Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
November 17, 2005
Simulating History

Richard Blackwood sends this entry from Michael Barone's blog. Barone ran into Bob Kendrick of the Negro League Baseball Museum who was working on getting Buck Williams into Cooperstown. Richard wonders if anyone wants to tackle the highlighted project:

My own suggestion: Let's have some computer whiz work up a program that would simulate how the Negro League stars would have performed in, and would have transformed, Major League Baseball if they had been allowed to compete there before MLB was integrated in 1947. Baseball is, after all, a game rich with statistics, and today people fool around with computerized simulations of games in various sports. What would an integrated baseball competition have looked like in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s? Let's give Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Ted Williams some more competition, with the Negro League greats. And let's open up the Hall of Fame more to those who deserve to be there.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone had already done this. If not, you'd need to figure out how Negro League statistics translate to MLB statistics, much like the formulas that project minor leaguers into the majors. There are some good simulation engines out there. It shouldn't be too difficult.


Posted by David Pinto at 07:38 PM | All-Time Greats | TrackBack (0)
Comments

The impression I've gotten from reading about such simulated statistics is that Negro League stats are not reliable, consistent, or easily normalized. It's not the same as Major League Baseball, or minor league baseball, where someone's got a box score of almost every game since 1900. It's also hard to distinguish the barnstorming games from the "official" league games.

Posted by: Barron at November 17, 2005 11:37 PM

Well, while you do run into several issues, it would be interesting to attempt.

Could you normalize statistics by taking the ML numbers of players like Satchel Paige or Roy Campanella or Larry Doby backwards into their negro league days? We do have decent records of the Negro Leagues from those days, although even those are pretty incomplete. If you could do that, you could use it to extrapolate equivalencies for other players, factoring in less talent, but also less competition, age, etc. etc.

Where you might really run into trouble is going back further, because it really was a different game in the early 20th century and it might be too big of a stretch to say that the negro leagues changed just like the major leagues. Comparing Christy Mathewson and Smokey Joe Williams might forever be limited to really cool anecdotes.

Posted by: Will at November 18, 2005 08:44 AM

I have read similar statements to what Barron says above. In fact, I tried to Google simple things like Satchel Paige's won-loss record and could not find anything resembling reliable statistics from his days in the Negro Leagues.

I did read how some folks at SABR are trying to collect this information, but I have not read anything about what progress they have made.

Posted by: Mark at November 18, 2005 11:26 AM

There are a number of simulations that try to make these kinds of estimates on the Hall of Merit section of Baseball Think Factory:

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/hall_of_merit/discussion/the_negro_league_home_page

Not all of 'em have what they call MLEs, or major league estimates, but many do, especially as you get into later players.

Posted by: Mark Donelson at November 20, 2005 03:32 PM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?