Here are a few not on the list to at least discuss:

Mark McGwire (I know, I know)

Eddie Matthews (this one surprises me) whoops, never mind, he's there. One "T" Mathews !

Seaver is too low. Should be ahead of Clemons, Maddox and Pedro.

No George Sisler, Al Simmons or Mickey Cochrane. What other egregious misses?

Couldn't have said it better.

Many reasons why other people don't get this. Some of the top ones are plenty of bias against more modern players, the fact that he only has 219 wins (which isn't acceptable for career greatness....unless your name is Koufax), and the fact that his impossibly great years didn't produce any individual stats that appear legendary on the surface. Like a 1.12 ERA, 30 wins, etc.

Pedro had a fantastic peak but faded due to injuries. His peak was higher than Seaver, for example, but he was not as dominant for as long as Seaver. He also played on a lot of good teams which helps. He certainly ranks high but not as high as he is placed in my humble opinion.

I think it's kind of interesting how everyone pretty much agrees with Baseball's Greatest Hitters, Pitchers not so much. I think I could throw out a list of the Greatest of All Time 1-10 and someone else could have those reversed, with almost the exact same Pitchers.

Hitters:
Ruth is pretty much always #1.
Then it's Cobb or Mays for #2.
However, I's say Ted Williams easily is right there.
Then ya got Aaron.

So those are pretty much everyone's Top 5. You can try to make cases for DiMaggio, Gehrig, Mantle, Wagner, Robinson.....but I don't think they crack the Top 5.

Pitchers though 1-5, good luck getting a consensus.

Let's try.

Let's see your Top Pitchers 1 - 5 as you would rank them.

Mine would be:

1-Randy Johnson
2-Pedro Martinez
3-Roger Clemens
4-Bob Gibson
5-Bob Feller

Shit but now I left out Walter Johnson. and Lefty Grove. and Seaver....and many will have Koufax in there. See it's impossible.

Just based on numbers which do seem to hold up across eras, I'd have to put Walter Johnson and Young in any top five. On your list I might take Seaver before Gibson. I'd move Pedro down because of his career numbers but I understand the argument.

1. WaJo
2. Young
3. Clemens
4. Nichols
5. Alexander

I think if we made a list that was just based on career value and a list just based on peak value, there would be more (but not full) agreement. But it is true that pitchers seem to be harder to rank than hitters.

But since there is one list, everyone has to decide what they value most. The reason I rank (alphabetically) Alexander, Clemens, Gibson, Grove, R. Johnson, W. Johnson, Maddux, Mathewson, Seaver, and Young higher than Martinez is that they had longer careers and also high peak values. In some cases (not all) both their career and peak values rank higher than Martinez.

Martinez's four highest WARs were 11.7, 9.8, 9.0, 8.0 = 38.5
Grove 11.2, 10.4, 10.4, 9.8 = 41.8
Clemens 11.9, 10.4, 9.4, 8.8 = 40.5
Randy Johnson 10.7, 10.1, 9.1, 8.4 = 38.3
Gibson 11.2, 10.4, 8.9, 7.1 = 37.6
Seaver 10.6, 10.2, 7.8, 7.3 = 35.9
Maddux 9.7, 9.1, 8.5, 7.8 = 35.1.

Alexander, Johnson, Mathewson, and Young were in the 40s or 50s and obviously had much longer careers as well.

I used 4 years to get the peak-of-the-peak for each. Seaver and Maddux don't quite match Martinez but for me it's close enough that even a little credit for a long career makes me rank them higher. I rank Koufax below Martinez because his argument is entirely on peak value and his four best years (36.4) were not as good as Martinez's. I rank Spahn below Martinez because in my mind his long career did not offset his four best years "only" being 32.5. I feel the same about Carlton. To me Gibson was the closest call. I could go either way between the two, so I rank them 10 and 10a.

But I see an argument to get Martinez as high as second. First, put him over Gibson, Maddux, and Seaver because of peak vs. career. Then ahead of Clemens because of suspicion of steroids. Then ahead of Alexander, Walter Johnson, Mathewson, and Young because of dead ball stats being skewed (although I think the point of WAR is to try and unskew them a little). Then ahead of Grove because how can a player be better than someone who played 70 years later (that's really the only argument I see for putting Grove below Martinez…he was very similar to Martinez in that he dominated in a hitter's era but he was more dominant and did it for longer than Martinez).

But I can’t get him past Randy Johnson, who was just as dominant, pitched 1300 more innings, and has a higher WAR, WAR7, JAWS, and some other acronyms.

I'm sure I may have missed someone. I did not consider 19th century-only pitchers because it is hard to compare an era when pitchers could pitch over 600 innings and have a WAR of 20.5 (as Pud Galvin did in 1884). But if I did, Nichols would be my choice. I also did not include Negro League pitchers because I don't feel qualified weighing the statistics available with the reputations some players had.

I love RJ as well, but the acronyms don't show that RJ's career was just as dominant.

Pedro's career WAR: 83.9 in 2827 innings (33.7 IP per)
Randy's career WAR: 101.1 in 4135 innings (40.9 IP per)

Pedro's career ERA+ was 154. Randy's was 135.

Not only was Pedro more dominant, but it's not even that close.

I'm fine with ranking RJ "higher" because he pitched so many more innings though, but I prefer Pedro's 2800 innings which were more elite. The ol' subjective argument

Yeah, I get that. I didn't want to overdo the acronyms, but I did see that Martinez beats Johnson in WAR/162 6.4 to 5.6, which I think is like your stat but in reverse (?).

In fact, the only ones above him in WAR/162 with more innings as well are Walter Johnson, Grove, Clemens, and Nichols (he's tied with Young at 6.4).

And if you go by WAR7 it is close (Johnson 61.5, Martinez 58.2).

I do lean towards giving some credit for longevity (as long as it is productive) so I guess that's why I rank Johnson higher. The longer careers generally gain counting stats as they go down in rate stats. Otherwise we need to figure out how to get Noodles Hahn and his 6.4 WAR/162 over 2000+ innings into the argument (that's 12th all-time ahead of Alexander, Mathewson, Gibson, Seaver, Maddux, Johnson, and many others).

Maybe Paige belongs in this discussion? B-R (which now has Negro League WAR!) has Satchel Paige listed at 46 WAR in only ~1700 innings. On a per-inning basis he's a bit ahead of Young and a smidgen behind Clemens. Now, of course he didn't pitch as many innings as those guys, but we might want to take into consideration the fact that Negro League seasons were very short.

If we don't want to adjust his stats for the shorter seasons, then DarwinBulldog's list looks pretty good. I think it actually gets more difficult ranking the next five or so. RJ, Matty, Grove all seem to be in a tight scrum together.

FWIW, here's the career bWAR pitching leaderboard:

Young
WaJo
Clemens
Nichols
Alexander
Grove
Seaver
Maddux
Johnson
Matty

Those are all the guys above 100. Niekro and Blyleven are the next two, but they seem to be a clear step down from this group.

Not a bad rotation

I am hesitant to post another long, rambling post, but when the Paige question came up earlier, I did some research on Baseball Reference for other Negro League pitchers.

Three of them (Ray Brown, Bill Foster, and Bullet Rogan) are close to Paige in innings pitched, seem to have more impressive numbers in many of the traditional stats, and top him in WAR7 and WAR/162. In particular, Bill Foster and Bullet Rogan* are ranked as the second and third best pitchers in WAR/162 (behind another Negro Leaguer Dave Brown, but he only pitched half as many innings as the other players mentioned). Ray Brown is 21st in WAR/162 and Paige 38th. Rogan is 39th in WAR7, Foster 141st, Brown 224th, Paige 294th. There are other Negro Leaguers that rank highly in these categories, but they do not have as many innings or, if they do, the rest of their stats were not as impressive as these four.

One caveat is that I can't figure out Paige's WAR/162 just for the Negro Leagues. But that wouldn’t change his WAR7, since his seven best years were in the Negro Leagues. Plus, now that they are all considered major leagues, I am not sure if a differentiation is needed.

Two arguments for Paige are strikeouts and that he pitched well when he was older. And it's true, his strikeouts totals and ratios are better than the other three pitchers. But we know from Nolan Ryan that strikeouts and longevity don’t necessarily make you the greatest pitcher (although Paige had much better control than Ryan).

Here is a mix of traditional and analytic stats:
Bill Foster 110-56 2.63 1.172 47.1 WAR in 1499.67 IP (31.8 IP per WAR)
Bullet Rogan 120-52 2.65 1.157 61.5 WAR* in 1500 IP (24.4 IP per WAR; but 39.7 using just his pitching WAR of 37.8)
Ray Brown 122-45 3.02 1.205 39.5 WAR in 1477 IP (37.4)
Satchel Paige 118-80 2.70 1.092 46.3 WAR in 1695 IP (36.6)

Looking at this, it may be that Paige was the best, but it's not a no-brainer. If we start with the assumption that "of course he was the best because that's what I've always heard" then there is a tendency to find arguments that support that and ignore contradictory evidence. But if we started from scratch and were not aware of the legend of Satchel Paige, and used statistics now available to us that weren't before, we might come up with a different answer. I'm not saying he was a bum…just that maybe, possibly, who knows, he was perhaps the second or third best Negro League pitcher based on the numbers available now (which may change as more research is done). And to be honest, I feel weird saying that because for the last 50 years I just assumed he was the best.

Anyway, at least I learned something about players that I was not familiar with (other than their names). I also recognize Smokey Joe Williams as a candidate for best Negro League pitcher but his best years came before Baseball Reference has stats. Other names I see mentioned in these discussions, such as Leon Day, Martin Dihigo, and Hilton Smith also do not have enough data in BR for a statistical comparison.

And I nominate Bullet Rogan as candidate for best two-way player: 120-52 .698 2.65 pitching; .338/.413./.521/.934 batting (mostly as an outfielder in the same years he was pitching).

* Rogan's WAR rankings are skewed because they include his batting. But he was still a helluva pitcher.

Quite honestly, I understand the possible reasoning behind adding the Negro League stats as major league stats, but disagree that they are necessarily the true equivalent of MLB stats and belong side by side with them. It has long been an argument of some that pre-integration MLB star player stats are possibly somewhat inflated due to the fact that those MLB players did not get/have to play against Negro League players, and therefore were able to pad their numbers playing against lesser talented white players. But that argument goes both ways!

If you look at the sheer number of MLB players historically, and the number of Negro League players whose stats have now been added onto the major league's records, something quite clearly does not add up. Given the overall population of whites and blacks in the US, and the historical percentages of black MLB players since integration finally took place, and those percentages today, from a statistical standpoint it would readily seem that it is the Negro Leagues that were probably filled with a significantly higher percentage of non-MLB talent than the white, segregated major leagues ever were. And because of that, it is the star Negro League players whose stats are likely much more inflated and embellished from having played against overall far lesser talent than their white counterparts in MLB pre-integration.

Everyone keeps spewing out all kinds of advanced numbers and statistics in their comparisons of where players should be on this ESPN list. I wonder if the Negro Leagues are not more akin to upper-level minor leagues, which is what they pretty much became after integration in 1948. And as such, maybe Negro League stats shouldn't be taken at face value as equivalent to other's stats. If you are going to insist on including them as full MLB stats, then explain and give me valid, factual, and logical reasons why we shouldn't also recognize say the PCL as a major league. Or what about some Cuban or other Latin-American leagues, why haven't any of them been granted full MLB status? Aren't there much greater numbers of Latin players in MLB today than African-American players? And you can even include the Japanese-Asian leagues in this argument. Josh Gibson gets even more consideration, recognition, and acceptance of his talent and ability now that his records are actual MLb stats, so why not someone like Sadaharu Oh? If you're going to go out of your way to recognize one ethnic group of formerly disenfranchised players, you either do it for ALL of them, or none of them!!!

Yah I think you need to go 10 deep for Pitchers.

So my revised list would be:

1-Randy Johnson
2-Pedro Martinez
3-Roger Clemens
4-Bob Feller
5-Walter Johnson
6-Satchel Paige
7-Nolan Ryan
8-Sandy Koufax
9-Bob Gibson
10-Lefty Grove

So who just misses the cut, for me: Kershaw, Maddux, Seaver, Alexander, Spahn, Young, Mathewson & Steve Carlton

IMO you have Pedro too high, Feller too high, Ryan should not be anywhere near the list, Grove too low. My list would include Seaver Young Alexander and Mathewson and probably (not going to rekindle this) Spahn. So I'll go 15 deep.

W Johnson
Young
Clemens
Grove
Seaver
Randy
Paige
Alexander
Mathewson
Spahn
Pedro
Feller
Gibson
Maddux
Carlton

I get Bob's point, but just to be clear, I was trying to compare pitchers within the context of the Negro Leagues with the data available. I have no idea how I would incorporate those players (including Paige) into an all-time list with non-Negro Leaguers aside from a gut feeling. Other than that, I think Peter's list is reasonable. But I will say that the traditional stats for the players I mentioned look pretty good as well.

I would go with these all time top 5 pitchers (career value, not peak), not necessarily in order best to worst:

Walter Johnson
Lefty Grove
Bob Feller
Seaver
Maddux
Pedro

Next Tier:
Mathewson
Koufax
Nolan Ryan - most sheer dominant, most fun to watch
Paige - really don't know, just gut feeling
Randy Johnson

It's very hard to exclude a guy with 7 No Hitters and 12 1-Hitters. When he was on, he was on. No one on the list comes close to that.

Less so if that pitcher walked 2,795 batters. He did finish 2nd in the Cy Young voting that one time though.

Yes, but he was often off. His control was not that good. His bb/9 was awful, almost 5. Read Bill James' discussion of him, it's IMO pretty enlightening. 29th ranked pitcher by JAWS. I think Bill James in 2003 ranked him around 20th or maybe even lower.

I googled "Bill James top 100 All Time", up came the list and the highest ranked player that is a pitcher is Walter Johnson at #8. The second highest ranked pitcher is Satchell Paige at #17.

I honestly have never seen any meaningful accurate season by season/career stats for Paige. I figured they simply don't exist. Maybe I haven't scoured the internet deep enough to see what I am looking for.

So how does Bill James arrive at #17 for Paige (2nd best pitcher of all time)? From where is he getting his stats?

Not saying he's wrong, but it's interesting that a statistician like James put so many Negro League players in his top 100 and relied mostly on anecdotal evidence.

Bill never really was a statistician. (As he'd be the first to tell you.) His real strength as a baseball writer was his willingness to ask questions, and to be open to unexpected answers. He used numbers to answer questions when he could, but it would be a mistake to include him in the list of genuine statisticians (Tom Tango, Michael Litchman, and so on) who study baseball.

Somebody said: "it is the Negro Leagues that were probably filled with a significantly higher percentage of non-MLB talent than the white, segregated major leagues ever were."

One thing to keep in mind is that Negro League teams often had smaller rosters than AL/NL teams. Looking at the 1943 Kansas City Monarchs (grabbed a team from the middle of Paige's career): they only had eight players who got >100 at bats. Only four other position players managed to get even 10 at bats. They only had seven pitchers who appeared in more than one game. It looks like the entire team was the starting nine, a bench bat or two, and a couple spare pitchers.

Comparing them to the 43 Yankees. The Yanks had, by my count, 13 position players who appeared in a substantial number of games, to go along with 10 pitchers who made more than a cameo appearance or two. Almost twice as many players on the roster.

Negro League competition wasn't all that diluted, compared to AL/NL competition, because there weren't as many guys on each roster.

I thought Bill James was heavily involved in developing sabermetrics.

Bill James was a statistician. Probably the best proof of that is his development of Win Shares, which was WAR before WAR.

He was instrumental in developing sabermetrics, but that's his "using numbers to answer questions when he can". His actual mathematical acumen is limited. In various places throughout the Abstracts he denies being a statistician, and says that he's only interested in mathematics as it helps him understand baseball better. You'll notice that his work involves very little in the way of actual statistics - there're very few regression analyses to be found. And a lot of his work had nothing to do with numbers at all: short biographies of notable players take up a significant chunk of several of the Abstracts.

Win Shares is James' uberstat, but it's not WAR before WAR. It's premised on dividing actual team wins between players. Philosophically, it's the opposite of WAR. The question James wants his stat to answer is "who deserves credit, and how much credit, for each team win?". The question that WAR tries to answer is "how many additional wins would you expect from a team, if this player were to join it?" Win Shares is thus much more context-dependent than is WAR. It provides an interesting record of what happened, but, analytically, it's much less useful. It doesn't tell you much that's of much use for analyzing a trade, or for predicting a player's performance, and so on.

I think it is great that earlier rankings (and the ESPN list) included Negro League players, because we know some of them would have been stars if they could have played in what were then the Major Leagues. But I think after deciding that they should be included, people didn't have that much to go on except anecdotal evidence, some apocryphal stories, sketchy statistics, and in some cases earlier rankings (which themselves relied on anecdotal evidence, stories, etc.). Paige was the best pitcher, Gibson the best catcher, Charleston the best outfielder, Leonard the best first baseman, etc. It was just a matter of deciding how to rank them among the non-Negro League players.

Now that we have some statistics, in many cases they justify our "gut" rankings. In some cases, the stats are superhuman and clearly have to be taken in context...Josh Gibson's 162 game average .is 374/.458/.719 with 46 HRs, 166 Runs and 196 RBIs. I think we can agree he would not have done that in an integrated major leagues in the 1930s. But I think we can also agree that he certainly lives up to the hype (if not exceeding it). No one can look at those stats and say, I guess he really wasn't as good as they said he was.

But Paige's stats do not hit me in the same way. They are very good, his 162 game average is 14-9 with a 2.70 ERA and 169 strikeouts in 199 innings. His ERA+ is 152 and his lifetime WAR is 46.3 in 1695 innings (36.6 innings per WAR).

Then I look at Bill Foster: 162 game average 19-9 with a 2.63 ERA and 156 strikeouts in 253 innings. His ERA+ is 164 and his lifetime WAR is 47.0 in 1499.67 innings (31.9 innings per WAR).

Bullet Rogan: 162 game average 22-10, 2.70 ERA, 161 ERA+, 168 strikeouts in 275 innings.

Ray Brown: 162 game average 22-8, 3.02 ERA, 149 ERA+, 126 strikeouts in 271 innings.

Except for strikeouts, these players appear to be statistically better than Paige.

Now, there might be reasons for this. For example, Paige was used primarily as a reliever in the integrated Major Leagues, so his 162 game average was watered down for W-L. And pitching in the integrated Major Leagues also worsened his career ERA and W-L pct. There may also be statistics from games that have not been discovered yet.

But let's say Bill Foster was the traditional #1 ranked Negro League pitcher, and say there were stories about him taking the outfielders off the field when he was pitching, and throwing strikes over a bubble gum wrapper.

And then say we were presented with all these statistics we didn't have before. I think we would say, well, yeah, that just shows we got it right, like we do (or I do, anyway) with Gibson (and Charleston, Leonard, and others).

I don't think we would look at Paige's stats and say, no, really he should have been number one all along, it's obvious, can't you see that he has a worse W-L pct., higher ERA, lower ERA+, lower WAR, lower WAR7, lower WAR/162, and lower JAWS and that proves he was better than the guy we always said was number one.

I was the one who said the Negro League stats were diluted down. I'm not arguing or disagreeing with your figures and statements, but you're using the wrong numbers.

I did some online research and am relying upon facts and figures I got off various sites. So if something I ended up using is wrong, I apologize, but blame the online sources.

So, since the National League was first formed in 1876, there have been 19,969 recognized MLB players through 2/17/2022, none of which appear to be solely Negro League players. And as of the end of 2020, MLB recognized approximately 3.400 Negro League player's stats as now being official MLB stats. These were taken from seven different Negro Leagues that operated during the period 1920-1948. And it appears that about 45 of those newly added Negro League player stats were for players that eventually made it into the majors, so I'll reduce the number of added Negro League player stats down to 3,355 (3,400 - 45) so as not to double count those players that did get into the majors also. Currently, depending on where you look, the black population in the US is at about the 12%-14% range. Back during the 1920-1948 period the Negro League stats were taken from, the black population in the US was even lower, at only about 10%. And finally, in 1956, Jackie Robinson's last year in the majors, the percentage of black players on MLB rosters was 6.7%. At the start of the 2020 season, the percentage of black players on MLB rosters had risen to 7.8%, still below the percentage of blacks overall in the US population.

Now without even adjusting for the increased number of teams and players over the past 60 years, starting with MLB's expansion that began back in 1961, if you take the overall total number of recognized MLB players in history and divide that by the number of years MLB has existed, you come up with an overall average of 136.8 new MLB players (19,969 / 146 Yrs) being recognized and added each year. Now if we do the same calculation for the Negro Leagues, we end up with them adding an average of 115.7 new MLB level players (3,355 / 29 Yrs) being recognized and added each year. The problem is, blacks accounted for only about 10% of the overall US population back then, and have historically represented an even lesser percentage of MLB rosters over a long period of time.

So based on those numbers and percentages, you would expect the average number of new black MLB level players being added from the Negro Leagues to be more like 13.7 players each year (136.8 MLB average X 10% black population), versus the 115.7 new MLB level players that were actually being added from the Negro Leagues annually. The 102 player difference (115.7 - 13.7) between these expected and actual average MLB level players being recognized and added each year by the Negro Leagues between 1920-1948 is most likely made up of players, the vast majority of which, that do not have MLB level talent, and are only playing at this level because Negro League teams needed to fill out their rosters with somebody. So as a result, it would seem logical to assume those Negro League stars that did have MLB level talent were able to feast on and pad and embellish their stats by playing a lot less MLB talent level players. Much, much, much more so than their white counterparts in the segregated major leagues. So to now take these Negro League stats and compare them straight across the board against everyone else in MLB is, I feel, totally unfair to all the regular MLB players, as they likely played against much higher overall MLB level talent throughout their careers, as opposed to their Negro League counterparts.

So if you want to go back and tell me again how the Kansas City Monarchs team having small rosters explains away the ridiculously disproportionate number of Negro League players that got their stats added onto MLB's records, and can do so with some actual facts, figures, and logical arguments, I'm all ears. Just promise you won't come back with some crap about how the black athletes just want to all play football and basketball now, and that's the best explanation you can give to explain how those Negro League players were all legit MLB level players back then. And so you know, I made sure to skew some of the numbers I was using so they'd actually go against the argument I was making. In other words, the numbers are likely even more ridiculously disproportionate than I was putting forth. :)

Throwing Zimmer was more impressive than the bat at Piazza, nod goes to Pedro over Clemens for this reason only.....

One of my favorite Pedro moments was during a Red Sox Indians game that was escalating in the 7th as Pedro threw a brushback pitch and then Nagy retaliated by drilling Jose Offerman. All hell breaks loose, the umpires warn both benches, and so on. Pedro then somehow persuades Jimy Williams to put him back out for the 8th and of course he immediately drills Alomar hard and he and Williams get tossed. Pedro protected his hitters and was unapologetic about it. His comment was something like things happen.

Top 100
 

Seaver too high? Think again. One of only TWO…..yes TWO pitchers who ever won 300+ games (311); struck out 3,000+ batters (3,640); and post a sub-3.00 ERA (2.86). Walter Johnson being the other. Ranked #7 lifetime in WAR among all pitchers & #6 in JAWS (Jaffe System combining best peak 7 years & longevity). Lifetime .603 winning percentage is roughly 100 points superior to his teams Winning % & he posted 231 complete games and 61 shoutouts. Hitters posted a measly .226 lifetime batting average against Seaver - an amazing statistic. Pedro Martinez being # 11 is a complete joke - not Seaver being #22.

It's worth noting that this is true, but there was also a 40 year stretch from 1968-1998 that the % of black players was more like 14-19%.

https://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/baseb...ics-1947-2016/

Great point--when baseball was popular with black athletes, they made up a sizeable portion of MLB rosters relative to their population in the country as a whole.

I am still not sure what BobC is trying to get at by saying the % of blacks in the major leagues is not currently high. Is he not aware of the fact that it has a lot to do with baseball becoming less popular among black athletes compared to football, basketball or other professions?

If his point is that black athletes are not capable of playing in the majors, then he needs to do a better job presenting that case.

Jackie Robinson signing did not magically open up the floodgates for black athletes, or latino athletes for that matter. It wasn't until well into the latter part of the 50's that percentages combined reached 12%. I have no doubt that the lack of representation that BobC is alluding to has little to do with the overall quality of play of the Negro League. Besides the fact that the league ended shortly after the barrier was broken, so by the time the opportunities were more forthcoming, any feeder effect would be non-existent.
BTW, the fact that latino athletes are represented in MLB in roughly DOUBLE their demographic percentages is astounding to me. Coupled that with the 1300 roster spaces in the NBA and NFL occupied by black athletes and it is not so surprising the MLB representation is as low as it is.

Doesn't really matter or affect the Negro League situation and questions as the numbers I was pointing out were so disproportionate back then that even if we take into account the higher % of black MLB players at certain times in history, as you pointed out, and double the expected average annual number of black players to be recognized as MLB level players each year from 13.7 to 27.4, it still comes nowhere near the actual 115.7 Negro League players they began calling major leaguers each year. The Negro Leagues were basically a few major league players spending their years playing in the minors, and padding their numbers against weaker overall talent. And is why to me, any Negro League player on any all-time records or lists is suspect, and likely may not fully deserve the acclaim, ranking, and standing they are being afforded. I am not saying anyone was not a great player, but there is evidence that if people are basing at least some of their opinions on stats, they may not be as accurate and comparable as one would hope, and otherwise expect, due to the reduced overall level of talent they were primarily playing against.

So you're basically just saying that I'm wrong because all blacks are overall so much better athletes than whites could ever be at pretty much every major sport, and the only reason for them not dominating over whites in any particular sport is simply because they aren't really so interested in that particular sport and therefore, choose not to play it. That about right?

Assuming so, it is senseless to waste my time trying to debate you as I've seen how discussions go with others of such thinking and understanding. Suffice it to say then that you are of the opinion that had baseball not been segregated back during the time of the Negro Leagues, from 1920-1948, that because all the black athletes back then were not yet so enamored with football and basketball that all the major league baseball teams from then would have most likely been made up of 50%, 60%, or maybe even 70% or more of black players then. I'm obviously so wrong for ever thinking to look at historical trends and percentages in trying to project or estimate likely numbers of a particular group's participation, and success, in certain sports. Thank you.

The Negro Leagues likely ended as their star players were being signed to play in the majors and/or to minor league contracts with teams with MLB affiliations. And in the eyes of their fanbase, the Negro League teams saw themselves demoted to low minor league status, at best. Ownership probably saw drops in interest and attendance as a result, and likely made shutting a team down as a straightforward business decision.

BobC, you are really going off the rails now.
The SABR demographic statistics show that African Americans made up 15% or more of MLB rosters from 1968 to 1977, which is about double what is today. I am not the only person who thinks this could be due to a waning in popularity of the sport among blacks. SABR also thinks this. If you look at the SABR article, it says right on the bottom: "The past 20 years has witnessed a decline in African American players in the game....The prevalent opinion seems to be that the cause of the decline in African Americans is external to major league baseball: that African Americans are focusing on other sports as youths, either by choice or because of fewer opportunities to play baseball. As far as we are aware, this issue has not been studied — it is reasoned speculation."

I never said, nor do I believe that African Americans could make up 50% to 70% of rosters. I am simply pointing out that current demographics are not a great metric for measuring African Americans ability to perform in the MLB.

I note that a number of people have said Pedro Martinez is rated too high as is peak was not very long. Ditto for Trout, although his peak will likely grow considerably. So the total value for Pedro is quite less than say Tom Seaver or Walter Johnson. Still an argument can easily be made that Martinez is the best pitcher ever based on his talent and what he did 96-05. I draw the correlation to the Beatles. It is almost universally agreed that they were the greatest Pop/Rock band of all time by music fans. Few will say that the Stones or the Who or someone else should be considered the greatest of all-time as they were together for a much longer period of time.

Good, then maybe there is hope you will finally understand my point after all. I am fully aware of the thinking and supposition that black athletes seem not as attracted to baseball today as they may have once been, and have some of my own thoughts and opinions as to why this may be the case, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. But I especially like your reference to the "reasoned speculation" to such thinking, as that is sort of the same concept or impetus behind my point.

In my earlier posts I worked up what I referred to as an average annual number of players being recognized as major league level ballplayers each year to kind of get a sense of how many players one would normally expect to be replacing and supplanting the previously recognized MLB players whose talent level had maybe dropped below that elite, MLB talent level, due to age, injury, or otherwise. I believe the concept and thinking, or "reasoned speculation" as you referred to it, is that a certain percentage of a given population can normally be expected to be of such an elite athletic talent or status. But by suddenly increasing the number or percentage of such people deemed to be at this particular, elite talent level, it doesn't automatically make that statement true. It more likely means that you are somewhat arbitrarily now expanding the number of recognized elite athletes by suddenly including athletes you previously would not have recognized as elite. In other words, you've diluted down the overall talent level to be able to include and deem more athletes as elite, not actually have suddenly gained more elite level athletes.

I had said before that I purposely allowed some of the facts and figures I was using to be skewed against my argument. Specifically, in coming up with my average number of 136.8 new MLB players being recognized each year, I did so using the number of recognized MLB players of all-time from Baseball Almanac, 19,969 through today, and dividing it by the 146 years, since 1876, that MLB has now been in existence. That 19,969 figure apparently does not include any of the approximately 3,400 Negro League players that were recently added to the MLB ranks (haven't come across the exact number yet), except for the 45 or so black players that did end up playing in the major leagues and were part of that 3,400. I compared that 136.8 average to the average annual number of newly recognized MLB players from the Negro Leagues I came up with of 115.7. I got to that number by dividing the 3,355 players (3,400 - 45 players that did play in the majors) by the 29 years (1920-1948) over which the Negro Leagues are now recognized as the equivalent of MLB. I then pointed out how at the time of the Negro Leagues the black US population was only about 10%, and historically, black players had never at any time comprised more than 19%-20% of all MLB rosters. As such, you would think (and here I go using that "reasoned speculation" of yours again) these two averages, 136.8 versus 115.7, should have been much, much farther apart, with the average number of Negro League players being significantly less. The fact that these averages are so close though would seem to indicate that maybe we're granting MLB status to more black players than we should be, and thereby significantly diluting the talent level of MLB level players back then simply to include more blacks. And since at that time the leagues were segregated, the inclusion of all these additional black players, and subsequent severe dilution of the overall level of MLB talent, is going to fall mainly and squarely on the Negro Leagues.

I purposely skewed the overall average number of new MLB recognized players each year by using MLB's entire 146 year history. Since MLB expansion began back in 1961, the number of MLB teams has grown from 16 to 30. So naturally you would expect the average number of new MLB players each year since expansion to be much higher, and to have raised the overall annual average going back to the Negro League years. The point being, given the black percentage of the US population and historical representation of MLB players, 115.7 new MLB level Negro League players being recognized annually versus the 136.8 new MLB players being recognized annually overall is absurd enough, but it is actually much worse than that.

In going to Baseball Reference, I found you can look up the number of MLB players who made their major league debuts, by year. And it appears Baseball Reference now includes all the Negro League players in their stats. So going back to just the Negro League years of 1920-1948, I found that a total of 5,602 players made their MLB debuts during this time, of which approximately 3,400 were the recently recognized Negro League players. (I am not going to adjust that number this time by the 45 players who also made it into the major leagues eventually because I'm now restricting my comparison to just the Negro League years (1920-1948), and it is probably statistically insignificant for purposes of this argument anyway.) So that means that about only 2,202 (5,602 - 3,400) white players from the segregated major leagues became MLB level ballplayers during this time, versus 3,400 or so Negro League players. Or to compare them as averages, 75.9 white players per year (2,202 / 29 Yrs) versus 117.2 black players per year (3,400 / 29 Yrs) were being recognized as MLB level players during this time. Before I was looking at 136.8 to 115.7, whites to blacks, as the comparison, which was already absurd enough given the black US population % and MLB overall historical representation % of blacks. But now after focusing on just the specific years in question, I'm looking at 75.9 to 117.2, whites to blacks, which now turns things even more upside down and has MLB recognizing considerably more black players as major leaguers each year on average during this time than it does whites. Yet again, blacks only made up 10% of the US population back then.

And this is exactly why I asked if you believed that black athletes were overall so much better than white athletes, and that therefore you must have believed that had there been no segregation in baseball back during the time of the Negro Leagues that all the major league rosters would end up being 50%-60%-70% black then. To which you said NO! Well then, let's assume there was no segregation and bias back then. The number of MLB teams would likely have remained at 16 throughout this time, and thus they likely also wouldn't have needed anywhere near the 5,602 MLB players that debuted during these years. But all other things equal, and with no discrimination and bias, you would expect that of the entire 5,602 players that MLB considered as now being at the major league talent level from back then, whatever number of players they actually needed to keep filling the rosters at that time would likely have been somewhat along the same lines as the breakdown of white and black players now recognized as having MLB level talent, which according to actual historical data I'm presenting, would have been 60.5% black (3,400 / 5,602) versus 39.5% white (2,202 / 5,602). And as I mentioned earlier, players making their major league debuts are basically replacing aging and injured players, or others that for whatever reason(s) are primarily no longer able to perform at a MLB talent level. So, all other things equal and no discrimination and bias involved, if you go through 29 straight years averaging about 60.5% of the players making their major league debut with your team being black, want to hazard a guess as to what percentage of the team's roster is probably going to be made up of black ballplayers at the end of that 29th year?

I truly wasn't going to waste any more time responding to you, but your "off the rails" comment pissed me off. I have been presenting as much factual data and information as possible to support and prove the validity of my point, and have gone to the added trouble of explaining in detail how I used that information in my calculations. But it seems the main argument I am getting back from you and others includes really nothing in the way of factual data or detailed calculations, but mostly revolves around the "reasoned speculation" that today's black athletes don't like baseball as much anymore. No real proof, data, or facts, just commentary like there being 1,300 black athletes playing in the NBA and NFL now, and that is apparently all the explanation needed to account for the low percentage of blacks in MLB today. That kind of argument assumes that the 1,300 blacks currently in the NBA and NFL today could just have easily been playing MLB, if only they wanted to. (I wonder what Jordan would have to say about that?) And frankly, that kind of logic and thinking is a bit insulting to all black athletes as it kind of implies they only have a really small number of elite athletes that would otherwise be capable of making it into the majors.

So with this additional information I've now added, you are faced with a dilemma. You said that MLB would not be made up of rosters with 50%-60%-70% of the players being black. But if you go back to the Negro League years and look at the actual numbers of MLB players being recognized, and assume a somewhat equitable representation of the talent of players along racial lines, if there was no segregation and bias you would expect that MLB rosters would end up being mostly black, which you said they wouldn't! But if out of that pool of MLB recognized players back then, and without segregation and bias, you still ended up with MLB rosters being predominantly white, that would mean that a huge portion of those black players wouldn't have beaten out their white counterparts for all those MLB roster spots after all. And if that were the case, that would mean most of those Negro League players back then really didn't have MLB level talent and shouldn't have all just been arbitrarily added as major league players, and thereby let those Negro League players that did have MLB level talent get to pad their stats by playing against overall less talented players. But you didn't agree with that reasoning by me either, did you? Well, you can't have it both ways.

So what are you right about and what are you wrong about? And please don't just tell me that blacks athletes don't like baseball is the answer to everything. And don't be afraid to maybe try throwing some actual facts and data in, as well as maybe showing your calculations and work. Who knows, you might get some extra credit if you do. :D

BobC, if you expect anyone to read your diatribe, you are out of your mind.

BobC, I agree with you on many topics. But here the statistics are both difficult to follow and not realistic. It is impossible to know what exact % of negro league players had true MLB talent. Racial bias was still there in full force in the early stages of MLB integration. Some MLB teams didn’t have a single black player for something like 10-15 years after Jackie broke the color barrier. Surely these teams could have found at least one negro league player worthy of a MLB roster spot in 10+ years, correct? But they chose not to. So there is no way to actually know exactly what number of negro league players talent wise “should have” been in MLB. It is complicated beyond any statistical analysis.

Absolutely correct, and do not disagree at all. That is what makes this a virtually (and literally) impossible question to truly answer. The best we can do is look at what statistics, percentages, and so on that we do have from these more modern times to try and extrapolate what may have occurred back in the day. It is, I believe, agreed that in any given population you're going to expect a certain percentage of that population to have an elite athletic ability, be it running, jumping, hand/eye coordination, strength, size, or whatever. And I would think that the definition of someone having major league talent is that they ended up playing in the major leagues. And throughout the bulk of MLB's existence, this been defined as playing on an American or National League team. But because of segregation, black players were not allowed the opportunity to get spots on major league rosters. Had there been no segregation and bias back during the period 1920-1948, without a doubt there would have been many white players that would have been replaced by extremely talented black players, and therefore would have never seen the light of a major league roster. So yes, there a lot of white players that also do not truly deserve to be called major league players in my thinking.

And that is maybe the pivotal question, how many of those white players would have been replaced by blacks back during that 1920-1948 period? There is no way to ever truly know. So maybe the best we can do is look at the more current situation in baseball, and the representation of blacks in MLB today, to try and get a sense of what percentage of them would have made the major league back then. But in so doing I'm told I'm wrong because black athletes don't like baseball that much anymore, and supposedly the proof of that is how many blacks are currently playing in the NFL and NBA. So let's understand this, I'm told I'm wrong for trying to predict what may have taken place in the past by somewhat relying on modern facts and statistics by people who are also using, guess what, more modern facts and statistics. Please, how are those modern facts and statistics of my naysayers any more relevant to predicting what happened 70-100 years ago than mine were?

And also, rather than just disagreeing with me, when are one of the naysayers going to actually state what they think the proper percentage of blacks are that would have made the major league rosters back in 1920-1948, and at least try to back it up with some facts, numbers, logic, something other than just "reasoned speculation" BS!

I've already given everyone the other end of the spectrum when I did the work and research to show how MLB added 5,602 new major league players from 1920 to 1948, how that was more than twice the actual number of major leaguers that should have been recognized during this period, and that 60.5% of those new MLB players were black.

MLB, by adding all those Negro League players, severely diluted the overall pool of MLB level talent for the specific 29 year period from 1920 to 1948, and that is an irrefutable fact. So there were obviously players during this time that benefitted stat-wise from playing against overall inferior talent. And because throughout this period the leagues were segregated, the question comes down to whether it was the white or the black players who benefitted most. And even though there were a lot of great and talented black players back then, would they have really been able to take over 60.5% of all the MLB rosters as suggested by numbers of new black and white players being recognized during this specific 29 year period?

I'm going to do some simple math for everyone to further prove my point. I already showed that during the 29 years from 1929-1948, MLB only needed to add about 2,202 new MLB level players to keep the rosters full. And during that same time, about 3,400 Negro League players were also added to the MLB ranks. Now I was originally using 10% for my black player MLB talent level representation factor, based on the black US population % back then, along with the current % of black players in MLB being slightly under 10%. But I was called out and reminded how at some points blacks represented as much as 19% of current MLB players. But to appease and hopefully make the naysayers happy, for purposes of this exercise I'm going to assume blacks represented 50% of all the newly recognized MLB players during this time. So in that case, of the 2,202 new MLB players that were recognized, if 50% of them are now black, that means only 1,101 (2,202 X 50%) white players should have gotten in and been recognized as major leaguers during this time. It also means that 1,101 (2,202 - 1,101) white players were really not major league level players after all, and diluted the overall talent in the majors as a result. Now as for the Negro League players, that means 1,101 deserved to have entered the major league ranks, but that still leaves 2,299 (3,400 - 1,101) Negro League players that were not deserving of MLB status and also diluted the overall level of talent down. But that number for the Negro League players is more than twice the number for the white MLB players, so which league(s) looks like they had their overall MLB talent level diluted and watered down the most? And this has been my point all along, that maybe the star Negro League players have benefitted and padded their stats by having played against much more watered down talent throughout their careers than any other players in the history of MLB as a result.

The funny thing is, for the number of players between the segregated leagues to come to where they are equally diluted down with each ending up having recognized the same number of MLB players they otherwise shouldn't have, you would need to have the Negro League players besting their white counterparts for those MLB roster spots just over 77% of the time. That percentage is more on par with black representation in the NFL and NBA today, but still doesn't automatically mean MLB teams would have had anywhere close to that level of black representation back during the Negro League days. Very different skill sets and needs between the different sports. And being black and great at one sport doesn't automatically make you great at any of the others. As I'd said once before, go ask Michael Jordan.

My numbers, math, and logic aren't perfect, but at least I'm trying to use as much factual information and data as I can, along with a lot of logical, common sense, to make what I think may be a valid point. So if you're going to give me grief, at least have the decency and respect to try and do the same.

“War and Peace” is jealous of this thread.

No, I would expect someone with intelligence, an open mind willing to listen to actual facts and logical arguments, and who can comprehend and digest differing theories and concepts in making informed decisions, to follow what I'm saying. I only go into the long "diatribes", as you call them, when faced with people that apparently can't comprehend what I'm trying to say and convey, so I try to expand things in the hope that they finally get it. Sadly, they often still don't it.

For those who don't want to read what I'm saying, that is fine with me. I usually write my posts in direct response or rebuttal to another particular poster. I didn't necessarily write my "diatribes" for everyone. But as I've pointed out, it appears the only response to my point in this particular thread is that I'm somehow wrong because of anecdotal, reasoned speculation. I'm still awaiting some factual, intelligent response from that corner in rebuttal, but doubt that's ever going to happen.

There are some members on here who operate with very small, closed minds, have pre-formed ideas that they will never sway from or think about and/or listen to logical arguments that could prove their ideas may not be as accurate or true as they think. They tend to ignore facts and logical, informed discussions, and usually conduct any debates they get into by essentially just repeating over and over how they are right, and everyone else is wrong, with no facts, data, or logical arguments ever really given to back them up. Those are the people I expect to most likely not read one of my "diatribes". For others, if nothing else, I hope they at least get some entertainment out of them, if not some information or different ways to maybe view and think about things, as well. :D

If you would like to read my response, you can see what I already posted on the subject 5 years ago on this thread in posts 30-37.

I was thinking the same thing.

Add me to the list. I was thinking the Epic of Gilgamesh.:)

Thanks Glenn. That was an informative, logically thought out, and well explained back and forth between you and some others. And you seem to go along with what I've been trying to say. Looking at the number of black versus white HOFers is another measure to potentially help determine how many Negro League players really were deserving off MLB status recognition.

In an attempt by MLB to make amends to Negro League players and elevate them to MLB status, they obviously couldn't just cherry pick the star players like Gibson and Charleston, and only grant such status to some. MLB would never have lived that down given the way things are today. But in doing so, they obviously have created way more MLB players during that 29 year period than would have been recognized otherwise, and that just means the overall MLB talent level was diluted down. And because the leagues were unfortunately segregated, the much larger number of Negro League players making the major league ranks back then makes it look like more of them would not have been of true MLB caliber as opposed to their white counterparts, thus making the Negro Leagues way more watered down.

I'm just trying to explain in looking at players on this All-Time Greatest list how the stats for some of them may need to be viewed with a big grain of salt. Instead, I feel I'm sort of being accused of saying none of these Negro League players belong in the majors at all. That is the furthest thing from the truth. Beginning to feel like Whoopi Goldberg. LOL

Thanks Glenn. That was an informative, logically thought out, and well explained back and forth between you and some others. And you seem to go along with what I've been trying to say. Looking at the number of black versus white HOFers is another measure to potentially help determine how many Negro League players really were deserving off MLB status recognition.

In an attempt by MLB to make amends to Negro League players and elevate them to MLB status, they obviously couldn't just cherry pick the star players like Gibson and Charleston, and only grant such status to some. MLB would never have lived that down given the way things are today. But in doing so, they obviously have created way more MLB players during that 29 year period than would have been recognized otherwise, and that just means the overall MLB talent level was diluted down. And because the leagues were unfortunately segregated, the much larger number of Negro League players making the major league ranks back then makes it look like more of them would not have been of true MLB caliber as opposed to their white counterparts, thus making the Negro Leagues way more watered down.

I'm just trying to explain in looking at players on this All-Time Greatest list how the stats for some of them may need to be viewed with a big grain of salt. Instead, I feel I'm sort of being accused of saying none of these Negro League players belong in the majors at all. That is the furthest thing from the truth.

agree
 

slap in the face

Yeah, and it's inexplicable given the recent efforts to elevate the Negro Leagues and sensibilities these days in general.