Quote:
Originally Posted by drcy
I think the question of if the Negro League states belong in there is a legitimate question.
However, MLB has all sorts of apples-to-oranges juxtapositions. Ty Cobb and Barry Bonds, Cy Young and Clayton Kershaw lived in very different baseball periods.
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True but they are very different questions. One is horizontal -- do you assume talent is relatively constant over time, or at least that players should be judged relative to their era such that someone with a 10 WAR in 1920 was as "good" as someone with the same WAR in 2020?
The NL question is vertical -- IF the leagues were not equal, it doesn't make sense to consider the stats the same as MLB players of the same era. Today, for example, if the minor league champion had a higher batting average than the MLB champion, you would not say he led baseball in hitting, or if you did it would be meaningless. I am not commenting on the "IF" but just putting it in context.