Quote:
Originally Posted by t206fix
These players were not excluded from the ML because they lacked talent, it's because they were black. And as Triwak put it, just because someone says they weren't good enough to be in the Majors, doesn't make it true. There is no metric out there right now that can tell us the 11th best player on a NL team was equal to the 15th best player on a ML team. A lot of people out there have opinions, but the only way to prove it is to let them play... oops, too late for that.
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Totally agree. Not that we can't estimate 'greatness', just it's hard to make a direct comparison. I love the way it's done in baseball reference (I believe) which was posted earlier, showing the league affiliation.
I think it's great that the HOF is accepting the NL as another "Major League", just a lot of thought and effort will need to be put into the stats for any meaningful comparison. And even then it will obviously be an estimate of 'greatness'. Jeez, we can't even agree on who the best picture was in a single league within a given year, for one example.
As far as anecdotal/opinions. I've read enough books were 'Joe Dirt said Milt Pappas was the toughest pitcher he ever faced, even tougher than Koufax', that individual opinions mean little. But taken in aggregate they could be meaningful.