Allan Roth
Allan Roth, born Abraham Roth in 1917 in Montreal, was a Canadian statistician who helped start modern sabermetrics in baseball. He became the first full‑time statistician for a Major League Baseball team, working for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers from 1947 to 1964. Roth created and tracked many new baseball statistics, including on-base percentage, and he compiled detailed data such as how players performed against left‑ versus right‑handed hitters, in different ballparks, and in various game situations. He also recorded every pitch in Dodgers games for 18 seasons.
Roth also worked as the NHL’s official statistician starting in 1941. He served in the Canadian Army during World War II and was discharged in 1944 due to epilepsy. After the war, he sent Branch Rickey a letter with statistical proposals, and Rickey hired him for the Dodgers; delays with visas postponed his start until 1947. He legally changed his name from Abraham to Allan in 1941.
In the Dodgers organization, Roth’s work extended beyond numbers. He helped publish statistics for press boxes, yearbooks, and media guides, and in 1954 he moved from behind home plate to the radio booth, where he shared facts with broadcasters and built a rapport with Vin Scully. During spring training, he studied players to help improve their performances, and his guidance is credited with helping Sandy Koufax turn his career around.
Roth is considered a pioneer of sabermetrics. He invented the concept of on-base percentage and proposed an early version of the save in 1951 (the save would become an official stat in 1969 with a different formula). He was fired by the Dodgers in 1964 after an extramarital relationship sparked controversy; the team later explained the official reason as a resignation related to travel, but the broader reason became clearer years later.
After leaving baseball, Roth wrote for The Sporting News, edited Who’s Who in Baseball, and contributed statistical data to Sandy Koufax’s autobiography. NBC hired him in 1966 to provide statistics for Game of the Week, All-Star Games, and the World Series, and he later worked for ABC as well. He retired in the 1980s due to ill health and died of a heart attack on March 3, 1992, in Culver City, California, at age 74.
Roth was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010. Baseball historians and admirers praised him as decades ahead of his time, and SABR named its Los Angeles chapter in his honor. In 2019, he was posthumously awarded the Henry Chadwick Award for his contributions to baseball research. He married Esther Machlovitch in 1940; they had two children, Michael and Andrea, and they divorced in 1965 after his affair was revealed.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:37 (CET).