The Negro Leagues are now major leagues

[westofyou]

Sure. Leagues like the Federal league are included...but when were they? Was it 70-100 years later? I’m legit asking. I do not know. This just seems really post hoc to me. I think there is a greater lesson in keeping it separate and acknowledging sins of the past, then saying oops let’s cover this 70-100 years later. History can’t be changed, but it can be learned from. I think we learn more about the evils of racism by keeping the stats separate while acknowledging it as a major league. We know the talent was there but it was a separate league for reasons of racism. It looks like a post hoc CYA to me. I think everyone knows the Negro Leagues had MLB quality talent in them. But they were separate from the AL and NL. The stats should reflect that inequity and stand separately. I think acknowledging the talent but not commingling the stats demonstrates an important lesson in inequity that need to remain in history for future generations to learn from and not repeat.

Here's a good piece on the FL and if it was worthy of MLB distinction

http://research.sabr.org/journals/fe...a-major-league

[westofyou]

So that means he has 174 MLB victories now?

They don't count Russ Fords FL records when discussing his stat line as a whole in my stat tools. I can't pull his records as a Yankee and a FL player together, they are counted but housed in their own bucket. They don't mingle in the career totals of his ledger except at the player level.

[Old school 1983]

Here's a good piece on the FL and if it was worthy of MLB distinction

http://research.sabr.org/journals/fe...a-major-league

Awesome. Thank you.

[RedsManRick]

This makes no sense to me and it reeks of arrogance. We all know now that banning African Americans from MLB for so long was a massive mistake and a real travesty for the game. Undoubtedly, the record books would look quite different had those players been allowed to participate.

But it happened. No one can change it. No one can erase it. And it’s arrogant as hell to think we can somehow “do what we can” to right a long ago wrong. We can’t. The best thing we can possibly do is what most of us were doing already— educate ourselves about those players the history of the Negro Leagues. My son is 9, loves baseball, and we’ve talked about the history, the why’s, etc.

Mostly, it’s a lie. Listing Josh Gibson’s stats among MLB stats is just a lie. He didn’t accumulate any of those numbers in MLB- so it’s patently absurd that his name would suddenly appear there. Of course, he SHOULD have been allowed to play and he may have very well been at the top of the record books had he played MLB. And I have no doubt many of the great players from that era would have been pushed down the ladder.

But we have no clue. And that’s the tragedy of it. They weren’t afforded the opportunity. So we will never know. We can speculate; we can debate; but we don’t know. And plugging those numbers into the MLB database is a joke. It’s a joke for the record books and I think it’s outright insulting to the players from the NL—- it comes off as grandstanding and pandering. Like somehow, now, in 2020, we can get-together and somehow “fix” this.

History is just that, history. MLB has its own history and it should probably be ashamed of some of it. But it’s theirs and they own it. The Negro Leagues and their players have their own history and it should stand apart and be viewed through an accurate lens.

Agreed 100%. You cannot retroactively pretend like there was integration. Combining the statistical histories of leagues which did not overlap on the field accomplishes nothing. MLB could have and should have admitted the damage and sought to elevate the accomplishments of Negro League players in of MLB's actions. But this was not the way to do that.

I found this Howard Bryant article a good articulation of my thoughts: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...-black-players

Baseball could have elevated the Negro League classifications as a professional league without altering the record books. It could have retroactively elevated the pensions, to financially assist Negro League descendants. Baseball should have taken the honest road, which would be to carry its stain and leave the tattered, piecemeal records of the various Negro Leagues as a historical reminder of its own destructiveness. Baseball did not do that -- not because it was so important to give Josh Gibson a posthumous batting title but because like most of white, mainstream society, it does not want to carry its share of the responsibility for the condition it created.

[757690]

Agreed 100%. You cannot retroactively pretend like there was integration. Combining the statistical histories of leagues which did not overlap on the field accomplishes nothing. MLB could have and should have admitted the damage and sought to elevate the accomplishments of Negro League players in of MLB's actions. But this was not the way to do that.

I found this Howard Bryant article a good articulation of my thoughts: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...-black-players

MLB already has retroactively added stats from other leagues. They even have retroactively changed stats from MLB games when they discovered new information. None of this is new.

I really don’t understand why this is controversial. It’s just stats, it’s not changing championships or team wins. We are argue about stats constantly, this just gives us something else to argue about.

[foster15]

MLB already has retroactively added stats from other leagues. They even have retroactively changed stats from MLB games when they discovered new information. None of this is new.

I really don’t understand why this is controversial. It’s just stats, it’s not changing championships or team wins. We are argue about stats constantly, this just gives us something else to argue about.

I think this mixing of stats is wrong on so many levels and goes against the grain on what data/stats are supposed to provide. But first, let's address the political/emotional/moral aspect of this. What does it really accomplish? Does it somehow make us better human beings? better country? better world? Doubt it. So all it accomplishes is muddying the waters for some quick and fleeting righteousness.

Data/stats are supposed to make things clearer. We still have to put things in context(which is far from an exact science) but the clearer the data, the better. It's difficult enough to compare two players who played on the same team(spot in batting order, how many times facing pitchers from the same and opposite side of plate as they throw from, who follows them in the batting order etc...). Then comparing players from different teams but same league(were his stats better because he played on same team as Koufax/Drysdale and didn't have to face them?). Then different leagues within the same entity(they played against the Yankees 18 times a season while he went against them zero times). Then you have different eras(higher mound, wider strikezone, pitching wasn't as good back then etc...)

Now they want to take a very smaller sample size of society, that only played against each other, and throw them in there, in the middle of baseball history(after the Babe but before Ted Williams for example). There is nothing common, nothing at all, other than they played the game of baseball, to make those stats meaningful. And that's the problem. When you've spent years trying to find the right data and clean it up as much as possible, why then go and muddy it? You don't take data and blurry it up for feel good reasons. That's not what science/stats are about. It's supposed to make a picture clearer.

Yes, they've added leagues after the fact, but at least they were so early in the date range, that it's very easy separate it out based on date range. Yes, we all know that Cy Young won 511 games. But we also can separate his era as being abnormal to the rest of baseball history and not just crown him greatest pitcher of all time based on his stats. All games evolve, but throwing in records of a totally different entity right in the middle of it's history does nothing but muddy everything. Especially because we know that there's so much data missing and that the games they played ranged from overwhelmingly outclassing the opponent to good matchup to totally being outclassed based on the fact they played a game anywhere they could find one. The original Cincinnati team did the same, but at least we can easily eliminate that data when evaluating since it's at the very beginning.

If baseball wants to include their stats as another category, fine, go for it. Something like Negro Leagues, American League, National League, MLB(AL NL combined) and all leagues(same as MLB but add the Negro leagues if you wish, but I find it useless, others might want to do it because it's fun or something).

I realize we'll be able to do that on our own. But 100 years from now, it'll be forgotten and folks will look at these stats and not put the proper context behind. It muddies the data, and it certainly will muddy history going forward.

[Assembly Hall]

Welcome to 2020...