catcher didn't play in the series but he was active for it and could have played so is considered a champion as opposed to someone that played in midseason and was optioned to the minors or someone who got hurt during the season and was therefore unavailable. Spanneraol (talk) 21:33, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here are some of the related discussions, in reverse chronological order:
As I've stated previously, my opinion is to follow what reliable, independent, non-promotional, notable sources say—if they call a player a World Series champion, then the World Series championship can be highlighted in the infobox—but so far there hasn't been a lot of success in attaining a consensus on something other than using the World Series roster. isaacl (talk) 23:10, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My view is to remain consistent with Baseball-Reference.com (which ticks all the boxes: reliable, independent, non-promotional, notable). Specifically, a player's stat page there (e.g. David Ortiz). Dmoore5556 (talk) 04:16, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion here is that anyone who was on the World Series roster (even if they did not play in the World Series) is a champion by default. If reliable sources (including baseball ref) claim anyone not on this list is (or, for some reason, is not) that takes precedence.
The rings are seemingly irrelevant as mentioned. I believe anyone who was at the roster at all gets one, which is a huge list that contains far too many people, and sometimes staff as well (though not "official" rings). I also think someone saying they got a ring but no one saying they were a champion should not be factored in either.
But, ultimately sources matter the most here. There should not be any discussion if a valid source says they're a champion. Chew(V • T • E)23:19, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've been cleaning up a lot of pages, and the ones that are the most inconsistent are external links season pages, especially older ones, but even current ones too. What external links should we include?
Here's some possible suggestion, and an example with the 2023 Texas Rangers season:
I can make a template for this if it would be useful. We could also make a template that covers all external links to a team season, which would include the stats and schedule or anything else.
I also see "x team official website" linked, which is often either dead or archived, and I just don't see the benefit of that at all. What would be useful of a snapshot of a given page that season? If we want stats, we can link to live links, same with schedule. The official site should just be on the team page, not any season pages. Chew(V • T • E)21:16, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to create a template that covers those things that's fine with me.. I believe some of them have the stats linked in the info box as well. I don't mind a few extra links that are specific to certain seasons but year the team home page isn't really necessary for them. Spanneraol (talk) 22:00, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Creating a template akin to baseballstats seems helpful; I'd suggest also including Retrosheet. I don't see a need/benefit for "official website" outside of the general article about the team (e.g. in EL of article Milwaukee Brewers). Dmoore5556 (talk) 01:35, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've made {{MLB team season stats}} as an initial starting point. It takes params similar to the baseballstats template. Most of the params might be the same but there might be some deviation based on team. Chew(V • T • E)19:51, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right now, under WP:BASEBALLSA/PL, the only modern leagues that are reflected in baseball infoboxes are MLB, NPB, and KBO. Those leagues were presumably selected because they are the top summer leagues in the world, representing a relatively high level of professional play in their respective countries. To briefly sum up, the general consensus is that NPB is either on par or slightly below MLB in terms of competitiveness ("Quadruple-A"), with KBO a bit behind that. I submit that the Mexican League (LMB) be added to this group, since it clearly fits all those criteria: it is the top level of play in Mexico and has been for a century, it is a fully professional summer league, and the level of competition that is comparable to (if not necessarily on par with) MLB, as evidenced by the number of MLB veterans that play in LMB. Considerably higher is the number of players that find success in both LMB and the NPB/KBO, many of whom put up comparable numbers on both sides of the Pacific (Trevor Bauer, Roberto Osuna, Roberto Petagine, to name a few). Players have also said that LMB deserves to be in the same conversation as NPB and KBO. (1)(2)
To my mind, the only reason it's not already included in this group for style purposes is LMB's historical classification as a minor league, from 1955 to 2020. I would note a key difference between LMB and other minor leagues, that LMB was never made up of "farm teams" and its players were signed to independent contracts independent of MLB teams. Minor league classification was largely a formality and, and LMB functioned more like an independent league under the nominal authority of MLB, rather than a true Triple-A minor league like the PCL and International League. (3) Aside from that, I'm not sure what the argument is to keep it out of that group for style purposes. Captain Parmenter(talk)14:04, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Spanneraol. The Mexican League is not on par with MLB, not to the extent of NPB or KBO. Players do come back from Asia to have success in MLB (Eric Thames, Erick Fedde, Merrill Kelly come to mind immediately), but I am unaware of any MLB player having that level of success after going to Mexico. Osuna and Bauer are special cases due to their.... personal behavior choices. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:47, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's tricky to talk about former LMB players in MLB simply because of how MLB has historically positioned itself as the gravitational core of baseball in the Americas — meaning that the vast majority of quality players spend at least some time in MLB organizations. But there are successful MLB players to sign out of LMB: Joakim Soria, Vinny Castilla, more recently Randy Arozarena and Fernando Cruz, and that's just this century. But MLB orgs picking up the best players is something that is increasingly true of KBO and NPB as well — to a lesser degree, sure, but that's more due to geography than anything else. Captain Parmenter(talk)17:55, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I was up at 3:00 AM (LA time) this morning to watch the Dodgers open the season in Tokyo against the Cubs. Hoping for a good season.... and not too much drama on wikipedia. Spanneraol (talk) 13:56, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As much as I love Christmas, the start of the regular season is arguably the most wonderful time of the year. Here's to another wonderful baseball season, both on here and at the ballpark! LEPRICAVARK (talk) 20:33, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia currently has articles MLB London Series, MLB Mexico City Series, and MLB Seoul Series. No article (yet) on Tokyo series, even though more games have been played there than in London, Mexico City, or Seoul. As MLB's naming has hopefully stabilized, I think a MLB Tokyo Series article makes sense, and it may be where content currently in MLB Japan Opening Series 2008 (which has zero references) could be refined and properly cited (my thought it to absorb that content into MLB Tokyo Series and make MLB Japan Opening Series 2008 a redirect). Comments welcome. Thanks. Dmoore5556 (talk) 02:14, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was not aware that article existed, but yes, that seems like an appropriate place for the content. I think more detail about the international games than a simple list is warranted; essentially, the same level of detail that the London Series and Seoul Series articles have already. Y2Kcrazyjoker4 (talk • contributions) 13:02, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A single article MLB World Tour could work (it's currently a redirect to a section of the List article), now that MLB has settled on that naming. I think such an article, if created, should aggregate content from and replace each of the stand-alone MLB [City Name] Series articles. The List article would then be reduced to pretty much just the list, with discussion/history/future plans covered in article MLB World Tour.
Whether articles about specific series should remain, is another question. I believe there are currently 3 such articles:
MLB Japan Opening Series 2008 has zero sources cited and contains (in my view) well-intended but unnecessary detail about regular-season games that were ultimately notable only for contextual reasons.
2019 MLB London Series is well-sourced, but, with regards to the games themselves, outside of noting that both games were long and high scoring, I'm not sure World Series treatment is warranted.
MLB Tokyo Series 2025 is more focused on the creation of the event rather than the game play (e.g. no team rosters or game line scores).
This would be my preference (combining to create the World Tour article) since the individual games/series are not really notable on their own. Spanneraol (talk) 01:41, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Postseason bracket on season (and postseason) pages
I was looking through various formats used in the postseason bracket (mainly, are teams linked and/or abbreviated?) and it seems that different periods use different methods. Aside from 1960 through 1971 (which I updated to match the 2024 format), there seems to be different styles.
1884 through 1900 have full team names, linked, and include each individual game (granted, these were mostly pages that I recently created, and I copied the format of the time from pre-division 20th century pages, which also included each game, though I think that was a very recent addition that has since been reverted).
1903 through 1959 have full team names, linked, with just the # of games won.
1960 through 1968 matched this before my recent edits.
1969 through 2009 have only city names (or for shared cities, "NY Mets", "LA Angels", or "Chicago White Sox"), and are linked in the first round of that teams appearance.
1969 through 1971 matched this before my recent edits.
2010 through 2024 have only city names (or for shared cities, "NY Mets", "LA Angels", or "Chicago White Sox"), and are not linked (and I'm assuming this is the case because of some decision made in 2010, and that standard just carried on to today w/o adjusting previous seasons).
2022 through 2024 only says "Championship Series" while the previous seasons say "League Championship Series".
I believe we should have a standard that's applied to all of the season/postseason pages (or perhaps two standards, one for the pre-division era, and one for the division era), addressing:
Are teams to be linked at all? (Basically, should the first instance be linked or not?)
Should we only use the city name for all pages, or only in the 1969–present division era? Maybe only for the first instance a team is in the bracket we use the full name, then use only the city name?
For cities that share a team without a simple abbreviation (so besides New York (NY) and (Los Angeles)), should we continue to use the full name (such as "Chicago" or the early 20th century examples of "Boston" or "St. Louis"), or perhaps a shortened city name ("Chi", "Bos", "StL") that can be found on MLB's website (such as when you view a team's schedule vs the "Chi Cubs" as seen here).
Regarding the headers ("Wild Card Series/Games", "Division Series", "Championship Series"), should "League" precede these, as it does in "League Championship Series" from 1972 (1969 before my changes) through 2021?
Personally, I believe we should use the current 2022 through 2024 standard and apply it to all seasons, not just the divisional era, just with the Chicago teams abbreviated to "Chi Cubs" and "Chi White Sox". Also, maybe there's something to be said regarding the pre-1969 World Series, and having each individual game shown.
Spesh531(talk, contrib., ext.)19:40, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.
I don't think that's necessary... the "wild card winners" thing is something I have been trying to fix when it come across it.. those teams should just say "National League wild card" and not "winners". The info box should say if you won something... losing in the second round or the championship series is still losing. Spanneraol (talk) 01:54, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One could argue that winning an LCS berth is similar to winning a wild card berth (I'm not necessarily arguing for inclusion or exclusion, just trying to understand the rationale). —Bagumba (talk) 02:03, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wild Card berth gets you into the playoffs, same as winning a division title. That's why I think it should only be the division titles, wild card (not winner), league pennant and World Series championships in that field. Spanneraol (talk) 02:09, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've opened up an edit request and made changes to support Wikidata in {{Baseballstats}}, this would allow for data for this template to just be put into Wikidata and populate the template automatically. I would appreciate any comments or feedback regarding it on the template discussion page (or here), see Template_talk:Baseballstats#Edit_request_3_February_2025_2 for examples and discussion. Chew(V • T • E)20:53, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I notice that for many World Series-winning players, in their infobox where it says "World Series champion", there is a link to just the World Series itself. Wouldn't it make more sense if World Series champion linked to "List of World Series champions"? The NFL infobox does this with List of Super Bowl champions, and so does the NBA with List of NBA champions. Obviously this would be a massive undertaking to change every single player's page, so I recognize at this point it might be too difficult. Red0ctober22 (talk) 23:47, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever the consensus ends up being in terms of which page to point to, we should be careful to avoid an MOS:EGG situation. A link to the article World Series should simply be a direct link around the words "World Series", and a link to the article List of World Series champions should be a piped link around the words "World Series champion". FWIW, World Series champions redirects to the champions list page. Linking the words to the specific year they won would also be MOS:EGG, and in any case there's not an unambiguous target for multi-time champions (i.e. Derek Jeter, Madison Bumgarner). Left guide (talk) 02:08, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
... there's not an unambiguous target for multi-time champions ...: FWIW, the NBA and NFL projs link both one-time and multi-time winners.—Bagumba (talk) 08:43, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think you may be misunderstanding the context. My comment was referring to the idea of linking the words "World Series champion" (and not the year number) to a specific year edition. For example, if Randy Johnson's infobox were to say "World Series champion" or in code [[2001 World Series|World Series champion]]. Left guide (talk) 10:00, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think I'm understanding what you are trying to say, but the NFL and NBA pages always link "Super Bowl champion" or "NBA champion" to "List of Super Bowl champions" or "List of NBA champions", respectively, no matter how many titles that player has won, they never link "NBA champion" to a specific NBA Finals, that is the point of the year number in parentheses. For example, if you see Jalen Hurts, he has only won one Super Bowl (Super Bowl LIX), but where it says "Super Bowl champion", it still redirects to List of Super Bowl champions, as is the same with Tom Brady, who has won seven. The one difference between these two players is that Tom Brady's page links to "Super Bowl champion", which is a redirect to "List of Super Bowl champions", which Hurts' page directly links to "List of Super Bowl champions", though that doesn't really matter since linking the redirect still displays a preview of the "List of Super Bowl champions" page.
For example in the context of the MLB, to give an example of a winner of multiple World Series and a winner of one, it propose it would look like this:
