[JustinD]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

I agree with you that the MLB recognizing Negro League stats will have little to no effect on pricing, especially since Baseball Reference and SABR already integrated the stats years ago.

But to say the "WBC has shown that numerous other leagues are more competitive currently than the Negro Leagues ever were" is an odd point and impossible to prove. Are you saying that the cream of the crop from the Dominican, Korean and Japanese Leagues were better than the average Negro League? That may be the case, but it is not really relevant. What MLB is saying that on the whole, the 7 Major Negro Leagues were basically as good as white MLB as demonstrated by a fairly large sample size over many years. I don't think you can take the tiny sample size of the WBC and extrapolate a ton of information.

Furthermore, you are missing the point of the integration of the data. The best players from around the world are able to join the MLB in the USA. Blacks didn't have that opportunity until 1947.

I am not missing the point, I am simply stating it is not apples to apples. The statistics you cite are not traditionally clean numbers. These games used statistically by authors like Holman were often Negro Teams consisting of the best barnstormers they could get and some of the best Cuban players. The traveling teams from MLB only needed 5 players with MLB experience to count and were whomever the promoters could afford and some semi-pro players to fill. Some tours even contained not a single major league pitcher in the tour, so for me these numbers do not show depth of everyday players.

There are very few entries of data in which a complete NL team played a complete Major league team. Without that history, the statement of competitive equality is unproven and assumed. It was was most commonly groups of players vs players, not team vs team. I don't see a fair comparison to anything other than WBC.

Please don't mistake this as a downplaying of the Negro League. It of course had numerous players that in the best of worlds would have been playing with the majors. I am only stating that the statistics would have been better done in another way that was less confusing and yet still honored the league.