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Originally Posted by nat
Bill never really was a statistician. (As he'd be the first to tell you.) His real strength as a baseball writer was his willingness to ask questions, and to be open to unexpected answers. He used numbers to answer questions when he could, but it would be a mistake to include him in the list of genuine statisticians (Tom Tango, Michael Litchman, and so on) who study baseball.
Somebody said: "it is the Negro Leagues that were probably filled with a significantly higher percentage of non-MLB talent than the white, segregated major leagues ever were."
One thing to keep in mind is that Negro League teams often had smaller rosters than AL/NL teams. Looking at the 1943 Kansas City Monarchs (grabbed a team from the middle of Paige's career): they only had eight players who got >100 at bats. Only four other position players managed to get even 10 at bats. They only had seven pitchers who appeared in more than one game. It looks like the entire team was the starting nine, a bench bat or two, and a couple spare pitchers.
Comparing them to the 43 Yankees. The Yanks had, by my count, 13 position players who appeared in a substantial number of games, to go along with 10 pitchers who made more than a cameo appearance or two. Almost twice as many players on the roster.
Negro League competition wasn't all that diluted, compared to AL/NL competition, because there weren't as many guys on each roster.
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I was the one who said the Negro League stats were diluted down. I'm not arguing or disagreeing with your figures and statements, but you're using the wrong numbers.
I did some online research and am relying upon facts and figures I got off various sites. So if something I ended up using is wrong, I apologize, but blame the online sources.
So, since the National League was first formed in 1876, there have been 19,969 recognized MLB players through 2/17/2022, none of which appear to be solely Negro League players. And as of the end of 2020, MLB recognized approximately 3.400 Negro League player's stats as now being official MLB stats. These were taken from seven different Negro Leagues that operated during the period 1920-1948. And it appears that about 45 of those newly added Negro League player stats were for players that eventually made it into the majors, so I'll reduce the number of added Negro League player stats down to 3,355 (3,400 - 45) so as not to double count those players that did get into the majors also. Currently, depending on where you look, the black population in the US is at about the 12%-14% range. Back during the 1920-1948 period the Negro League stats were taken from, the black population in the US was even lower, at only about 10%. And finally, in 1956, Jackie Robinson's last year in the majors, the percentage of black players on MLB rosters was 6.7%. At the start of the 2020 season, the percentage of black players on MLB rosters had risen to 7.8%, still below the percentage of blacks overall in the US population.
Now without even adjusting for the increased number of teams and players over the past 60 years, starting with MLB's expansion that began back in 1961, if you take the overall total number of recognized MLB players in history and divide that by the number of years MLB has existed, you come up with an overall average of 136.8 new MLB players (19,969 / 146 Yrs) being recognized and added each year. Now if we do the same calculation for the Negro Leagues, we end up with them adding an average of 115.7 new MLB level players (3,355 / 29 Yrs) being recognized and added each year. The problem is, blacks accounted for only about 10% of the overall US population back then, and have historically represented an even lesser percentage of MLB rosters over a long period of time.
So based on those numbers and percentages, you would expect the average number of new black MLB level players being added from the Negro Leagues to be more like 13.7 players each year (136.8 MLB average X 10% black population), versus the 115.7 new MLB level players that were actually being added from the Negro Leagues annually. The 102 player difference (115.7 - 13.7) between these expected and actual average MLB level players being recognized and added each year by the Negro Leagues between 1920-1948 is most likely made up of players, the vast majority of which, that do not have MLB level talent, and are only playing at this level because Negro League teams needed to fill out their rosters with somebody. So as a result, it would seem logical to assume those Negro League stars that did have MLB level talent were able to feast on and pad and embellish their stats by playing a lot less MLB talent level players. Much, much, much more so than their white counterparts in the segregated major leagues. So to now take these Negro League stats and compare them straight across the board against everyone else in MLB is, I feel, totally unfair to all the regular MLB players, as they likely played against much higher overall MLB level talent throughout their careers, as opposed to their Negro League counterparts.
So if you want to go back and tell me again how the Kansas City Monarchs team having small rosters explains away the ridiculously disproportionate number of Negro League players that got their stats added onto MLB's records, and can do so with some actual facts, figures, and logical arguments, I'm all ears. Just promise you won't come back with some crap about how the black athletes just want to all play football and basketball now, and that's the best explanation you can give to explain how those Negro League players were all legit MLB level players back then. And so you know, I made sure to skew some of the numbers I was using so they'd actually go against the argument I was making. In other words, the numbers are likely even more ridiculously disproportionate than I was putting forth.
