Hall of Fame Early Baseball Committee

[CardCollector]

Originally Posted by CardCollector

What's also tough is that there will be SABRist that will indicate the AA was not as competitive as the NL, which would then remove Caruthers from possible consideration because 175 of his 218 wins were wile playing in the AA.

"Not Bad for a Beer League" (see p. 55 of this link: http://research.sabr.org/journals/fi...Pastime-15.pdf) does a nice job of presenting some evidence suggesting that the AA was pretty competitive. Here's the takeaway:

"All of the available evidence--championship series, exhibition games, incidence of bushers and the experience of transferred players--suggests that relative parity was achieved between the two leagues between 1886-1889. Partial evidence (exhibition wins, percent of bushers, a tied championship series) supports the theory that this state of parity was achieved as early as 1885. (Indeed, even the Spalding Guide of 1886 admitted that the American Association clubs had shown 'marked improvement in the strength of their teams' in 1885.)