Honus Wagner Hit Hard by Revision of Statistics : Hall of Fame: Baseball Encyclopedia drops famed shortstop from 6th to 7th on career hit list and from 26th to 29th in all-time averages.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are unhappy about changes in Hall of Famer Honus Wagner’s batting statistics that dropped him from sixth to seventh on the career hit list and from 26th to 29th in all-time averages.

Wagner, who played for the Pirates from 1900 to 1917, is listed in the eighth and latest edition of Macmillan’s Baseball Encyclopedia with 12 fewer hits and a batting average .002 less than in previous editions.

“What are they going to do, change his plaque in the Hall of Fame?” said Rick Cerrone, the Pirates’ vice president for public relations. “They’re a publisher, not a record-keeper; it’s not their decision to make. They made the change without telling anyone in Major League Baseball.”

The shortstop is now listed as having 3,418 hits, instead of 3,430, and a .327 average instead of .329.

Wagner also slipped from fifth to seventh in career doubles, losing eight, while Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie gained 10.

The team says changes should have been made with consultation of the committee established by former Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti to approve such alterations in established records and statistics.

Rick Wolff, the encyclopedia’s editor, said the changes resulted from input from various sources, including his research staff, the Baseball Hall of Fame and statisticians at the Elias Sports Bureau and the Society for American Baseball Research.

Wolff authorized the changes because the record committee does not meet again until August, well after the book’s publishing deadline.

Wolff said research has corrected several errors that have slipped into baseball’s official records over the years.

“For example, the first edition of the book, which is looked upon as the most pure record of baseball history by many historians, credits Wagner with three more hits than he now has and the same batting average,” Wolff told The Pittsburgh Press.

The changes in Wagner’s statistics were made in the three seasons he played for Louisville, 1897-99.